The Journey: Pilgrimage to Patmos.

Gynaecological surgeon, Dr J Richard Smith's new book explores pilgrimage, spirituality and chant as a means towards achieving wholeness...  

Patmos is the island to which St John, writer of the fourth Gospel and three of the epistles, was exiled from Ephesus in 96AD by the Christian-persecuting Emperor Domitian, and on which the biblical book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, was revealed to him in visions which he dictated to the scribe Prochorus. John was the son of Zebedee and Salome, the sister of St Joseph. As a young man he and his elder brother James became fishermen, and were both called as disciples by Jesus. He was present at Christ’s transfiguration on Mount Tabor, in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was betrayed and it was he who reclined on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper. John was the only disciple to stay with Jesus all the way to Golgotha and, along with Mary, was present at his crucifixion. It was John who Jesus asked to look after his mother like a son, and John who was present when Thomas placed his hand in the side of Christ. His exile on Patmos ended after the assassination of Domitian and John returned to Ephesus where he would eventually die peacefully, the only disciple not to have been put to death.

History has little to tell us of Patmos after John left until St Christodoulos came to the island in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, having arranged for the island to be gifted to him and his monks by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. He founded the Monastery of St John the Theologian and began the work of preserving the cave in which John received his visions (now known as the Cave of the Apocalypse).

The Cave has the appearance of a wave made of rock, varying between six and eight feet in height and with the facing wall covered with icons. On my visit during my week long stay on Patmos immediately this felt to me like a very holy place. It bore little resemblance to the caves on Bute back in my native Scotland, which are a bit dirty and smelly thanks to pigeons. In one of the icons St John is shown seeing his vision of God with seven candles, which represent the seven ancient churches of Asia Minor. Below the figure of Christ, looking on this occasion extremely severe, is John, reclined and receiving his message. Next to this is an icon of John dictating his vision to his scribe Prochorus, who is writing it down fast and furiously. A further icon shows the Virgin. Beside this, to the right, is a hole in the side of the cave with a silver halo round it where John rested his head during his visions, and close is another silver-rimmed hole, marking the hand-hold where John helped himself up. The place where he placed his head is behind brass bars but you can easily put your hand through to touch this sacred place. The ground is made of rock which is fractured in three directions, by tradition a Trinitarian sign.

I descended a steep staircase to the church, where I found a doorman and three other pilgrims – two men and a woman – sitting on two bench pews. A few minutes after I joined them the woman got up and moved to some brass rails by the wall, where she lay down and against the side of the cave. Temporarily spoiling the prayerful atmosphere, the doorman then decided to move some boxes of candles about, and I wondered momentarily if he was creating a distraction out of annoyance at having seen me cross myself the Catholic way rather than the Orthodox way (Catholics make the horizontal motion from left to right, the Orthodox right to left), but I was just being paranoid. As I left later, having taken my turn on the floor to touch the hole in the cave wall (reminiscent of the hole where the cross was planted at Golgotha in Jerusalem) I shook the fellow’s hand and he seemed to be a perfectly friendly and decent man who had most probably just grown too used to the sanctity of this special place.

One of the reasons Patmos became a UNESCO world heritage site is that it is ‘one of the few places that has evolved uninterrupted since the twelfth century. There are few other places in the world where religious ceremonies that date back to the early Christian times are still practised unchanged … an exceptional example of a traditional Greek Orthodox pilgrimage centre of outstanding architectural interest’. Over the course of this and the several other pilgrimages I have made over the last few years – from Jerusalem to Iona - I have become increasingly convinced that the Orthodox Christians, in their simple, long-held traditions, know a thing or two. Just a week before travelling to Patmos I had been having dinner with my friend Fr Anthony and we were talking about the Church’s problems: all the sex scandals have been a disaster and I for one think that the Roman Catholics should follow the example of the Orthodox Church and allow their priests to marry. I know that there are plenty of celibate priests like Fr Anthony and Fr Gary who are happy that way but there have to be plenty who are not, which I am sure is a contributing factor towards all the trouble that has occurred. Another problem with Roman Catholic (and Anglican) churches are the persistent changes being wrought in their services and liturgies. In the Orthodox Church nothing changes, and one knows, when one partakes in their services, that one is part of a very ancient tradition. It is precisely the lack of change that makes the stories and traditions of Orthodox spirituality so believable. Having been in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on another pilgrimage, I was left in no doubt that I had been present at the true site of the cross. We questioned whether Pope Francis is moving forward in the right direction: there is no doubting that most of us like a grand ceremony (the grander the better for me, as you’ll probably have noticed by now), but Francis has taken that name in order to look back to the values of St Francis, namely simplicity and closeness to the common man and woman, which is highly laudable.

With this in mind I made my route back down the wide cobbled path lined with pine trees which leads to and from the Cave of the Apocalypse, a journey enlivened by encounters with two sets of aggressive dogs – some big Alsatians which fortunately were chained up, but also some smaller, untied mongrels which ran into the road snarling at me. A wave of my stick and some choice Glasgow expletives sent them packing, still growling, and I eventually arrived safely back at my hotel via a wood at its side. I had spotted a little church in the trees and went to look but found it shut, but from there I could see the hotel garden so I shimmied on down and climbed over into it, hoping not be seen by the owners. I managed a quick swim in the pool before settling down to work until midnight.

By J Richard Smith

 

Dr J. Richard Smith is a gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College London and an expert in cancer survivorship and pioneering womb transplant surgery.

This is an excerpt from The Journey: Pilgrimage, Spirituality, Chant by J Richard Smith available now from DLT Books in paperback, priced £9.99. It was originally published in the Church of England Newspaper in September.