The Mother Goddess Wears the Face of Mary

The Greek Orthodox Monastery of Kykkos in Cyprus sits high on a mountain, cushioned by the beauty of God’s natural world.  I cannot describe the woodwork that shaped the seats of the sanctuary, the height of the ceiling that allowed one to shrink back and feel like a tiny piece of a huge picture.  The church gloriously housed rows upon rows of gilded icons that celebrated the works of Christianity’s apostles and the wondrous face of Mary, mother of Jesus.  There was a museum for visitors such as ourselves that shocked the viewer into reverence with tapestries, goblets, crosses, letters, books, and all sorts of relics that glistened with inlay of gold and silver.  As we very quietly made our way through this place so revered by holy men, awed comments were whispered between the students: “Beautiful!”  “How intricate is that . . .”  “This is it.  I could worship in a place like this.”  The richness of the atmosphere that the sacred place put off was unlike that of any other place I had ever been to.  Needless to say, I was 110% disgusted.  As a Christian, the Bible that I know and read regards Jesus Christ as “more precious than gold or silver,” a selfless man who preached giving to the poor and caring for everyone.  My first thought as I walked into the sanctuary was that the immense weight and astonishing surface area of the place that sported pure gold was far more than enough to give me a sickening headache.  Apparently here silver and gold were precious enough in themselves for people.  Did the misled followers of this sect not feel the need to read the Bible?  I had stood for minutes staring at a particular rug/blanket thing approximately 3 foot by 3 foot.  Its threads shone beautifully and the intricacy of the detail would make one gasp.  However, its description revealed that it was made purely of silver and gold threads, pearl beads . . . At that moment I wondered how many mouths could have been fed by this little sitting relic.  Also, the fact that the building was a perfect shrine to all the saints and apostles that ever lived, as well as to Mary, struck me as pure worship of the humans themselves.  While Greek Orthodox is a Christian denomination, I failed to find Christ anywhere apart from in the arms of the most holy Mary.  As I learned that people came from all around merely to kiss each of the blessed icons that lined the front part of the sanctuary, I ceased to call them icons and was forced to begin calling them what they are: idols.  Surely Mary and the apostles would be utterly devastated to see that their own names are uttered more often in prayer than that of Jesus Christ.  I was struck by the resemblance that this museum had to the many we had seen previously that hosted not Mary but Athena or the popular mother goddess at the time, such as Kubaba.  These past religions depended on human hands and works to create idols of worship that ultimately ended up in a museum that displayed the lives of their human makers.  This Greek Orthodox monastery had resigned itself simply to an extension of these past religions, worshipping the works of their own hands and even setting up this museum of purely material evidence of their belief in what they believed to be perfectly competent human products.  I know for certain that I am not perfect and the people who I listen to preach on Sundays are not, either.  But, I saw so much deception and misleading in this institution that believed it was working its followers right into Heaven.  The basis of these people’s lives felt so completely off.  This was certainly an eye-opening experience that revealed to me some of the inner workings of human minds outside of my own small world.