Record

ON MOUNT ATHOS, THIS WINTER, IT SNOWED LIKE NEVER BEFORE
Monks in White
A branch of an orange tree grew heavy with fruit and snow. Olive and cypress trees were blooming white. Hermitages and chapels covered with snow and cut off. An off-road vehicle and a tractor are making their way over the hill to the monastery Hilandar. From Gregorijat, on Christmas Day, Daphne Harbor is barely visible through the veil of snow, and is also abandoned. For three days, old Nikodim could not come out of the Hermitage of Saint Sava and make a path through drifts of snow as much as three meters high. People from the Holy Mountain have never seen this much snow, but they rejoice the whiteness that reminds us of the original purity of the world and man. They thanks the Lord for everything, including this

Photo: monks Milutin

Not even the oldest monks on Mount Athos remember snow this high as on Christmas Day in 2017. Snow usually covers higher areas and the top of Mount Athos, where a large cross rises, like a throne, at an altitude of 2,033 meters above sea level. But this winter, the administrative eat of Mount Athos, Karyes, was cut off from the world for a few days, as most Mount Athos monasteries, chapels and hermitages. The Christmas snow came down to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, covering with snow even the main port of Daphne, tucked away in a secluded bay on the southwest side of the peninsula. Father Siluan from Gregorijat monastery, situated on a hill above Daphne, sent us a photo of the port. Otherwise very busy, with several thousand people coming there every day, the port was deserted for Christmas. And the road from the port toward Karyes and the monasteries in this part of the peninsula was mostly impassable.

Chained with snow, Karyes sunk into the winter idyll. This is confirmed by Father Nikodim, abbot of the Hermitage of Saint Sava in Karyes, who is famous among the Mount Athos monks as a great ascetic, dedicated to prayers and quietness and monastic devotion.
– For three days I could not come out to clean the snow in front of the hermitage, where the drifts were as high as three meters – says father for National Review.
The snow covered the gentle Milej in the north of the peninsula, where the only remaining Serbian monastery on Mount Athos – Hilandar – is located, an endowment of St. Simeon and St. Sava.
Jokingly, one of the monks compared the height of snow with double height of monk Cyril, while the on duty photographer of Hilandar, father Milutin, a burly man from Mojkovac, recorded the idyllic snowy scenery with his lens. He testifies to us that no one from the fraternity of Hilandar remembers such a snow on Mount Athos, which will saturate the gardens and vineyards of the Mount Athos monasteries. Photos by father Milutin speak most eloquently of the snowy whiteness on the Holy Mountain.