Lessons from Mount Athos and the Desert Fathers

In January of this year (2025), I traveled with a friend from the same church. After completing the tedious visa process and booking accommodations at the monasteries, we flew from Boston, US to Thessaloniki, Greece. From there, we drove to the docks of the town named Ouranoupolis (“Gates of Heaven”), and then took a ferry to the long-awaited Mount Athos. Three long, narrow peninsulas extend into the Aegean Sea in northeastern Greece, and Mount Athos is one of them. It is the most famous holy site of the Orthodox Church and the geographical center of the Orthodox spiritual tradition, attracting a constant stream of male pilgrims year-round. This was my first pilgrimage, a seven-day journey from start to finish, and I benefited greatly from it.

The Historical Monastic Tradition of Mount Athos – For the Kingdom of God is not in word but in power.

The Christian monastic tradition began in the third and fourth centuries AD during the time of the Egyptian Desert Fathers, represented by St. Anthony. Mount Athos, as a sacred site for Orthodox spiritual practice, began in the nineth century and gradually gained prominence over the next 200 years. As Christianity was the state religion of the Roman-Byzantine Empire, Mount Athos received support from the imperial government. For example, the first formally established monastery was founded in 963 AD by Athanasius, a Georgian saint, primarily due to a permanent imperial grant ordered by the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas. In the eleventh century, Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX formally issued a decree prohibiting women from entering Mount Athos to ensure the purity and tranquility of the male monks’ ascetic environment.¹ This traditional prohibition was formally incorporated into Greek law in 1924.²

Mount Athos, known as the “Garden of the Virgin Mary,” is home to twenty historic ruling monasteries, representing the Orthodox traditions of the Greek, Georgian, Bulgarian, Russian, and Serbian peoples, as well as a dozen sketes and numerous independent hermit cells (hermitages), including those of Armenian and other ethnic groups. As of 2020, it housed over 2,200 monks³; these monks come from diverse ethnic backgrounds worldwide. Since the Church schism of 1054, Mount Athos has served as a spiritual center for the Eastern Orthodox Church. As a treasure trove of holy tradition, Mount Athos is now the “Autonomous Monastic Republic of Athos” (under Greek jurisdiction) and is under the spiritual administration of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Mount Athos represented the second peak of the three major Hesychastic revivals or developments in the history of Christian spirituality⁴, producing several Hesychasts, masters of spiritual formation who had a profound and positive influence on Orthodox theology and spiritual practice. Examples include the fourteenth-century Greek theologian Palamas and the nineteenth to twentieth-century Russian hermit St. Silouan.⁵

During the Ottoman conquests, especially after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Mount Athos suffered severe decline due to restrictions imposed by the Ottoman authorities, heavy taxes, and ultimately military occupation. In the nineteenth century, thanks to the patronage of the Russian Tsarist government and wealthy private individuals, the monastic population and property of Mount Athos experienced initial recovery and a resurgence. In 1912, the Greek navy liberated Mount Athos, ending nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule.⁶ Today, the religious and political status of Mount Athos—and its great spiritual mission—appears to be undergoing a full restoration.

The Serene Holy Mountain, Blooming with the Rose of Truth—The Structural Achievements of Spiritual Institutions

The ferry dropped us off at the pier at the foot of Mount Athos. Our first stop was the Russian Monastery of St. Panteleimon, adjacent to the sea. Its green theme, golden cross, and vibrant, majestic atmosphere made it a place Russian President Putin had visited twice on pilgrimage. Stepping into the monastery was like entering a newly filtered world, experiencing a tranquility I had never felt before. Looking up at the lush, verdant mountains above, enveloped in a pleasant stillness; this unique serenity awakened my senses, and the space itself seemed to have undergone a transformation. I began to understand more deeply the meaning of “ascetic who practices sacred quietude” and the “transcendental tranquility and dispassion” described by John the Ladder of Sinai.⁷

On Mount Athos, time is clearly not linear, but cyclical— a single-day repeated. The monastery repeats the same activities and the same liturgies every day, practically interpreting the theological definition of the Apostle Peter’s “a thousand years as one day.” Our second stop was the Greek Vatopedi Monastery. The monks there explained that King Charles III of the United Kingdom had visited this monastery a few times in his early years; they hoped that Charles would visit as King in the near future. Our third stop was the Georgian Iviron Monastery, where we unexpectedly saw a Japanese monk. The monastery houses the oldest library on Mount Athos, containing precious historical artifacts and manuscripts from the tenth to thirteenth centuries. For example, it possesses a precious manuscript of a Georgian translation of the seventh-century Byzantine classic, The Spiritual Meadow.⁸ The thematic scene of this ancient Greek work continues to unfold here across 1,400 years. Strolling through this evergreen spiritual meadow on Mount Athos, at each monastery I visited, I felt as though I were seeing a spiritual rose blooming for a thousand years, clearly exuding the fragrance of truth.

The “Academy of Hesychastic Science” of Orthodox Spirituality for a Thousand Years—the Project of Christianity using Gold, Silver and Costly stones

During my stay, I spent Orthodox Christmas at the Russian monastery and visited three other monasteries. The monks here attend services multiple times a day, totaling about 7-8 hours, as if performing a never-chaging full-time vocation.The vigil, in particular, lasts 3-4 hours, usually from 11:30 pm to around 3 am, accompanied by tireless prayers and elaborate rituals. There’s a saying here: if you wish for a clear mind, attend vigil services. The choirs in the monasteries sing with celestial voices, seemingly from time immemorial, resonating with the mind in the present moment; each monastery possesses various treasures of holy relics of the saints.

Through a week of observation, experience, and learning—attending daily vigil services, consulting with my friend, exchanging ideas with monks, and exploring the monasteries and the surrounding mountains—I understood Professor Zhang Baichun’s analogy from a lecture a few years ago: the monastic community of Mount Athos is equivalent to an “academy of science” for Orthodox Hesychasm of Christian spirituality. For 1,000 years, monks personally called by God have come here, led by spiritual masters—equivalent to “chief scientists”—continuously engaging in profound spiritual research and sharing their findings with the Christian church, benefiting believers and promoting the kingdom of heaven. I was amazed to discover that the monasteries, mountains, and forests together form a spiritual power plant where the Holy Spirit continually works— radiating divine energy day and night, empowering the monks, and renewing their diligent practice and exploration in their pursuit of God.

Concluding Remarks—May we be renewed in knowledge and become like the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:10-11)

What are the intentions of the countless Orthodox pilgrims who come to Mount Athos? Some come to experience a secluded, holy lifestyle; some come to confess, receive baptism, or pray for miracles; and some come to become monks, or patrons. In my view, Mount Athos, though in this world, yet not of it—On this mountain, some complex mystic principles of the Christian spiritual realm are no longer hidden from the children of the kingdom of heaven. This pilgrimage⁹ has given my mind new knowledge, recharged my soul, upgraded my epistemology, and allowed me to experience the sweetness of abundant life. These truths and the knowledge of the Holy Spirit, and their concrete methods of practical application, should originate from the core structure of the Christian faith—the doctrines of the Incarnation and Emmanuel (God with us)—and therefore transcend traditions and denominations. Undoubtedly, the sacred mountain still holds many wondrous mysteries of God’s kingdom, awaiting my next journey of exploration.

1. William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), [page number]. Dalrymple recounts that in 1857 his great-aunt Virginia Somers, her husband, and an artist friend ascended Mount Athos and camped there for two months, receiving warm hospitality from the monks. King Charles III of Great Britain made several pilgrimages to Mount Athos in his early years. He once brought Princess Diana with him, but due to the legal prohibition on women entering Athos, she remained on the boat while he visited the peninsula.
2. Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), chap. 18.
3. Friends of Mount Athos, A Pilgrim’s Guide to Mount Athos, 2020, http://www.athosfriends.org.
4. Zhang Baichun (former professor at Beijing Normal University, now Hainan University), lecture/material cited by author. Zhang explains that Christian spirituality has experienced three major hesychastic revivals: (1) Mount Sinai, Egypt (7th–8th centuries); (2) Mount Athos in Byzantium (13th–14th centuries); and (3) Russian Hesychasm (19th–early 20th centuries).
5. St. Gregory Palamas, a fourteenth-century Greek Orthodox theologian and monk of Mount Athos, defended the practice of hesychasm and articulated the distinction between union with God’s essence and participation in God’s energies. Regarding modern figures, St. Silouan the Athonite (1866–1938) emphasized that the grace of the Holy Spirit is experienced as a perceptible, renewing divine energy. It should be noted that in the early 14th century, a monk from Mount Sinai, Gregory Sinaites (originally from Greece), introduced the traditional hesychasm of Mount Sinai to Mount Athos. See “Gregory of Sinai,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, last modified November 23, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregory-of-Sinai.
6. Graham Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 133, 146–56.
   Herrin, Byzantium, 202. Herrin writes, “The fate of Athos during the period of Turkish rule is a sad tale of selling manuscripts and increasing reliance on Russian benefactors.” Scholars generally note that the Ottoman Turks began exerting control over Athos in 1424; after the fall of Thessaloniki in 1430, Athos came fully under Ottoman rule until 1912.
7. The Greek word hēsychia (“[seeking divine] quietness; stillness”) is rendered in Chinese as “spiritual formation,” a term that offers certain semantic advantages in theological discourse. See John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (ca. 600), Step 1, “On Renouncing the World,” 1.24: “Offer to Christ the labours of your youth, and in your old age you will rejoice in the wealth of dispassion.”
8. According to William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain, the author of The Spiritual Meadow is John Moschos, a prominent Byzantine monk and scholar of the sixth–seventh centuries. Moschos traveled with his disciple Sophronius the Wise (later Patriarch of Jerusalem) through Palestine, Mount Sinai, Egypt, and Syria, visiting monasteries, interviewing ascetics, and recording their sayings and practices. The Spiritual Meadow remains a valuable early source on Christian asceticism.
9. The author expresses gratitude to Rev. Stephen Wei Gao (Chicago, USA) and to members of the Mount Sinai “WeChat–Zoom” Fellowship in both the United States and China for their direct assistance in making this pilgrimage possible.