The Divine Liturgy in Mani dedicated to children with special needs

The Divine Liturgy in Mani dedicated to children with special needs

Maria Kasampalakou describes the very special experience she is going through, with her son Angel, who is in the spectrum of autism, at the Holy Monastery of the Transfiguration of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

A Divine Liturgy dedicated to some children that differ…
I met Maria Kasampalakou and her son Angel a few years ago. Angel is incarnating what his name means, and he is aware of his autism. After the first meeting with Maria, it was revealed to me that a man can truly see the pain as joy, as great ascetics try to achieve through years of praying. Mary’s prayer is Angel, her son. It’s like kneeling to the ground and performing hard fasting. Every day she carries over and over the body and heart of Angel on her shoulders.
An opportunity to reunite was a Divine Liturgy involving children with special needs, accompanied by their parents and unsuspecting worshipers. The latter experienced some shocking moments that awakened many sleeping hearts. Even if they did not experience in their own life such a form of pain, they embraced the sorrow of their brothers and sisters who suffer.
And all this happened at the Holy Monastery of the Transfiguration of our Lord, Jesus Christ in Mani, Messinia, Greece. Among us there were young people with mental retardation and slight disabilities from the organization, “Lyssous Garden”.

They learn organic farming methods
The “Lyssous Garden” is a training program in organic farming that was voluntarily created two years ago by the German journalist Valtraud Sperlih and Eva-Maria Lange. Their main funding comes from Liechtenstein’s Hercules Foundation. The program concerns the vocational training of young people with slight mental disabilities, in organic farming, under the guidance of agronomists, gardeners and social workers. For this purpose, there are two educational nurseries in the city of Kalamata and the area of Mani, where 15 young people aged 18 to 42 learn to cultivate using organic farming methods. Upon completion of their training, they will be able to work in seedbed farms and other gardening jobs. Together with these children, Mary came from Athens with her son Angel. She has been asked to describe that very day to us, and so she opened her heart:
“There are times when you don’t really feel like talking. It’s not because of the anger, sadness, illness, or isolation mood. But because you are so moved and really unable to find the right words that will “address” your emotion or your doings. Times that you feel that the most meaningful words you could ever have spelled, are shaded by the splendor of moments.

And when moments make up a day like that Sunday ... then you feel your smallness in all its grandeur. Nevertheless, because love is multiplied when it is shared, and the pain is divided, I will try to describe that day’s events.

It was a spring Sunday that we met between “two gardens”, to the one monastery to which we all come to, leaving our souls in the hands of God and our beloved elder and monks, and he Garden of Lyssous with its flowers: which flooded the monastery by performing and composing the dream of Mani’s Metropolitan Chrysostomos. The whole group, the parents and the musicians who, with the blessing and the Auspices of Messinia’s Metropolitan, Chrysostomos, last year organized the event: “Autism Our God’s Children”, this year we all went up to the monastery in Upper Doli!

Thee Divine Liturgy for Autism & Disabilities was inspired by Metropolitan of Mani Chrysostomos. Certainly because he has a sensitive heart, but also a special relationship, alove between him and a young autistic child Nikolas Zanidakis. Nicolas is delighted to be able to play violin, and those around him dare to express the belief that he performs as a professional. The child has also a special relationship with Elder Gabriel Koviliatis. When they stare at each other, their eyes sink so deeply into each other, so that if you are close to them, you feel really overwhelmed.”

I asked how everything started and how the efforts to set up this feast were coordinated. Maria Kasampalakou, with her inherent enthusiasm, replies:
“One evening, in early February, Metropolitan of Mani called us and expressed his desire to have a Divine Liturgy for those children of the same faith. This desire was ours too!!! So it happened.

Whenever God allows me to enter this place, I always have tears in my eyes. Disabled children flooded the area. The hearts of people broke! …they didn’t know what happened.”
That morning we arrived too early. It was drizzling, and the iron cross standing at the gate of the monastery stood patiently in place with clouds in the background. Whenever God allows me to enter this place, I stand there. And for a while I am the only person existing there. Me, the cross and the horizon. Every time I have tears in my eyes. It hurts deeply inside… it’s because our human nature when seeing our paradise knows that soon we shall leave it. How many times, entering in this holy place, I wondered looking at this cross: “My God, You brought me to paradise. How can You stand taking me back”

The Divine Liturgy had begun early, and two chants came from Sparta. With Maria Leftakis, we were welcoming the pilgrims, especially those who did not know what was going to happen, and with finality and modesty we were trying to explain about what was to come up. Metropolitan of Mani, Chrysostomos arrived and the monks welcomed him with the appropriate honor. Cheerful bells echoed and the birds sang too with all their spring mood!

Who cares about the weather? Let it rain!

“Lyssous Garden”
The children of the Autistic Spectrum, who just arrived too, with some of them holding their ears, while some others were performing small tuning shouts. The Liturgy began in grandiosity and “Lyssous Garden” members also arrived. Children with all kinds of disabilities flooded the area ... Young adults, with the right to live equally, enjoy the day with fellowship, participating in the blessed sacrament of the Holy Communion and being a part of the congregation.

During those very moments, the hearts of people broke! …they didn’t know what happened.

I saw two or three of them running to the faucet in the yard and coming back with their faces washed, while others were crying publicly and staring down on the ground humiliated for what they were carrying until that moment as a grievance: “Heart devastated and humbled.”

This is the power of contacting affliction. If joy and love is the salt of the food of the soul, affliction, I would say, is the pepper. Even though it is spicy, it flavors the dish called spiritual development. And it is not a lie to say that if you learn to love, pain will soften up. And if you make the pain smile ... oh, then you both win!

“Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all ...” the Metropolitan chanted inside the Church.

The Church was full of souls, devoted to God. Liberated and coexisting. Not a whisper of dissatisfaction or a strange look. Everything in place, as our Father in Heaven has arranged.

And all of us, in a conscious humbling.

Come and join us! Today we have become better people! This is wonderful!

“A stranger approached me, looked me in the eyes and asked me: ‘Is this the way you suffer all day long?’ And he began to cry.”After all this narration, I dared to ask Maria how she practices in her everyday life, in dealing with the pain, under the prism of a gift, that most of the people doubt. She also narrated a little story that happened to her in the courtyard of the monastery after the final words of the priest “By the prayers of our Holy Father…” at the end of the Divine Liturgy:

“To make you understand, I‘ll tell you this: I was approached by a gentleman, unknown to me until that day, who, when he saw us parents and children, he told me that his chest was filled with emotion and that he had never felt that strong feeling before. Only on TV or in the street he watched several times a couple of disabled people. But this feeling surpassed him and looking into my eyes he asked me: ‘Is this the way you suffer all day long?’

The stranger then began to cry. I grabbed his hands and said:
‘My heart does not feel pain for myself. I’m happy. I wouldn’t change my child’s autism. I’m sorry for the others. Now you also commiserate. That’s the main reason we all came here today. To have compassion! Because if you do not reach rock bottom you won’t really appreciate the good times you’re living in.’

“I never return to myself and my people, the same exact person as I start off, not only from this gathering at the monastery, but from every place or situation I let my soul walk to.”

After the Divine Liturgy, a beautiful celebration followed in the courtyard of the Holy monastery where, along with the feast, the sound of music was offered filling the ears and hearts of young and old people. Maria Kasampalakou is telling our readers the following:

“Even the weather cooperated! Actually, after the pouring rain, a great opening above the temple appeared, and “Mr shiny sun” rushed to dry the stone terrace. So we all sat down.

Everything was placed in order, appropriately measured and saved by the hand of God. Nothing left over and nothing was missing.

Athena Chiotis was there, a young lady gifted by our God, apart from everything else, with the voice of a nightingale. She managed to travel our senses chanting beautiful hymns. Christos Palamidis recited uniquely and Othon Bikakis caressed our ears with his lyre.

Then it was my turn to stand towards the door of the temple and speak. I saw all of them in a circle, and realized the beauty of the name of our association “Holy Protection” (name of Most Holy Theotokos) and that the words I was about to read were as if I had not written them two nights before, but as if I spoke spontaneously at that very moment, which was in fact a public confession of faith. Finally, I approached my beloved elder Gabriel and asked him:
‘Father Gabriel, could you allow me to say that today we are experiencing a big spiritual encounter here?’

‘With all my heart!’ he responded.

How does Mary expect the future to come for her and her son Angel? I am asking her and the answer is not far from the enthusiastic spirit of our whole conversation:

‘I never return to myself and my people, the same exact person as I started off, not only from this gathering at the monastery, but from every place or situation I let my soul walk to. As always, before starting any path, I wonder:

What has God prepared for me this time? What will He teach me this time?’

Don’t think I am anxious! I am expecting it! I have the appetite of a young child who is impatient to participate in a new game with his beloved friends.

And nothing changes, but also nothing remains the same ...”

Mary’s attitude against sadness and pain, but also for most of those parents, seems to derive from a profound knowledge of Saint Isaac the Syrian’s word, though we may not have heard or read it: “If, however, the moment that something makes you sad, you only see the surface and you cannot examine your hidden wounds that activated it, the more you complain, the more depressing your misfortune will be.”

__________

Sofia Chatzi
published in Greek newspaper
ORTHODOX TRUTH, 15.05.2019