ALBANIA UNDER HOXHA

Before continuing my story, it might help to give a little background, as not a lot is known about Hoxha's rule in Albania. From the seizure of power by the communist party in 1945 until 1967, Albania followed the general policy of most communist countries of marginalising the churches and religious organizations, with a view to their eventual “withering away” as Marx had predicted. This was achieved by a mixture of legal restrictions, imprisonment of the more independent and vociferous clerics, infiltration of the religious hierarchies by people sympathetic to the Party and atheist propaganda in schools. This was bad enough but, in 1967, the government initiated an all-out war on religion in an ambitious attempt at the complete abolition of all religious practices and beliefs in the country. The aim was to create, in Hoxha's words, “the world's first completely atheist state.”

Over the next 18 years, all 2,169 churches, monasteries and mosques were closed, 1608 of which were Orthodox. According to estimates from religious leaders, 95% of the buildings were demolished or completely gutted. The latter were converted to secular use such as factories, warehouses, stables, cinemas or nightclubs. The Orthodox Cathedral in Tiranë, for example, was converted to a gym. Because of their design, many of the monasteries were turned into army barracks. A very few religious buildings were preserved as ‘cultural monuments’ if they were of historical or architectural interest, including the beautiful Ethem Bey mosque in Tiranë. Nobody was allowed to pray in the mosque, however, except for foreign Muslim dignitaries on state visits.

Among all faiths, the vast majority of clergy were imprisoned, exiled, forced to seek other work, executed or starved to death. The number of Roman Catholic priests in Albania fell from 300 in 1945 to 30 in 1985, most of them in prison, while by 1990, not a single Orthodox bishop and less than 20 Orthodox priests survived. The conducting of religious services could result in twenty-five years in prison, while even the possession of a Bible or Q'uran meant ten years hard labour!

I will be telling the full story of this extraordinary period in the book I am working on now. You will find it extremely hard to believe!

PEOPLE OF HOPE

A Trip to Albania, Part 2

My three days in Korcë were so full of incident and interest that a brief blog would be inadequate, so I'll confine myself to a few of the highlights. This week, I'll concentrate on the main purpose of the visit, the testimony of some of the survivors. Without giving away too much of the book I'm writing, here are a few vignettes of some of the wonderful people I was introduced to and some of their comments.

Metropolitan Joani gave me nearly three hours out of his hectic schedule to give me some of the background to the Hoxha years. He is a deeply spiritual man but has also shown a good grasp of the practical realities in rebuilding the Orthodox community in Korcë. Born in 1956, he has personal experience of the attack on religion and was, in fact, baptized secretly in 1979. His family were persecuted for their politics which led them to see religion as a positive force for good – not the result the government hoped for! In spite of the horrors of the era, he likes to emphasize the positive aspects. “I never experienced such joy in worship as during the secret services. Everybody who was a believer felt alive, so Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim didn't see the differences, only what they had in common, the joy of belief. They often found themselves together in jail. The Albanian word for 'believer' is 'besimtar' but during that period they more often used the word 'shpesëtar' – 'he who hopes'” He also pointed out that the Albanian word for the devil literally means 'cul de sac' which was largely where Hoxha's rule took Albania.

COLD WEATHER, WARM HOSPITALITY

A Trip to Albania, Part 1

Korcë Cathedral (in snow)

Over the past couple of years, I have been working on a book about Orthodox martyrs of the 20^th Century. The general format was for each section to begin with a brief historical background, the bulk of the book being devoted to individual stories of heroism, to put faces to the dry facts and statistics. All was going well until I came to write about Albania under the communist rule of Enver Hoxha. I had no problem with the general background but details of individual stories were very hard to come by. I wrote to various people in the Albanian Orthodox community and, to cut a long story short, I was eventually invited by Metropolitan Joani of Korcë to pay a short visit and to meet with some of the survivors from the period. The result was that I eventually collected enough material for a small book on the subject which I am working on at the moment. If you are interested, you can find updates on progress with this and other books on www.facebook.com/chrismooreybooks. The trip itself, however was quite a story in its own right so, over the next few blogs, I'll give a brief taste of my journey, both secular and spiritual.

In spite of a lot of bad publicity in recent years, it is a fact that Albanians are characterized in the main by friendliness to strangers and almost embarrassing hospitality. My first experience of this was before I even set out from Greece. An Albanian living in my village, no more than an acquaintance, found out I was visiting his country and immediately organized for his cousin to pick me up from Tirana airport to take me to where I could get a minibus for Korcë. Not only that, he lent me the sim card for his Albanian mobile because it would avoid the need to pay expensive roaming charges!

A LESSON IN LOVE AND A 'CHURCH SEARCH'

Our Baptism, Part 2

Aside from the profundity of the spiritual experience, what impressed us both about the ceremony was the friendliness and informality of the priests: helping us syllable by syllable with the responses in unfamiliar Greek, showing us where to go, checking we were all right. They even allowed us to recite the Creed in English to make it more meaningful for us. All this was achieved without losing the underlying solemnity of the occasion. This is one of the great strengths of Orthodox worship in general, the services are reverent but not stuffy. I’ll never forget an open air service at a tiny church when the Bishop was in attendance. We had found a relatively shady spot with a very low stone step to sit on. When the bells began to ring we stood up but my wife had great difficulty getting to her feet. Suddenly, she felt a strong arm lifting her and turned to find that the Bishop had interrupted his solemn progress to help her. Would this happen in Rome or Canterbury?

Is it heretical to think that God may have a sense of humour? Near where we lived at the time there was a little girl who always seemed to be in trouble. She was, I must admit, a bit of a brat and we were for ever telling her off for chasing our cats or other mischief. It is the tradition here that, during the baptism, the candle is held by the youngest child present in church and ours was held by the young sister of one of my students. However, it was proving too heavy for her little hands and our little ‘bête noire’ took over the job and held our baptismal candle for the rest of the service. I defy anybody to doubt that ‘the Boss’ was teaching us a gentle lesson in love and forgiveness.

One of the ‘requirements’ of the newly baptized, including babies, is to take Holy Communion for the three Sundays following the service. All was well for the first Sunday, and we duly took our baptismal candles to our local church for the Divine Liturgy. On the second, however, we arrived at church to find it locked up. Not sure what was going on, we got in the car and drove to the church at the other end of the village – all locked up. Beginning to panic, we tried the church in the upper village which was also closed but fortunately an old lady in her garden pointed us further up the hill to the tiny church of St. Katherine, where all the priests were conducting a service for her feast day. Although a little late, we were in time to take communion and fulfil our obligation. The thought crossed my mind that, in my youth, I’ve driven round a town on a Saturday night trying to find a party but to drive all over Crete in search of a church service on a Sunday morning must be a first!

All in all, we found our baptism service both a deep spiritual experience and a wonderful example of the love and kindness of the priests and local people. It even had its moments of humour. However, at the end of the service, as we heard the priest say “At this moment, you are sinless and among the saints. Try to keep it that way for as long as you can,” we felt that a major change in our spiritual lives had occurred.

“BECOME WHAT YOU ALREADY ARE”

Our Baptism, Part 1

Having made the decision to be baptized into the Orthodox Church, we then set about the practical details.  At that time, adult baptism was rare in this part of Greece and our priests and we had to improvise somewhat. The ‘font’ was no problem as there had been one other English couple baptized here some years earlier and they had bought a shallow metal bath to stand in. More difficult was overcoming the tradition whereby the godparent pays for everything including new clothes for the baby. We really didn’t want to put our respective godparents to unnecessary expense but we had quite a job convincing them that, as we were adults, they didn't need to buy us a complete new wardrobe each! In the end, we compromised by accepting with good grace our baptismal crosses as gifts and sharing the other costs. 

Further practical difficulties arose over the changing arrangements. Our priests decided that we could wear robes for the baptism so that they could pour the water over us, the nearest we could get to total immersion. We originally planned to change into and out of our robes in the church office but the day before the baptism one of the priests came up to us with the ominous words, “We have a little problem.” On that very day, the office was being demolished in preparation for rebuilding. As you may recall from the Athens Olympics, however, nothing ever fazes the Greeks for long and some quick lateral thinking from the priests resulted in a very unstable arrangement of old altar cloths hanging on strings in the corner of the church. Miraculously, they all stayed in place for the service and modesty was preserved.

An ageing infant!

The service itself was an extremely moving and emotional experience but, since we had to concentrate on doing everything correctly, the full impact of the service didn’t really strike us until we watched the video quietly at home that night. For me, it brought back memories of my baptism in the Baptist Church when I was 13. Since the Baptists take the idea of total immersion literally and only baptize adults, every Baptist chapel has a small pool, in which the candidate is held by the minister as he goes completely under the water. It really does feel a bit like death and resurrection. While slightly less dramatic, the Orthodox service brought to mind another truth of the Christian faith. The old definition of a sacrament is “An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” and rarely can this be demonstrated more clearly than when the priest poured the water over my head. I truly felt that the ‘washing away of sin’ was a reality rather than a metaphor. In fact, the emotion of the occasion was so powerful that, even after several years, when I pour water over my head when washing my hair, I am often transported back to that moment. 

In the preamble to the baptism service, the priest asks, “Do you join Christ?” The beauty of the service, coupled with the warmth that enveloped us from the priests and congregation made me feel truly joined to Christ. In a real sense, I felt I had come home and the words of St. Gregory of Sinai became full of meaning:
                                   “Become what you already are,

                                    Find Him who is already yours,

                                    Listen to Him who never ceases speaking to you,

                                    Own Him who already owns you.”

The rest of the story tomorrow

FASTING AND THE 'FILIOQUE'

How did we come to join the Orthodox Church?

This is definitely a FAQ and, as the anniversary of our baptism approaches, it seems fitting that I should take a brief look at the reasons why a middle-aged Englishman and his wife came to join the Greek Orthodox Church. When we moved to Crete in 1994, we were members of the Anglican Church but found no problem in attending our local Orthodox church where we were welcomed by the priests and the congregation alike. We found that the Liturgy was similar in many respects to the service we were familiar with and we could follow it and even participate to a great extent. However, the fact that we could not actually take communion left us feeling somewhat unsatisfied. At that time, the nearest Anglican church was in Athens which would be quite a long swim on a Sunday morning so, knowing that we intend, God willing, to live in Crete for the rest of our lives, we began to look into the possibility of being baptized into the Orthodox Church.

We soon discovered that not only were the services similar but the differences in belief were, in many respects, small. Anglicans and Orthodox say the same creed - almost - and even many of their prayers are similar, if not identical. Differences such as the way we cross ourselves and veneration of the icons did not amount to major ‘show stoppers.’ OK, I haven’t forgotten the Great Schism and the dispute over the 'filioque' (the addition of the words 'and the Son' to the Roman Catholic and Anglican creed). However, unless you’re a theologian, the difference between the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father or proceeding from the Father and the Son is a bit obscure. Yes, of course the difference has some important implications but, since we didn’t understand it anyway, it did not seem a major barrier to us. We believed and we believe in God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We believed and we believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. We believed and we believe that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” No problem!