In the Cell of Isaac the Athonite

Arabic original here.



The Cell of Fr Isaac (Atallah): "Heaven on Earth"

On the night of the Feast of Saint Isaac the Syrian (old-calendar), we headed into the deep wilderness of Mount Athos, toward the cell of the reposed Hieromonk Isaac (Atallah), in order to share in the table of prayer, the vigil that goes from nine at night until sunrise the following morning. We were a group of believers, eleven people, several of whom were accustomed to going to this cell on this exact night.

It was seven thirty in the evening. We went up in a bus from a nearby monastery on an unpaved road, like all the roads on this mountain. After about half an hour, we stopped at a bridge and went the rest of the way on foot.

It was very dark. We walked one behind the other, relying on flashlights, the sound of crickets filling the space around us.

At first, we were haunted by a feeling of extraordinary fatigue. How can a person spend the entire night standing and sitting without being overwhelmed by tiredness and fatigue?

In human terms, this might be true, but here is the surprise: If a person from the first moment simply leaves himself in the hands of his Creator, he discovers that he is a "liturgical being", carried on the palms of angels and the saints of this mountain, if he decides to be united to God, the intercession of the All-Holy Theotokos will not depart from him for a single moment.

The beauty begins. A few moments before the prayer starts, rows of ascetics walk into the place, as though they had come down from heaven, one group after another, human shadows as though they had come from another world, walking at a quick and steady pace, one after another. You cannot see them well, because the color of their robes mixes with the black of night. You distinguish them by the flash of their faces and their long white beards, since the cell is completely empty of any modern technology. There is no electricity and cars cannot go on its path. Some kerosene lamps, which do not exceed the number of fingers on a hand, are placed in the corners to help us move.

Upon our arrival, with the guidance and warm welcome of the monks who live there, those arriving take up a simple location for themselves to sit and rest a little before the prayer begins.

The seats are wooden boards supported by stone and mud. Overhead was some wood and straw.

At that time the heavenly hosts pass before you, the elders of the desert, moving briskly among the shadows. They are welcomed with warm voices and receive a blessing from those who preceded them in asceticism. You sense the angelic presence, a peace, calm, and joy that is not of this world.

You look at them reflecting the candlelight and the light of the moon and you behold faces upon which are traced ascetic struggles and prayer, a firmness that is not lacking mercy, wrinkles traced by the fingers of grace and brightness.

Total seriousness wrapped in happiness and joy, giving and sacrifice.

"Commandos" who are completely ready, conscripted under the banner of Christ, alert and seasoned in battle, patience, and victory through God's grace. Just their faces exude a power. They immediately expel from your soul any feelings of laxity, hesitation, or fatigue.

Those among them who are advanced in age surpass the young in enthusiasm. Amongst them is an obedience to the spiritually advanced, extreme humility, and things that surpass all consideration or analogy. A venerable elder receives a blessing from a young priest, while the latter bows before the elder like a son to his father. How not, when he is his spiritual father!

They are really a heavenly presence. They embody Christianity and initiate you in the fullness and profundity of theology without speaking a single word. Their eyes are filled with tears from repentance and consolation, whose shine is the light of the Resurrection and victory. If you embrace them, you are touched by holiness and the sweetness of heaven.

They are great elders, before whom heads bow and under whose feet fall all the false and empty pleasures of the world. You realize that you are truly nothing and everything that you revel in is also nothing, possessions, positions, titles. Indeed, everything in life that you consider beautiful and strive to acquire is "emptiness and void". Man has no glory or honor except in being in the presence of God, as a humble and simple human, but at the same time rich in Christ and in all the gifts and graces that God has given him.

The true Christian is this divine presence that takes prayer as nourishment and struggle as a way of life.

After being briefly received with a cup of coffee and a piece of fasting halva, the simandron is strikes for prayer and the ascetic monks' voices break the night's silence with the most beautiful melodies and tones.

You look around and there the elders have scattered around the cell's church, left and right, with a speed that you're eyes have never seen. They disperse and are undivided, as they make up one body in harmony with Christ, the head.

Each one of them knows what to do and what he must do, as Christ's armies standing at the ready. Their tongues surpass the language of the body, heavenly beings who witness with their eyes the spirit of the One whom they address, to whom  and with whom they pray.

My God, what splendor! It is something beyond description. The cell of Father Isaac has become an open heaven. Here the icons joyfully give praise with those chanting and dance with joy with the angels and saints who have come down from heaven so that heaven and earth may become completely as one, filled with the odor of incense and lit beeswax candles in which one savors a taste of the kingdom. You know longer know whether you are standing on earth or present on high.

In the middle of all this angelic buzz, "geronda" moves about like a shadow, circling around the chanters and readers in silence, gesturing. A single gesture from him is enough for everyone to know what must be done. One book is closed and another opened without you knowing how or hearing any commotion that would disturb the purity and holiness of the place. Despite the small size of the church, it has become more expansive than the seas and oceans. A light dawns in every place and you wish for time to grow longer, for tomorrow to not reach you, but you are compelled to depart.

So, if a moment of fatigue comes to you, you resist it and refuse to close your eyes or to take a "nap", lest any of this beauty, splendor and the charm of the place pass you by. Even if you doze off, the heavenly tones take you and incline you to come back, wake up, and discover that you have arrived in a state of the kingdom that surpasses understanding. Truly you say with the Apostles, "Nothing separates me from Christ." I am in the presence of God.

Compline, vespers, readings, matins, the divine liturgy, all of them make up a single prayer-rope, a complete and integral unity, an open and unending table. You no longer realize how it began.

At any moment that you arrive, it has gone on before you, but at the same time it awaits you and there is a place for you there.

In the final moments of the night before sunrise, the kolyva is placed in the middle of the church and a monk distributes candles to the priests. All of them line up side-by-side in a semi-circle, facing the altar, so that the memorial service for the reposed monk Father Isaac (Atallah) can begin.

Why candles? Because they are a sign of Pascha and the shining forth from the tomb. There is no death in Christ. It is falling asleep and being transported.

The service begins with its most glorious beauty within the church and is completed outside, before Father Isaac's grave.

The black of night changes into the daylight of the Resurrection, so you realize in your soul that Father Isaac is participating with you in the very service. He stands beside you and chants with the choir, singing with those rejoicing.

Yes, you feel that he is alive. You want to talk to him and to bow before him to receive his blessing.

The service ends and you are surprised that it is almost six in the morning, so all can share in the agape table. You say to yourself: how did the whole night pass in a single moment without me getting tired?! Truly, "a thousand years are in the eyes of the Lord are like yesterday which has passed." He is the Heavenly Bridegroom, accompanied by the angels.

This is the cell of Father Isaac (Atallah), who left his earthly homeland of Lebanon to enter into the paradise of the Theotokos, to join the caravan of God's holy ones, and to turn a plot of land on Mount Athos into a heavenly elevator, in which one recovers his true, original identity, which is the kingdom.

This is Mount Athos and this is Orthodoxy, a life lived in struggle and blood.

Truly the kingdom begins now. Its gates are wide open. If you attain the Athonite vigil with good patience, then you attain divine longing, you acquire the "art of arts"-- that is, prayer, struggle, repentance, hope, joy, and consolation. Then you belong to the caravans of those struggling. You praise the Lord in repentance and joy and say to Him, "Amen."


Fr Athanasius (Shahwan)
October 11, 2012
Mt Athos, Greece

Metropolitan Ephrem on Isaac the Athonite

Metropolitan Ephrem’s homily on the twelfth Anniversary of the repose of Archimandrite Isaac Atallah, delivered at the Church of St. George in Hamatoura July 16, 2010-08-04. The Arabic original can be found here.

Be Brave

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Beloved, we have come here on this day to pray and raise a living memorial for the Monk Isaac on the twelfth anniversary of his repose. He lived for a time in this monastery and practiced asceticism here before being forced by historical circumstances to leave to go and be an ascetic on the Holy Mountain.

This memorial is fitting for us, so that we might remember and know all those monks and ascetics who lived and practiced asceticism and consecrated themselves to the Lord, so that we the faithful might know the substance of monasticism, the reason why it came into being and why God permitted it to exist in this world! Monasticism spread strongly from the fourth century and this, as you, is after the end of the first persecutions against Christians and the victory of Saint Constantine the Great and his establishing the Byzantine Empire.

At this point in history many people became Christians according to the faith of their leader. This is well-known. It led to the Christian life becoming colder. For this reason some Christians zealously wanted to closely maintain the life of the Gospel, imitating the Lord Jesus Christ and following the Gospel commandments. Thus some started to leave the cities and the world in order to hasten to quiet. This quiet is necessary for beginners because man is affected by his surroundings because of his weakness. But they went further than that in their imitation of the Lord Jesus and His teachings because they did not only seek external quiet but also interior quiet that is, to quiet their nerves, their desires, their passions. They were helped to achieve this by grace, the grace of God. Through this they are able to be consecrated to the Lord, in the love of the Lord.

Man cannot love God or love his neighbor if he only loves himself! This is why the Lord Jesus said, “he who wants to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is the ascetic way that many have walked since the fourth century, and especially in our lands because it arose in Egypt and Syria and extended to Iraq and Mesopotamia and to Iran to the Far East and then to Asia Minor, Turkey and Greece.

What good is this ascetic way for the world?

The monk purifies himself but he also purifies his surroundings! Because when God’s grace ‘sits’ in a person, when it fills the heart, it pours out to others. A single holy ascetic changes his surroundings an builds around himself a whole world! This is what we need today and at all times so that the entire world does not fall into sin and worship idols! That is, worship their passions and all the material things in this word, especially corruption. We need that so that the world worships the living God mentioned in the Gospel today when it spoke about the Prophet Elijah and John the Baptist. This is how man becomes holy.

This is the way in which Abuna Isaac walked! Those who saw him know this, his brothers who are present here today. From his youth he yearned for quiet and he fled from him home to the wilderness where he could be alone with God and be filled with His Holy Spirit. This is the way in which he walked and in which he was raised. God wanted him to go to Balamand Monastery and from there to this Monastery of Our Lady of Hamatoura and afterwards to the Holy Mountain where he ended his life in peace and repentance.

Father Isaac was hard on himself at first because he was persistent and watchful in order to be with God and to follow His commandments. He brought up his disciples in this way, just as he brought other up. His good memory is deep on the Holy Mountain. He was a brave and courageous man who spoke the truth and did not fear.

This way requires courage. This courage can only come from God because man is weak and fearful. However he was not afraid because he was a man who exerted great effort on himself and God gave him this power. For this reason his memory remains deep in all those who knew him. Father Isaac bore witness that God is the only necessary thing. This world and the material things in it, food and drink, none of them are necessary, but God alone is what is sufficient for us. This was the witness of Father Isaac. He was not attached to this world. He showed all that the world does not suffice and that there is eternal life with Jesus Christ waiting for us all, amen.

Fr. Pandeleimon of Hamtoura and Isaac the Athonite

Here is a wonderful article in Greek and English about Fr. Pandeleimon, abbot of the monastery of Hamtoura. It has several pictures of him and of the brothers of the monastery, as well. Scroll halfway down to find the English....!

http://noctoc-noctoc.blogspot.com/2008/08/elder-panteleimon-of-hamatouraa-hidden.html

Also, to hear Fr. Pandeleimon's excellent voice click here.

How to Translate the Psalms

The following is from the forward to Isaac the Athonite’s translation of the Psalms, written by Archimandrite Cassianus of Dayr al-Shafi’a al-Harra (Monastery of Our Lady of Fervent Intercession), Bdebba el-Horsh, North Lebanon. This translation of the Psalms was published in 2000 by the same monastery.


This is how the Elder, Father Isaac the Athonite appeared to me time after time. He would leap about the ground of the Holy Mount Athos, gliding like a hart around the channels of water that he had dug with his own hands on the grounds of his hermitage, seeking the underground water from God’s heart, shining with the stars in the Virgin’s Garden and clinging to the full moon which shined from behind the wall in that small cell. After roaming the night in prayer, he would come to us, looking through the window and pouring into our sleep-wearied eyes what he had gathered from the lights of the night. He would call out to us, “Come to praise! Come to the church! Let us praise the Lord with the ten-stringed Psalms!”

When I banished the weight of sleep from my eyes, I would see him carrying in his hand a small notebook with a blue cover as he walked to the church. He would enter the temple and begin preparation for the Divine Sacrifice after he placed that notebook on his desk among his books and his prayer-ropes and his papers.

Time and again curiosity pressed me to want to know what that ascetic elder was reading at night under the light of the stars. I tried to ask him many times, but I held back, imagining that he recorded in it the names of some afflicted people in order to pray for them at night.

The years went by and the days and nights passed, and the thought remained, asking me, “On which page of the notebook did he record my name?” until the day came when the truth was made clear. Our last encounter on the ground of the Holy Mount Athos was in the cell of the Resurrection on September 27, the feast of Saint Isaac the Syrian.. At noon, after the elder rested from the morning prayers, he sat next to me on a wooden seat. In his hands was the priests’ service-book, recently printed, which we had worked on together. He kissed it, placed it on his forehead, and said to me, “I will give you a book for you to print in the same way and for you to publish with the same binding, so that the Arabic-speaking sons of our Church will benefit from it.

He went into his cell and came back with that blue notebook and handed it to me. I grabbed it like a hungry man grabs a crust of bread. I opened it and I found that it was a book of the Psalms that Father Isaac had written with his own hands and translated from the Greek Septuagint which our Orthodox Church relies upon. I leafed through the book and found its words to flow forth brilliantly, like sweet water.

On the morning of the next day, after we finished the Divine Liturgy, he started to recount to me the story of this book. He said, “When I would read the Psalms in Arabic I would come upon many unclear meanings and I became alarmed when I compared some verses as they appear in the Arabic to the reliable Greek text because I found them to be very far from the intended meaning. There were unclear words or phrases or more in almost every Psalm, to the point that it leads to a lack of clarity in the text and the total discarding of the intended theological meaning as it was put forth by the Holy Fathers like Basil the Great, Dionysios, and Nicodemos of Mount Athos, whose many volumes I would read in order to understand just one sentence. So, I am able to show them in Arabic as close as possible to the intended theological meaning.

[…]

I would often stop at certain verses, pondering on them and praying, asking the Prophet David, ‘How should they be composed according to their true meaning?’ In that way I passed the nights and the hours of the day, searching and refining until I arrived, finally, at a faithful Arabic translation.

This does not mean that I deny the blessed efforts of those who worked before me, and for this reason you see that I preserved the words and phrases that my predecessors translated clearly, and which I found to correspond to the original Greek text, because the ears of the faithful have become accustomed to hearing them and have become familiar with them. I only updated what appeared to me to not fit with the original text in a simple, comprehensible way. While clarifying the meanings, it was necessary to rely on the Fathers of the Orthodox Church who explained the verses of the Psalms with the light of their divine inspiration and the profundity of their prayer and giving praise. “

I took the book as a blessed, precious gift and left the Holy Mountain for Lebanon, carrying a letter to His Eminence Metropolitan Elias (metropolitan of Tripoli) from Father Isaac asking his blessing to print the book.

I spent nearly two years refining the words of the book, numbering the verses according to the order followed in the Greek translation and writing out the vowels for important words so that they can be read in the Arabic language without hesitation.

I wrote to Father Isaac asking him to explain certain points and his explanation was the last written words that his hand wrote with ink before he left and was transported to the Land of the Living and the Living Word.

After I finished ordering and arranging everything that was necessary, I gave it to be printed at Pascha, so that it would be a holy, inspiring Pascha to those who accept it with faith and reverence, and a humble offering to our Lord Jesus Christ, the first and most glorious Pascha, so that He may forgive the sins of the Elder, Father Isaac the Athonite and make his memory to be eternal among the righteous and the saints, the Orthodox who have shone forth in piety and asceticism during the two thousand years since Christ walked the earth.

Isaac the Athonite, part III

The completion of parts I and II.

On his return to Lebanon, he was ordained as a priest at the Patriarchal Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Balamand by the laying on of hands of the patriarch Elias IV (Mouawad), with the name Philippos. He then lived in the period between 1973 and 1975 in the little monastery dedicated to the memory of the Holy Greatmartyr George the Victory-bearer, a dependency of the Monastery of the Mother of God at Hamatoura, in the region of Zgharta in North Lebanon, a metochion of the Archdiocese of Mount Lebanon on the territory of the Archdiocese of Tripoli and Koura.

Father Philippos took to his assignment at the monastery of Saint George with much enthusiasm. He immediately put himself to work restoring the monastery's church and the monks' cells which circled it. He also cared for the neglected fields, re-planting olive trees and grapevines. Father's personality and the work that he did began to bear fruit and the monastery little by little became a well-known place of spiritual renewal that attracted more and more souls to the Lord. It is worth noting that Father Phillipos served during his stay in that monastery the parish dedicated to the Holy Archangel Michael in the village near Ras Kifa.

But the Grace of God had forseen a different destiny for him. Thus, under pressure from the war in Lebanon, he had to leave his monastery, located as tradition demands on a mountaintop, which had become a valuable military position, and to seek refuge once more in Thessolonica where he was raised to the rank of Archimandrite in 1976. He exercised his priesthood in the city itself, at the church of Saint Barbara and he had charge of the theology students from the Patriarchal Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Balamand for the faculty at Thessalonica.

In 1978, he obtained permission from +George (Khodr) of Mount Lebanon, upon whom he still depended, to join the monastic life on Mount Athos. He moved to the Monastery of Stavronikita and received the name of his patron saint, Isaac the Syrian. He could thus follow more closely the teachings of his spiritual father, the elder Paissios, who lived in the hermitage dedicated to the Venerable Cross not far from the monastery.

Father Isaac would speak of his encounter with Saint Isaac in the introduction to his Nuskiyyat, his translation from Greek into Arabic of the Ascetic Discourses and Letters of Saint Isaac the Syrian. He reccounted to us that a venerable monk of Mount Athos said to him, when he still knew very little of the saint, "Have you come here from a land that has produced so many saints like the virtuous Isaac the Syrian in order to learn the fundamentals of the monastic life?" Father responded, "Yes, holy father, for the experience of our fathers has been transmitted here and I have come to recover it in this place."

One year after arriving at the monastery of Stavronikita, he retired to what would become his refuge, the hermitage of the Ressurection which he himself restored in the region of Kebssala, not far from Karyes, the capital of the Holy Mountain. He lived there alone for four years, a life of hard asceticism and struggle. He was confronted with many temptations and trials that sought to make him leave his solitude, until one day when, overwhelmed from the tourment of his thoughts, his fatigue, and his sufferings, he discovered a small grave while he was walking nowhere in particular. He stopped in front of it and prayed fervently, calling up within himself the memory of death. Then he said with a resolute voice, "Here I may die." From that moment, the thoughts which were tormenting him completely disappeared. This memory of death never left him again, since according to the monastic tradition, he dug a grave of his own size with his own hands in the garden of his hermitage. He censed this grave every day until his body was laid to rest there after his falling asleep in the Lord Thursday, July 16, 1998.

He remained on Mount Athos from 1978 until 1998, the year of his repose, and was known for his asceticism and spiritual combat. He became, by the grace of God, a renowned spiritual father on Mount Athos and in Greece, demanding of himself and a fervent promoter of the assiduous practice of the sacrament of confession.

In his lifetime, he also became a living bridge between the Church of Antioch and the Holy Mountain. He often said, "I represent Antioch on Mount Athos," and he was proud of it. Lebanese, but also arabic-speaking Christians of the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, as well as others who came from the New World came to receive his blessing and to ask his advice. He also made a number of short trips to his country of origin, Lebanon, as well as Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.

May his prayers accompany us, amen.

Isaac the Athonite, part II

Continued from part I.

The liveliness of his spirit and the zeal that Fares showed in his studies certainly encouraged the hegumen Yuhanna to authorize him to expand his studies, which he did by enrolling at the school attached to the Patriarchal Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Balamand in the region of Koura, North Lebanon. He thus found himself under the authority of +Ignatius (Hazim, the current Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Antioch and all the Orient) who was at that time bishop and superior of the monastery.

He was ordained deacon with the name Phillip at the monastery dedicated to the Holy Greatmartyr Jacob the Persian at Deddeh in Koura in 1963, by the laying on of the hands of +Elias (Kourban), metropolitan of the diocese of Tripoli and Koura, under whom was the monastery of Bkeftin to which he was attached. He was noticed throughout that period for his attentiveness at prayer, his carrying out what he was entrusted to do in peace and with much zeal, and his obedience to his superiors.

Providence, as usual, used local circumstances and caused him to leave the school of Balamand to head to Patmos in Greece in 1968, where he received the diploma sanctioning the end of his secondary studies.

He then persued his desire to deepen his knowledge of scripture by becoming a student at the faculty of theology at Thessolonica, where he served as a deacon at the Cathedral of Saint Dimitrios, patron of the city. It should be noted that he was known for having a very beautiful voice, which attracted many of the faithful to hear the Antiochian deacon chant and say the litanies in Arabic and Greek.

But the most important event for him during this time was that he became acquainted with the Holy Mountain of Athos and with the monastic life that was cultivated in that garden of the Mother of God. There in particular he met the one who would become his spiritual father, the Elder Paissios (+ June 12, 1994).

Archimandrite Isaac (Atallah) the Athonite (1937-1998) Part I

While there has never been a specifically Arabic-speaking monastery or skete on Mount Athos, there have been many Arabic-speaking monks who have gone to the Holy Mountain to seek their salvation. This is evidenced by, for example, the Arabic signature on the 14th-century "Declaration of the Holy Mountain in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts". In our own time, Isaac the Athonite travelled from his native Lebanon to the Holy Mountain, where he became a disciple of the Elder Paissios. The following article, which I will translate in installments, was written in Arabic by Archimandrite Isaac's brother Anthony and annotated by Fr. Ephrem (Kyriakos), abbot of the monastery of Saint Michael in Baskinta.. The translation here, however, is from the French translation of that document by "La Rédaction", published in Le Bon Pasteur, the bulletin of l'Association des Chretiens Orthodoxes d'Antioche et de leurs Amis, no. 4, March-June 2006.




Father Isaac was born to Martha and Nemr Atallah on April 12, 1937 in a Lebanese village called Nabay in the region of North Metn, dependant on the Orthodox Archdiocese of Mount Lebanon. He was given the name Fares. He grew up in a pious Orthodox family and learned from his father, the parish cantor, love for Christ and faithfulness to the tradition of the Church. From his youth he was attracted to solitude and prayer. It would often happen that his parents would lose track of him until they would eventually find him praying in the fields surrounding his village, not far from the house of his birth. He was already finding all his happiness in nearness to God and His Church.

One day when he was still fairly young he left the family home to join the monastery of the Prophet Elias in Shwayya, in the region of North Metn, but his father set out to go find him. At that time they said, perhaps to console him, that it was not the tradition of monasteries to accept the eldest son of a family as a monk since he is the family's support. Fares agreed and returned home.

He did his primary studies at the school of his village, Nabay, then he left school to work as an apprentice carpenter. At the end of his apprenticeship, he went to practice his trade in the "carpenters' souk" in Beirut. It is there that every evening, at the end of the work day, he took courses in Byzantine chant in the Ashrafiyya district of Beirut at the school of Mitri el-Murr, Protopsaltes of the Church of Antioch.

In the summer of 1962, at the age of twenty-five, he made his life's decision. In his small bag, he carefully packed his clothes and left his work at the grand Phonecia Hotel, which was the standard for Beiruti luxury at the time, and returned to his home after having turned in his resignation. When he arrived before his father, for whom he had enormous respect and unfailing obedience, he handed him his savings passbook, saying "This savings account has been opened in your name. When it matures, I would like for you to withdraw this money and distribute it equally among all the members of the family. As for me, I don't need anything because I am going to the monastery." His saddened father asked him, "What can I offer you in this world so that you don't become a monk?" Fares answered him, "Even if you give me this world as an inheretence, my eyes will not covet it! My life is not here, but in the monastery." Nemr, his father, tried hard to dissuade him from following the path of monasticism by putting preassure on the other members of the family, but it was in vain.

The same day, Fares took his bag and headed with his brother Anthony towards the monatery of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Bkeftin, in the region of Koura, a place he had never seen. He only had its adress and the name of its higumen, Archimandrite Yuhanna (Mansour), the future Metropolitan of Lattakieh in Syria, who had had his formation in the bosom of the Orthodox Youth Movement in the city whose bishop he would later be.

Arriving at the place, Fares got out of the taxi and got down on his knees, facing the monastery and, lifting up his arms, he recited a prayer then crossed himself. While getting up, he said audibly, "I give thanks to the Lord for having now granted me my desire."

Archimandrite Yuhanna was there at the enterance to the monastery to welcome them. The monastery was largely in ruins, most of its rooms were in a state of delapidation and almost uninhabitable. A single monk lived there besides the higumen. The sun was setting when Anthony went back, leaving his older brother at the monastery. At the family home, everyone was eagerly waiting for him. His father spoke first, saying "So where exactly did he go?" "To the monastery of Bkeftin in Koura," he responded, "but I assure you right away that, given the monastery's state of ruin, and given that Fares last worked at the Phonecia Hotel in Beirut, he won't last two or three days before you see him coming back to the house." His father looked squarely at him and said, "No matter what difficulties he will encounter, your brother will not come back again."