Religious Education

Hold onto your hats.  Isobel is blogging two days in a row!!

Today we went to St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery at Florence.  The monastery is named after St. Anthony the Great, a renowned third century ascetic from Egypt. About 40 monks and novices follow a regimen of prayer and work there.

There is a main church and a number of chapels, all done in in the ornate style of their churches.  We women are required to wear a long skirt (ugly ones provided) , head scarves, shoes (no sandals) and long sleeves.  The men just have to have long sleeves. 

The sanctuaries are very ornate with lots of gold and hand carvings and also pictures of the saints.  It is very different from the Protestant churches that I am familiar with.

 

 

 

This chapel had incredible woodwork.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gardens were quite beautiful with fountains and lots of desert plants.





 

 





 



I learned that the cross is like this to show the sign above Jesus' head at the top and the part at the bottom indicates that of the thieves crucified on each side of Jesus, one went to Heaven and one to Hell and the tipped part indicates that.

 

 

 

 

There was a little store by the gate where you could buy religious books and also some of the monastery's produce such as wine and olive oil.  There was also some fresh baking but it wasn't clear if the monks made that as well. (I didn't see any sign of a bakery.) Even the store was run by a monk.  The only woman, other than visitors, that we saw was the one giving out the ugly skirts and scarves - oh and ugly shirts too if you had bare arms. You can see some pictures of women in the above pictures.  I won't tell you which one is me.  Dalton has a wonderful full length picture of me that I definitely won't share. 

 

 

It was an interesting experience of another church culture.