Corinth in the Afternoon

After our morning touring the Acropolis and Areopagus in Athens we drove to Corinth.

On the way we stopped for lunch. We ate outside and this was our view.

Laura and I enjoy our lunch.

Above is the Corinth Canal, which connects the Gulf of Corinth with Gulf of Saronic in the Aegean Sea.

Above is what it looks like on a map. Ancient rulers attempted to construct this canal, but the project required dynamite and wasn't competed until 1893. Before this, small boats were transported over a road.

Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, where he had more success despite the city being the Las Vegas of its day. He stayed for a year and a half.

Though Paul converted many people, his time in Corinth was not without difficulties. Some people weren't happy with his teachings and had Paul brought before Gallio, the Roman proconsul, accusing Paul of teaching worship of God that was against the law. Above and below is the bema or tribunal where Paul was brought before the proconsul.

The proconsul dismissed the charges, a victory for the young Christian church.

This little pillar with the beautiful carvings was in front of the bema.

Having Mass at some of the holy locations was one of the most meaningful experiences of the pilgrimage. Here, Fr. Michael and Fr. Bob say Mass in the shadow of the Bema at Corinth. As Father Bob said in his homily, Jesus's resurrection and Paul's preaching are eternal. They are happening now and always.

This banner wasn't in Corinth but at St. John the Baptist Church in Santorini, where we attended Mass. After Paul left Corinth, he wrote two letters to the Corinthians, encouraging them from afar. Above are the famous and beautiful words from these letters.

St. Paul in Athens

After we viewed the Parthenon and other monuments on the Acropolis, we walked a short distance to a lower hill, the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill. It was here that St. Paul made a speech to the Athenians that is one of my favorite readings in Scripture, in the Acts of the Apostles.

Paul didn't stay long in Athens and in terms of converting Jews or Gentiles, his time there cannot be described as successful. As our spiritual director Fr. Michael said, "There is no Letter to the Athenians." But his speech is a powerful piece of rhetoric.

I love the idea of the highly educated Paul, strolling around Athens, taking in all of the beautiful architecture and shrines to all the gods, appreciating the intellectual and cultural legacy and contributions of Athens, and then giving it to the Athenians in his speech, using their own monument and words to reveal the living God to them.

I did not get very many good photos of this site. By this time, the crowds had arrived. Above, Alexandra, our tour guide, stands at the base of the Areopagus in front of the plaque with the words of Paul's speech in Greek.

View from on top of the Areopagus.

We would often sing and pray at these holy sites. Here Father Bob, our other spiritual director, leads us in "How Great Thou Art." Toward the end of the video you can see a slightly better perspective of the Areopagus.

Acts 17:22-34

Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: “You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination. God has over looked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time. And so Paul left them. But some did join him and become believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Starting with the Pagans: The Acropolis

When people think of ancient Greece, the Parthenon, pictured above, may be the first image that pops into their minds. Built during the golden age of Greece in the 5th century BC by the great Athenian general Pericles, the Parthenon was a shrine to Athena, goddess of wisdom and namesake of Athens. 

The purpose of our trip was to follow in Paul's footsteps, but we did see some of the sites of ancient, pagan Greece. We owe much of our western civilization (i.e. foundations of democracy, philosophy, science, etc.) to the Athenians. 

The Parthenon is located on top of the Acropolis, a huge rocklike hill in the middle of Athens. Acropolis means highest point. 

Fellow pilgrims Denise and Peggy. They are veterans from our Camino pilgrimage also.

Monuments to other gods are also located on the Acropolis. Above and below is the Porch of the Caryatids on the Erechtheum, a temple to Athena and Poseidon, the god of the seas. 

Beautiful views of Athens from the Acropolis.

Above is our tour guide Alexandra. She met us at the airport and will be with us the entire pilgrimage. She is no nonsense. In 1985, my friend Chris and I went on a three week if-this-is-Tuesday-it-must-be-Belgium tour of western Europe. Our tour guide used to say, "You are not on a holiday (vacation); you are on a Cosmos tour." Alexandra reminded me of that. She was very good about getting us to places early before the crowds.

This is one of our other tour leaders and fellow pilgrims, Leigh, who arranged many of the details of our pilgrimage with 206 Tours.

The Greeks lugged a lot of marble to the top of this hill.

It was a sunny but windy day on the Acropolis.

One last panoramic view before we move onto the Areopagus.

The Tragedy and the Comedy of the Start

This pilgrimage that I am blessed to be able to go on is the Footsteps of St. Paul taking us to Greece and Turkey through the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington. Once again, thank you to my friend Peggy Arizzi for connecting me to Bellarmine several years ago and also telling me about the pilgrimage. For the past six months, I've done a fair amount of study to prepare for the trip. I've listened to lectures about St. Paul, the formation of the New Testament, and Greek history, read the Acts of the Apostles, Paul's epistles, The Life of Sr. Marie Mandat-Grancey and Mary's House in Ephesus by Carl G. Schulte, C.M., and the very helpful book pictured above, In the Steps of Saint Paul by Peter Walker. As we visit the places I've studied about, I will include insights from these authors.

Obituary for Jim

This trip begins in sadness for me. My brother, Fr. James King, died on October 12, 2018 after a long illness. Ten days later, our good friend Mick Kenny died suddenly at home. Two great men, gone from this earth. It was hard to leave but the consensus seemed to be to go. My sister told me that I should take Jim and Mick's spirits along with me, so I will try to do that.

Obituary for Mick

Perhaps God knew the situation needed to start with some distracting comedy. When I was making my travel arrangements, I checked the Peoria Charter Bus website at least twice to confirm that the bus I would take to O'Hare was leaving at 1 pm. from the Bradley Student Center, allowing me plenty of time to make my 7:10 pm flight.

But then for some reason, I rechecked the schedule at 11:10 am, the day I was to leave, and this is what I found.

An 11:50 am departure time. Yikes! The bus I had to catch was leaving in 40 minutes. Normally, this would have been a bit of a problem, but I was pretty well packed. So the only shock was that I would have missed the bus if not for checking. 

John and I arrived at the Student Center before the bus.When it pulled up behind us, we got out of the car and walked with my suitcase to where the driver was standing. As we stood there, he looked at us for a few seconds and finally asked, “Can I help you?” in a disinterested fashion. We explained I wanted to buy a ticket and he processed the transaction for us. “Did there used to be a 1 pm departure time here?” I asked. He shrugged and said yes. As the driver went to help other passengers, John nudged me. “That’s the driver who had the major meltdown when we were returning from Spain," a trip we had taken a couple of years ago. I remembered: A bunch of passengers had surrounded the driver at O’Hare on a dark, rainy night and were clamoring for help when he completely lost it.”

Later when I called John from O’Hare, he told me that he had thanked the bus driver profusely for all of his good driving. It must have worked as he was very calm on the trip.

I had googled how to minimize jet lag. Drink water, exercise before and after flying, don’t eat on the flight. As I walked around the airport, I heard some passengers being paged as their flight was about to leave. Would Kanye West please report to the gate? Three times his name was repeated. A woman and I exchanged amused smiles. It couldn't really be him, could it.?

Why yes it could. A little while later I saw a guy in the photo above telling his little brother that he had seen Kanye West and was showing him this photo on his phone. He told me he was a big fan. As we stood by the gate, a couple of airline employees walked by and told us that Kanye was flying to Paris, economy class. 

The guy with the phone was traveling with the women below. 

The world will obliterate your preconceived categories for people, if you let it. 

I met my 27 fellow pilgrims at O'Hare. Nine of them had been on the trip John, Luke, and I took to Spain in 2016. We were flying on Swiss Air (though it says United above) to Zurich.

Here's our plane.

The last "funny" thing that happened was we sat on the plane for a half hour while a few men tinkered repeatedly with the wing. They had their screwdrivers out and were using them and pointing with them. After a third time up on the cherry picker, they were either finished or had given up and got down. Might have been better to be sitting on the other side of the plane.

We finally took off on a clear night over Chicago, bound for Zurich and then onto Athens.