Today, monastic life in Orthodoxy is experiencing a crisis. In Greece and the Middle East, the decline of monastic vocations is caused primarily by a difficult historical mutation. Traditional forms of monasticism have always been associated with rural civilization, which is now on the verge of extinction. In the era of foreign domination, monasteries were the last refuges for threatened society. They could hardly meet the challenge of the modern world, which in the eastern Mediterranean is regarded as imported from outside, and not as the result of the normal evolution of structures and minds, as in the West. In Eastern Europe, the situation is even more complicated due to official atheism and aggressive secularism of the authorities. However, the challenge of technical civilization, which had degenerated into a totalitarian system, made people face the need to comprehend the most essential. In Russia, as in Romania, in the years after World War II, there was a renewal of monastic life, which often captured strata of intelligent youth. The alarmed authorities reacted in the most severe way: in Romania, the reaction manifested itself in 1958, in Russia a year later. Only a less noticeable rise in female monasticism in Serbia was able to take place painlessly. Today we see signs of a certain revival of monasticism. Contemplation "in the heart of the masses" is gaining strength in Russia, where there are still a few monastic communities. Much has been preserved in Romania, where the monastic reform carried out by Patriarch Justinian in 1953 is beginning to bear fruit. Numerous young communities are intertwined with new structures, and the monks, according to the statute drawn up by the patriarch, must participate in economic construction "with a view to transfiguration," with prayers for those "who do not know how and do not want to pray and have never done so."

In Greece, difficult relations exist between the "monastic" zealots of traditional forms of monastic life and the haters of everything modern and the "laity" brotherhoods, which are sometimes seduced by purely external work. Somewhat apart from this rivalry are young Christian intellectuals who strive to find the spirit of Tradition in order to work out an answer to the aspirations and anxieties of the modern world. Some of them choose the "path of Alyosha Karamazov" – prayerful, full of love and presence among people, others go to Athos with the same thirst for inner renewal. In the Middle East, such problems are close to being resolved. In the Youth Movement of the Patriarchate of Antioch, a call to the contemplative life has been awakened, a women's community has recently arisen near Tripoli under the spiritual guidance of Fr. George Khodra; a male community of followers of the hesychasm tradition, brought here by Fr. Andrei Skryma, settled in the mountains, above Beirut. In the Diaspora, there is a significant gap between individual monastic convents, mostly convents, whose nuns came for the most part from nostalgic for the past and least enlightened circles of the Russian emigration—and an intellectual rather than spiritual understanding of Orthodoxy. Attempts to renew monastic life in monasteries, such as the Tolleshunt Knights under the guidance of the disciple of Elder Silouan, remain a rather isolated phenomenon.

Athos seems to concentrate this crisis in itself. A significant decrease in the number of its inhabitants is explained primarily by the cessation of replenishment from Russia: in 1900, the Russian St. Pantelemon Monastery numbered 2500 monks, and today there are only three dozen of them left. The situation, however, is not hopeless, there are still a thousand and a half monks on Mount Athos, and in some Greek communities there is a surge of new strength. The hermits in the southern "pus-tynki" still keep alive and ardent the flame of the highest monastic tradition. But there is another side to the crisis: it is expressed in the categories of fear of the modern world, unwillingness to know it, suspiciousness and curses...

At the same time, the renewal of Mount Athos requires openness to Orthodox or simply Christian ecumenicality. Athenagoras I, organizing the festivities of the millennium of Athonite monasticism, despite the discontent of some monks who feared disturbance and public uproar, sought to promote a double process of renewal and openness. To gather on Mount Athos all the Orthodox Churches, in the person of their primates, meant not only to remind them of their unity, but also of the duty arising from this unity, in order to bring about an influx of new forces to the Holy Mountain, and to return to the spiritual life of the "silent" its creative dimension.

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On June 11, 980, the young monk prayed in the skete of the Dormition at the Mother of God. He was supposed to sing the Ninth Canto of the Canon, invariably dedicated to the Mother of God, originally including only "Magnificat" (My soul magnifies the Lord), when the "stranger", the Angel of the legend, actually a vision, appeared. And the "stranger" prefaced the hymn with the words: "It is worthy to truly bless Thee, the Mother of God, ever-blessed and immaculate, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, without the incorruptibility of God the Word, we magnify Thee, the Mother of God." This prayer, which is included today in many services, has become one of the favorite prayers of the Orthodox world. The anxious monk could not remember the words, but the "stranger" wrote them down on the stone with his finger. At the same time, the icons of the Mother of God and the Savior in the iconostasis changed places, so that the Mother of God appeared to the right of the Holy Doors. A symbol of deification and "mysterious primacy" at the end of time, "the meaning of divine motherhood," writes Fr. Andrei Skryma.

The icon still exists in the Protaton church in Karyes. A solemn procession carried her across Greece in the month that preceded the millennium festivities.

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Postponed due to the illness of Paul I, King of Greece, the festivities began on June 22, 1963. The crowd of pilgrims and visitors was enormous, it increased even more on the second day, so that all the places prepared in advance were crowded, and the feast turned into something chaotic, huge and unusually joyful, as is often the case with religious holidays in the East. Patriarchs Benedict of Jerusalem, German of Serbia, Justinian of Romania, Cyril of Bulgaria, Archbishop Chrysostomos, Primate of the Greek Church, Archbishop Porphyrios of Sinai, and the head of the Finnish Church, Paul, arrived in person. The Patriarchs of Alexandria and Moscow, as well as the Archbishop of Cyprus, were represented at the highest level. The Russian delegation was headed by Metropolitan Nikodim. In commemoration of the unity of the Orthodox world, the heads of the Local Churches were commemorated at the Divine Liturgy, which was conciliarly served on Sunday, June 23 in Karyes.

Вечером того же дня православные делегации и представители различных христианских конфессий посетили Великую Лавру, где был отслужен благодарственный молебен на могиле ее основателя, святого Афанасия Афонского. Вечером, в трапезной, под аскетическими фресками Феофана Критского, братия была столь многочисленна, что всем желавшим не хватило места. Невозмутимый среди всеобщего оживления монах читал «житие иже во святых отца нашего Афанасия Святогорца».

Посещением Великой Лавры завершились официальные празднества. Однако русская, сербская, румынская и болгарская делегации задержались на некоторое время на Афоне, чтобы установить контакты с монастырями своих стран и с Вселенским патриархом. Впервые за десятки лет официально возобновились отношения между негреческими монастырями Афона и их Церквами. Благодаря упорству патриарха Афинагора было получено разрешение на приезд славянских и румынских монахов…

Межправославная встреча в Великой Лавре после завершения празднеств, стала важным поводом для осмысления Церкви, для преодоления слишком радикального понимания автокефалии, без впадения в чрезмерно юридическую централизацию, чуждую православной традиции. Сам пример афонского монашества показывает, насколько общины, которые стремятся к независимости, могут добровольно отдать себя под власть общего авторитета, служащего благу всех. Двадцать больших афонских монастырей вполне независимы, равны в правах и обязанностях. Их представители образуют «святую общину», которая каждый год назначает исполнительный комитет из четырех членов «епистасис», президент, которой «Про–тос», получает утверждение Вселенского патриарха. В целом, это соборная система, находящая действенное выражение в постоянном синоде. В такой перспективе, румынская делегация на конференции на Афоне в 1930 году, предложила учреждение постоянного всеправославного синода при Вселенском патриархе. Это предложение, которое не было осуществлено, было вновь выдвинуто в 1963 году патриархом Юстинианом. Он предложил создать при Вселенском Престоле постоянно действующую комиссию, состоящую из представителей Церквей–сестер – епископов и преподавателей богословия – чтобы подготовить созыв предсоборного совещания или собора. На этот раз идея получила принципиальное одобрение. С началом соборного процесса она должна в конце концов осуществиться.

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30 июня патриарх Афинагор прибыл в Пирей. Принятый с почестями, подобающими главе государства, он совершил официальный визит в Грецию, посетив при этом свою родную деревню. Повсюду он встречал сердечный прием в народе. «Элладская Церковь в лице некоторых ее руководителей часто была враждебна Вселенскому патриарху, – сказал он мне. – Но народ за меня, он поддерживает мои усилия, что я глубоко ощутил входе этой поездки…».