Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 101, Tuesday 19 August 2025

‘Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (Matthew 19: 24) … a camel at the Goreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX, 17 August 2025).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Squeezing through the Eye of a Needle? … a narrow, low gate in the streets of Tangier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 19: 23-30 (NRSVA):

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ 26 But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’

27 Then Peter said in reply, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ 28 Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’

‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor’ (Matthew 19: 21) … a town centre hotel for sale in Ballybunion, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

A rich young man has come to Jesus seeking advice. He has many possessions, but he knows this is not enough. He wants to possess eternal life, and comes to Jesus for advice. When Jesus suggests he should go, sell his possessions, and give the money to the poor and then return and follow him, the young man ‘went away grieving, for he had many possessions.’

Then Jesus tells the disciples ‘it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven … it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’

During her sermon preparation some years ago, a priest colleague asked on Facebook: ‘If a fire broke out in your house, what three possessions would you grab?’

The answers she got were interesting. People included their laptop (with their photographs), their phone, their keys, their wallet or purse with their plastic cards, and their passport.

What would you take with you?

What do we cling to?

I once had a large collection of old banknotes. They were enough to make me a millionaire or even a multimillionaire … in Weimar Germany, war-time Greece or Ceausescu’s Romania. But in reality they are worth nothing today and would earn no interest apart from the interest they might have for collectors.

They were in circulation at times when inflation became rampant in those countries and at times of crisis in Europe. Had they been spent at the time they were issued they might have bought something of value; had they been given away in their day, they might have helped the poor and the hungry. But circumstances saw to it that those who became attached to their wealth on paper would lose all they had.

The Gospel reading this morning challenges us to think again what we cling to and what are our true values.

Does the faith of the man who falls down before Christ in the Gospel reading depend on his own wealth and money? When our prosperity and wealth disappear, like the fast-fading value of those banknotes, are we in danger of feeling abandoned by God?

How would we grab our faith and take it with us if we rushed to escape a crisis?

In the Gospel reading yesterday, the man runs up to Jesus, and falls on his kneels as if in adoration, or like a servant before a master, and asks what he should do to inherit eternal life.

Christ’s response is cautious. Is he challenging the man to see whether he really knows the Ten Commandments? Or is he testing the man to see how he has acquired his riches and wealth?

The man slinks away because he has much property.

What acts as a ball and chain that holds us back in our lives today, leaving us not fully free to follow Jesus? I may not have much property. But is there something else that I need to shed, in my attitudes, values, habits, behaviour, priorities, use of time, commitment or lack of commitment?

In his compassion, Christ sees this man’s weakness. He has emphasised his relationship with others. But is this founded on his desire for personal salvation, some sort of personal version of the concept of ‘karma’?

What about his relationship with God?

Does he trust in God because God is God, rather than because of what God can do for him?

The man asks how he may inherit eternal life. Is eternal life something to be inherited, like wealth and social status or place in society? In that society, religion was inherited rather than a matter of personal choice – one was born a Jew, but few people ever became Jews. Is eternal life to be inherited, like religious identity and social class?

Are we in danger at times of thinking that we are entitled to our place in the Kingdom of God?

And in our behaviour, as well as our prayers, do we let God know, and others know, this?

Christ comes to the quick when he points out that this young man puts his trust in his own piety and wealth, in his achievements, in his inherited status. But wealth stands in the way of his relationship with God.

So, Christ tests the man. If he truly loves the poor, he will make a connection between loving God and loving others. The man is shocked and makes quick his departure.

This rich young man may lack nothing, but he wants eternal life. Yet he fails to realise he has met the living God face-to-face, and he turns away.

But Christ does not say the rich and the wealthy cannot find salvation. He says money and riches can hold us back and make it difficult to be true disciples, to enter the kingdom of God. It can be so difficult that, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (verse 24). The Talmud suggests though it would be even more difficult, perhaps even impossible, where it speaks of ‘an elephant passing through a needle’s eye’ (b. Ber. 55b; b. B. Metz. 38b).

We cannot save ourselves, but God can save us. However, Peter’s implied question (verse 27) points out again how easy it is to think that being a disciple or follower of Christ should be linked with the hope of rewards in the here and now.

I find I have to ask myself again after reading this Gospel passage: What do I cling onto most now that I can shed – not in terms of property and possessions, but prejudices and values – that get between me and Christ, and between the way I live my life and eternal life.

Then will I be happy to get down on my knees, like a camel, and squeeze into the City of God through the smallest and most narrow of the city gates, and find in the most humbling of ways how to squeeze into the Kingdom of God?

The Talmud speaks of the difficulty of ‘an elephant passing through a needle’s eye’ … an elephant in Lichfield Cathedral as part of the March of the Elephants in support of Saint Giles Hospice last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 19 August 2025):

The theme this week (17 to 23 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Tell the Full Story’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 19 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, we lift up Caribbean church members in the UK, remembering the pain caused by the 2007 abolition anniversary. Heal their hurt, strengthen their voices, and guide us towards true justice and equality for all.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
revive your Church in our day,
and make her holy, strong and faithful,
for your glory’s sake
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Tourists on camels near Levissi (Kayaköy) near Fethiye in Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘But you know, death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian’

‘De Profundis’ (1943), the haunting Holocaust tour de force by Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), draws on Psalm 130: ‘Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord’

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 29 March 2020

The Fifth Sunday in Lent (Lent V), Passion Sunday

The Readings: Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8: 6-11; John 11: 1-45.

There is a link to the readings HERE.

Lazarus is raised from the Dead … a fresco in the Analpsi Church in Georgioupoli on the Greek island of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

This Sunday is often known as Passion Sunday, marking the beginning of the two-week period of Passiontide.

In Passiontide, the crosses and images in churches were often covered from this Sunday until the end of Good Friday, building up our anticipation for the story of Christ’s Passion, death and Resurrection.

In Passiontide, the Corona Virus or Covid-19 pandemic is creating communal angst that may well find a voice or resonances in the cry from the depths in Psalm 130 (De Profundis), and many people may worry that soon they are going to identify with Martha’s cry in our Gospel reading, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ (John 11: 21).

These heart-breaking cries may be heard in the most uncomfortable situations over the coming weeks. Where are we going to find God’s presence in this crisis? Where are we going to offer hope? How are we going to show and share the love of Christ? For we know too that ‘Jesus wept.’

Our readings this morning offer hope in the midst of death, and the experiences of the Prophet Ezekiel, the Psalmist in De Profundis, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament reading, and Mary and Martha at their home in Bethany, offer hope to people who face the pains of life and death at this time.

In the first reading, the Prophet Ezekiel is among the people deported when Babylon captured Jerusalem in 598 BCE. But, despite this crisis, he believes God is faithful to his people.

In the dry valley, God shows Ezekiel a dry place filled with dry bones that are lifeless. But the contrast to the dead bones is the ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’ (ruach, רוּחַ) of God. God will renew the covenant, restore the people, and promises the resurrection of all at the end of time.

Psalm 130 is known as De Profundis, is a prayer for deliverance from personal trouble, but ends with a message to all people.

The psalm opens with a call to God in deep sorrow, from ‘out of the depths’ or ‘out of the deep,’ a graphic phrase signalling closeness to despair or death.

The psalmist makes the powerful and paradoxical point that God is to be held in awe not because he punishes but because he forgives. He is merciful by nature, his help is worth waiting for, as watchmen guarding a town:

O Israel, wait for the Lord,
for with the Lord there is mercy;
With him is plenteous redemption
and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

In the New Testament reading, Saint Paul explains the difference between what he calls living in the Spirit and living according to the flesh. As Christians, we live in the Spirit and the Spirit lives in us. We are alive because of the Spirit, for God’s Spirit is in us, God will give us new life through the Spirit, and raise us to new life at the end of time.

The Gospel reading (John 11: 1-45) is one of the best-known passages in Saint John’s Gospel for a number of reasons:

1, In the Authorised Version or King James Bible, it contains what is popularly known as the shortest verse in the Bible: ‘Jesus wept’ (verse 35). Later translations fail to provide the same dramatic impact as these crisp, short two words, ‘Jesus wept.’

2, The command, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ has given rise to a number of childish, schoolboy jokes about athletic performance and not even winning a bronze medal. There is hardly the same potential in the NRSV’s: ‘Lazarus, come out!’

3, Lazarus himself is interesting. He is often confused with the Lazarus in Saint Luke’s Gospel, the poor man at the gate, the only character to be named in any of the parables.

The name Lazarus means ‘God helps,’ the Greek Λάζαρος (Lazaros) being derived from the Hebrew Eleazar, ‘God’s assistance,’ or: ‘God has helped.’ So, already, his name introduces us to an expectation of God’s help, God’s deliverance.

This story is the last – and the greatest – of the seven Signs in Saint John’s Gospel. This is the crowning miracle or Sign in Saint John’s Gospel. It provides the interpretation of the whole Gospel, it reveals Christ as the giver of life, holding together his two natures, his humanity and his divinity.

This reading also contains the fifth of the ‘I AM’ sayings: ‘I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live’ (John 11: 25).

This seventh Sign holds together the two natures of Christ, his humanity and his divinity. The death, burial and shroud of Lazarus represent our own human plight. And the raising of Lazarus is a promise of the Resurrection of Christ and of our own resurrection.

Death was not the end for Lazarus … this time around. There is no further mention of him in the Bible. His first tomb in Bethany remains empty. But, of course, he had to die a second – and final – time.

Death comes to us all. We all end in the grave. No miracles, no wishing, no praying, can avoid that inevitability. So, what was wrong with the fact that Lazarus had died? That he was too young? We will all find when death comes that we are too young.

Perhaps what the Gospel writer is saying here, in a deep and profound way, is that death without the comfort of knowing the presence of Christ is distressing for anyone who seeks to be a follower of Christ.

In the Litany, we pray, ‘from dying unprepared, save us, good Lord’ (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 175). We should never forget the ways word and sacrament prepare those who are dying and those who mourn.

For we know that death is not the end. In his death, Christ breaks through the barriers of time and space, bringing life to those who are dead. Those who hear the voice of Christ live.

I once interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu and asked him about the death threats he faced in South Africa at the height of apartheid. He engaged me with that look that confirms his deep hope, commitment and faith, and said: ‘But you know, death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian.’

When Jesus looks up and says: ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me,’ the Greek conveys more of the prayerful action that is taking place: And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, <<Πάτερ, εὐχαριστῶ σοι>> (Páter, efcharisto soi, ‘Father, I am giving thanks to you’). Lifting up his eyes is a prayerful action in itself, and combined with his giving thanks to the Father has actions and words that convey Eucharistic resonances.

Comfort for the living, comfort for the dying and comfort for those who mourn.

In the Eucharist, we remember not just Christ’s passion and death, but also his Resurrection, and we look for his coming again.

Christ in his life points us to what it is to be truly human. In the grave, he proves he is truly human. He has died. He is dead. Yet, unlike Lazarus the beggar, he can bridge the gap between earth and heaven, even between hell and heaven. But, like Lazarus of Bethany, he too is raised from death not by human power but by the power of God.

‘But you know, death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian.’ We know this with confidence because of the death and resurrection of Christ. Death is not the end.

Let us give thanks to God for life, for death, and for the coming fulfilment of Christ’s promises, which is the hope of the Resurrection, our Easter faith.

‘Surely I am coming.’ Amen. Come Lord Jesus (Revelation 22: 20).

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Raising of Lazarus by Duccio di Buoninsegna (ca 1260-1318), Kimbell Art Museum

John 11: 1-45 (NRSVA):

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7 Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8 The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9 Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11 After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ 12 The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23 Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24 Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25 Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27 She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37 But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ 40 Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

‘The Lord … set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones’ (Ezekiel 37: 1) … the bones of the dead left behind in the charnal house beside the Basilica of the Panayia Pirgiotissa in the former Greek village of Levissi or Karmylassos, now the ghost town of Kayaköy in western Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: Violet (Lent, Year A).

Penitential Kyries (Passiontide and Holy Week):

Lord God,
you sent your Son to reconcile us to yourself and to one another.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Lord Jesus,
you heal the wounds of sin and division.

Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Holy Spirit,
through you we put to death the sins of the body – and live.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

Most merciful God,
who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ
delivered and saved the world:
Grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross,
we may triumph in the power of his victory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lenten Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

Now in union with Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near through the shedding of Christ’s blood; for he is our peace.
(Ephesians 2: 17)

Preface:

Through Jesus Christ our Saviour,
who, for the redemption of the world,
humbled himself to death on the cross;
that being lifted up from the earth,
he might draw all people to himself:

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of hope,
in this Eucharist we have tasted
the promise of your heavenly banquet
and the richness of eternal life.
May we who bear witness to the death of your Son,
also proclaim the glory of his resurrection,
for he is Lord for ever and ever.

Blessing:

Christ draw you to himself
and grant that you find in his cross
a sure ground for faith,
a firm support for hope,
and the assurance of sins forgiven:

‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ (Ezekiel 37: 3) … skulls in the ossuary in Arkadi Monastery from a battle in 1866 during the Turkish occupation of Crete, when hundreds of people died (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Hymns:

293, Breathe on me, Breath of God (CD 18)
569, Hark, my soul, it is the Lord (CD 33)
310, Spirit of the living God (CD 18)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

‘Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord’ (Psalm 130, ‘De Profundis’) … in the depths of a cave on the Greek island of Paxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Freedom of expression and respect for religious beliefs

The forlorn Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Theodoros Trion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford,

21 April 2015,

The Three Faiths Forum,

The Revd Dr Kieran Flynn Memorial Lecture Series,

The Lantern Centre, Synge Street, Dublin

These notes were prepared for a Lecture organised by the Three Faiths Forum in the Lantern Centre, Dublin, as part of the Revd Dr Kieran Flynn Memorial Lecture Series (Islam in the West: Contemporary Issues), followed by Questions and Answers and an open discussion.

Freedom of expression and respect for religious beliefs:

For many of us, as we consider the present-day situation and the debate about freedom of expression and respect for religious beliefs, our considerations within a Three-Faith context, involving Jews, Christians and Muslims, is likely to focus less on Asher’s Bakery or a Drogheda printer’s stand on wedding invitations, and more on the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin.

From a Western perspective, this gives priority to the plight of Christians, particularly in places where there are Muslim majorities, and especially the plight of Christians caught in areas in Syria and Iraq controlled by the self-styled ‘Islamic State.’

We may consider, of course, the brutality of the mass murder of 30 Ethiopian Christians on a beach in Libya this week, and a few weeks before that the mass murder of Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya.

In the past few days, these concerns have been linked with reports of Christian migrants thrown overboard from over-crowded ships in the treacherous seas between Libya and Italy, or the plight of refugees fleeing conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East only to find themselves abandoned at sea, drowned in the Mediterranean or washed up on rocky shores in Rhodes.

Nor should we forget the suffering of Christians, particularly Christian women and girls captured by Boko Haram in Nigeria and the neighbouring countries in West Africa.

When we add to this the total exclusion of Christians from Saudi Arabia, the bombing of churches in Pakistan and Iraq, or the low-level intimidation of Christians in Malaysia, including judicially-sanctioned prohibitions on their use of the common word Allah for the one and only God, it soon becomes possible to paint a canvas that leads to abrupt conclusions.

But such conclusions do not take account either of the teachings of the Qur'an or of the places where Christians have often benefited from the benign patronage of Islamic rulers.

Verse 256 of al-Baqara, one of the most quoted verses in the Qur'an, notes that “there is no compulsion in religion.” It excludes forced conversion and applies in particular on to “People of the Book,” meaning Christians, Jews, Sabaeans, Mandaeans, and by extension, I imagine, Yazidis, and all faiths with a tradition of scriptural revelation, including Samaritans and Sikhs. I know one Muslim scholar in Turkey who extends this too to those Hindus who are monotheists.

When Pope Benedict XVI in a lecture at Regensberg University in 2006 argued about the meaning of this verse, 36 Muslim scholars disagreed with this interpretation, saying this verse was a reminder to Muslims that “they could not force another’s heart to believe,” and specifically intended to dissuade recent Muslim converts in Medina from trying to convert their own children from Judaism or Christianity to Islam.

At the annual conference last year of Us (formerly USPG), an Anglican mission agency on whose boards I sit, the Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, the Right Revd Michael Lewis, described his diocese which includes several million Christians in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf. The residents of the United Arab Emirates are almost exclusively are not-Emiratis, and a large proportion of these are Christians.

In Dubai, on a normal weekend, he said, 32,500 Christians pass through the doors of Holy Trinity (Anglican) Church, and there are similar figures for churches in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Bahrain, and similar numbers for Roman Catholics.

Ironically, in the past, Christians in Iraq and Syria have fared better under Saddam Hussein and the Assads, father and son.

Nor should we forget that Christians are not the only victims of Islamists. The so-called Islamic State is actually more concerned with Sunnis who disagree with them, and with Shia Muslims, who are rejected as heretics or even outside the world of Islam. And, along with Muslims and Christians, they are also targeting Yazidis, Mandaeans, and other faith groups who had long been tolerated in the region.

Many Muslims do not feel they have religious freedom in their own countries. The present conflict in Yemen, and much of the continuing violence in Baghdad is the political expression of an age-long distrust between two groups of Muslims.

We must remain conscious of the plight of Ibrahim Halawa (19) from Firhouse in Dublin who is being held in prison in Egypt and whose trial is constantly being postponed. Amnesty International and other bodies believe he is being detained solely for his religious views. His father, Sheikh Hussein Halawa, is Ireland’s most senior Muslim cleric and Imam of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonskeagh.

We must remember too that the Muslims who took part in the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo a few years ago held hands with their fellow Christians in what was known as the Arab Spring.

Today, many Muslims do not feel safe at the hands of many Christians. The marches organised by the pernicious Pergida continue in Germany, even though they have gone off the media radar. Last week, 10,000 people took part in their rally in Dresden, their main base. Geert Wilders, the Dutch xenophobic politician, told them: “In my eyes, you are heroes. Islam does not belong in Germany.”

Of course Islam belongs throughout Europe. We should never forget that Spain was a Muslim land for more centuries than it has been a Christian kingdom, and that under Muslims Jews were tolerated there in a way that they were not tolerated with the introduction of the Inquisition.

In a similar vein, what we now know as Turkey was the heart of the Byzantine Christian empire for many more centuries than it has been an Islamic society.

Nor should we forget that Islamophobia is not solely the prerogative of Christians. A militant atheist was to blame for a murderous attack on Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in February.

In the Middle East, Christians are not the victims of Muslims alone. The rapid decline of the Christian population in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is taking place in areas where Christian Palestinians and Christian Israeli Arabs are caught between the hammer of militant Zionism and the anvil of militant Islam.

I am just back from Turkey, where two or three stories may help to illustrate how religious tolerance and pluralism and religious persecution can paradoxically be experienced in the one society in the Mediterranean basin.

There I was reminded how, during centuries under the Ottoman Empire, the rulers vacillated in their attitudes to Christians.

As I explored the churches and monasteries hewn into the rock-faces of Cappadocia, I was reminded that what we now know as Turkey was once the heartland of Christianity for centuries.

Saint Paul was from Tarsus, he and Saint Barnabas preached in Iconium, which is now Konya, and many of Saint Paul’s letters are written from or to believers in Anatolia or Asia Minor, including Ephesus and Galatia. Saint John addresses his letters from Patmos to Seven Churches in the Book of Revelation, each of them in Asia Minor, in or close to the areas around Ephesus and Smyrna. Later, the key credal propositions of Christianity were formulated by the Cappadocian Fathers.

Two weeks ago, we travelled three hours by bus from central Cappadocia to Konya to visit the tomb of Rumi. We were the only non-Muslim visitors among the sea of Muslim pilgrims visiting what is perhaps the most sacred Muslim shrine in Turkey. Never was I made feel ill at ease … quite the contrary.

Rumi, who wrote in Persian Arabic, Turkish and Greek, died on 17 December 1273 in Konya. There I was reminded of the age-old tradition of hospitality offered by the Mevlevi order, dating back to the time of Rumi in the 13th century. In his tradition, the Mevlevi invitation reaches out to people of all backgrounds:

Come, come, whoever you are,
whether you be fire-worshippers, idolaters, or pagans,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a dwelling place of despair.
All who enter will receive a welcome here.

Christians survived, albeit at times perilously, for 600 years under the Ottoman Empire. As Loukas Notaras (Λουκᾶς Νοταρᾶς), the last Grand Duke or Prime Minister, of the Byzantine Empire, noted, the Byzantines preferred the Muslim turban in Constantinople to the Latin mitre. Unfortunately for him, however, the capture of Constantinople was followed by his execution in 1453.

At times the Ottomans were tolerant, at times Christians were persecuted, at times Christians enjoyed undisturbed communal autonomy, and at times Christians prospered. Until the 20th century, Christians rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and, with certain exceptions, they were free in their choice of residence and profession. Indeed, the Swedish king Charles XII (1682–1718) took refuge in Constantinople after his defeat by the Russians at Poltava (1709), like many a Venetian politician before him.

Christians, including Greeks and Armenians, often rose to high rank in the Sublime Porte without abandoning their religion, and there were Greek and Armenian Foreign and Finance Ministers in Constantinople until the 1910s.

It is only as the Ottoman Empire begins to collapse that Christians suffer the full impact of what becomes religious intolerance: the massacre of Armenians, followed after World War I by the expulsion of Christians on a mass scale, including Greek-speaking, Syrian and Armenian Christians, whose ancestors had lived for generations and centuries in villages that still remember their names.

But let us not blame the perpetrators alone. Those who stood by silently were complicit too. Had European ships not remained offshore at Smyrna as Christians were leaping to their death in the sea and as the city burned behind them, had Europe stood up then and said ‘No’ in the 1920s, the plotters of genocide in the 1930s would never have felt free to develop and implement their evil plans.

Two weeks ago in Cappadocia, I was visiting the underground city of Derinkuyu, which had the capacity to accommodate up to 20,000 people for 2,000 years. As I emerged into the daylight that morning, there was a stark reminder that until 1923 Derinkuyu was known to its Greek-speaking residents as Malakopea (Μαλακοπέα). Across the square from the entrance to the underground city stands the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Theodoros Trion, lonely and forlorn like a sad scene in an Angelopoulos movie.

This once elegant church was built in 1858-1860, but has stood abandoned since 1923. Its walls have started to crumble and collapse, and inside the frescoes are decaying, for the promised restoration of the church and its bell-tower has been abandoned.

Similar stories are well known from the villages of Kaya Köyü, known until 1923 as Levissi, 8 km south of Fethiye in south-west Turkey, or in Şirince, because they have been celebrated in modern literature by authors such Louis de Bernières in Birds without Wings in the case of Levissi, or Dido Sotiriou’s Farewell Anatolia, in the case of Şirince.

I have visited churches throughout Turkey that have been turned into mosques, in Istanbul, in Seljuk, in Kaş ... these scenes and stories are repeated and re-enacted throughout Turkey.

But the plight of the Cappadocian Greeks, or of the Pontic Greeks, who were expelled from their homes of generations and centuries, simply because of their religion, is often forgotten for there is no great fiction writer or novelist to tell their stories.

The Kara Musa Pasha Mosque is one of the surviving treasures from Ottoman Crete in the old town of Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Of course, the same stories can be told in reverse. I have spent time in the fast few years cataloguing the lost mosques, Muslim fountains and Ottoman balconies throughout Rethymnon on the Greek island of Crete, and have visited the villages outside Rhodes town that were settled by Muslims expelled from Crete in the 1920s and who then found themselves under Greek rule once again in the 1940s.

On the other hand, Jews seem to have fared better than Christians under Ottoman rule. Indeed, it is an indictment of what we call Western European civilisation that Jews under Islamic rule in the Ottoman Empire fared better than Jews under Christian rule in the Iberian peninsula. The first synagogue linked to Ottoman rule is Etz ha-Hayyim (‘Tree of Life’) in Bursa which came under Ottoman rule in 1324. This synagogue is still in use, although the modern Jewish population of Bursa has shrunk to about 140 people.

When the unification of Spain was realised in the 1490s, Jews and Muslims alike were expelled en masse from the Iberian peninsula. But the Sephardic Jews were warmly welcomed on the other side of the Mediterranean, and by-and-large they prospered in the Ottoman Empire.

In the mid-16th century, Joseph Nasi, a Sephardic Jew who was born a Marrano in Portugal but had fled the Inquisition, was appointed Duke of Naxos, Sanjak-bey or Governor of the island of Naxos, a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims.

The Jews of the Dodecanese islands, including Rhodes and Kos, continued to live there after these islands were captured from the Ottomans by the Italians at the beginning of the 20th century. In Rhodes, for example, they had many synagogues, their own Ladino newspapers, soccer clubs, and so on. It took the invading German Nazis just a few months, if not just a few weeks, to virtually wipe out a culture and traditions that had survived and blossomed for centuries under Ottoman Muslim rule.

When a society is tolerant, it is exemplary; when a society’s intolerance results in suffering and death, we must all accept the blame.

The Princeton historian Bernard Lewis is controversial for many of his views. But it is interesting how points out that until relatively modern times, tolerance in the treatment of non-believers, at least as it is understood in the West after John Locke, was neither valued, nor its absence condemned by both Muslims and Christians.

Religious tolerance, freedom and respect are relatively new ideas, but neither the adherence to them nor the denial of these values is the prerogative or monopoly of any one religious grouping, and, indeed, when they are denied to one, eventually they are being denied to all.

In a back-page interview in the Church Times last Friday [17 April 2015], Dr Georgette Bennett, who has an international reputation for her work in dialogue between the three primary monotheistic faiths says one of the most beautiful statements about pluralism is found in the Qur’an. She misquotes, the verse, but admits she is offering a paraphrase: “If God had intended for all of us to be the same, he would have created us that way. Instead, he made us different so that there would be many paths to God.”

[The verses she refers to actually say: Unto every one of you have we appointed a different law and way of life. And if God had so willed, he could surely have made you all one single community: but he willed it otherwise in order to test you by means of what he has revealed to you. Compete then with one another in doing good works! Unto God you all must return and then he will make you truly understand all that on which you were wont to differ. (5: 44-48)]

Some passages from the Quran for citation in the subsequent Question and Answer session:

Whosoever kills an innocent human being, it shall be as if he has killed all mankind, and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. (5: 32)

Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabaeans whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness – their wage waits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow. (5: 69)

… and you will find the nearest in love to the believers (Muslims) those who say: ‘We are Christians.’ That is because amongst them are priests and monks, and they are not proud. (5: 82)

True piety (or righteousness) does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or west but truly pious is he who believes in God and the last day and the angels and revelation, and the prophets; and spends his substance upon his near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggar, and for the freeing of human beings from bondage; and is constant in prayer, and renders the purifying dues; and truly pious are they who keep their promises whenever they promise, and are patient in misfortune and hardship and in time of peril, it is they that have proved themselves true, and it is they, they who are conscious of God. (2: 177)

The evening was chaired by Joe Humphries (The Irish Times) and the other invited speakers were: Dr Ali Selim, the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, and Dr Rosemary Byrne, Associate Professor of International Law and Human Rights, Trinity College Dublin.

Turkish Government plans to betray a sad village to the highest bidder

The villagers of Levissi were forced to abandon their homes in 1923 ... the ruins stand as witness to a sad time in the history of Europe (Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Turkish newspaper Karsigazete, a leading English-language newspaper in Turkey, Hürriyet Daily News, and other Turkish media outlets carried reports last week that the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry is to hold an auction next month [23 October 2014] to rent the deserted Greek ghost town of Kayaköy, one of the most intriguing cultural heritage sites on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, for 49 years in return for its restoration.

The reports say the auction will partially open the archaeological site at Kayaköy to building and that there are plans to build an hotel and other tourist facilities that will spread across one-third of the village.

The total cost of the project is expected to reach 30 million Turkish Liras (about €10.4 million), and two companies have already offered a bid for the auction.

Kayaköy is about 8 km south of the popular coastal town Fethiye. Local officials have praised the move, claiming that restoring 5,000-year-old village through renting it would turn the ghost town into an “international brand.”

The Turkish reports say “Kayaköy was abandoned after its Greek inhabitants returned to Greece in the population exchange between the two countries in 1923.”

But the truth is very different: the Greek population of Kayaköy did not “abandon” their town – they were forced to leave in a violent act of “ethnic cleansing” in 1923, after the burning of Smyrna (Izmir). Nor did they “return to Greece” – the town and the surrounding area had been Greek-speaking not merely for centuries, but for thousands of years, and since antiquity this place was the home to successive, multiple generations of Greek people who knew their home village in the Kaya valley as Levissi, and before that as Karmylassos.

I first visited Levissi in 2006, and have returned a number of times during holidays in Ovacık, Hisarönü and Fethiye. On that first visit, its haunting impact made it difficult to write about, and it was another two years before I wrote about the tragic sequence of events that turned Levissi into a “ghost town.”

Kayaköy or Levissi was known to the Lycians, to the Greeks, and to the classical historian Strabo as Karmylassos (Καρμυλησσός). At the beginning of the last century, the people in this Anatolian mountain village were Christians but many were bilingual, speaking both Turkish and Greek. This was their home, and the home of their ancestors. No-one considered the modern Greek state as homeland, and although Rhodes is the nearest Greek island, at the time it too stood outside the modern Greek state, occupied by Italy from 1912 on.

The villagers of Levissi were forced to abandon their homes, their churches, their schools, their workshops, their shops and their factories in 1923, when the agreed “exchange of populations” between Turkey and Greece led to every Greek Orthodox villager being forced to leave for Greece – along with the few remaining Armenians, Jews and any other minorities who were neither Muslim nor Turkish-speaking.

About 500 houses from the original village are still standing – some turning to rubble, others still displaying hints of former elegance and grandeur, many with doors, floors, cisterns, fireplaces and chimneys still intact, some with peeling plaster, often with fig trees and weeds growing through the buildings.

The occasional restoration points to the lost grandeur of these houses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It is possible to pick your way through the former streets and alleys, or to imagine yourself sitting in one of the squares, sitting in the summer sunshine, sipping coffee, watching the children play and listening to the Sunday bells of the churches.

Here and there, I have come across a house that has been restored to its former grandeur. But when the tourists slip away, this a lonely place, without the life and sounds it should rightly have echoing through its silent streets and squares.

Kayaköy or Levissi was once a substantial town – as there are 500-1,000 houses still standing today, there must have been more 80 years ago, so this was a small town with a population of at least 3,000-4,000 people if not more; some estimates even put the population at 6,000.

The sad truth is that – despite the war between Greece and Turkey between 1919 and 1922 – the people of Levissi had always been good neighbours to one another, with some exceptional cases of intermarriage. Their lives inspired Louis de Bernières in 2003 when he wrote Birds Without Wings, his prequel to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, where the village of Levissi is thinly disguised as Eskibahçe.

The interior of the Church of Taxiarches ... its frescoes, icons and other religious works have been vandalised and stripped out (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Church of Taxiarches (Ταξιάρχες, the Archangels Michael and Gabriel) or the “high church” stands on top of a hill in the middle of the town. It is a five-bay church with barrel-vaulted ceilings, an apse and a narthex with a saddle-back roof.

But the frescoes and icons have been stripped from the walls, the iconostasis has been removed, and the former pebble floor, made of black and white pebbles in mosaic pattern, has been lifted away.

Outside, in the spacious courtyard, it is easy to imagine the great ceremonies and liturgies that must have been celebrated here over the centuries.

Throughout the town, there are at least 14 other smaller churches. Some are tiny; some are collapsing under the weight of neglect of almost a century; in one, where the frescoes survive but are fading, the eyes have been gouged out of the saints, as if those who remained could not bear to have their protectors look down in judgment on them.

The interior of the Basilica of the Panayia Pirgiotissa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Down at the end of the town stands the more recent Basilica of the Panayia Pirgiotissa (Παναγια Πυργιώτισσα), built as recently as 1888 – the date is still visible in the floor mosaic at the north-west door, and in the Greek inscription above. The floor of the church and the narthex at the west end are mosaics laid out in typical Dodecanese patterns of grey and white pebble-work.

Inside, the church still has its marble-framed iconostasis – without its main icons at a lower level. But some of the icons survive at the top of the screen, including images of Christ and the 12 Disciples, the Transfiguration, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Easter appearance to Thomas and the Disciples, the Ascension and Pentecost.

But the frescoes have been scraped off the dome, the apse and the walls. If anything has survived or been preserved it is because it was white-washed over so that the church was used as a mosque until the 1960s.

One Sunday morning, we prayed inside this hallowed place. For a few brief moments, this was a church again as we celebrated the Sunday Eucharist with bread and wine we brought with us from a local restaurant.

The remains of the dead in the charnal house beside the Basilica of the Panayia Pirgiotissa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Outside the church, tucked away in one corner of the churchyard is the bell-tower, and in the other the charnel house, piled high with the skeletal remains of villagers. When they were forced to leave, the Christian villagers took the skulls of their parents and ancestors, leaving the rest of their bones behind.

When the people of Levissi left their homes, in the account recreated by Louis de Bernières, Father Kristoforos led them out carrying the town’s most sacred and most cherished icon. Similar tales are recounted by many Greek novelists, most notably Nikos Kazantzakis in The Greek Passion or Christ Recrucified (Ο Χριστός Ξανασταυρώνεται), in which the people expelled from the village of Sarakini by the Ottomans are led to the village of Lycovrisi by their priest, Father Photis.

As they left Levissi in haste, it was impossible for these people to bring the bones of their ancestors with them. Instead, they carried off their skulls, carefully and tenderly wrapped, to bury them once again in villages and town across Greece. The bones they left behind were piled high in the charnel house beside the Church of the Panayia Pyrgiotissa.

The people of Levissi, like people from the neighbouring villages and islands, moved to Rhodes, Crete, the northern Aegean and Nea Levissi in Athens. Turkish-speaking people from Western Thrace in northern Greece were invited to move into their empty homes, but many were too superstitious to live in what they saw as a ghost town. For a few years at least, some houses were protected by caring but distressed former neighbours and one-time friends. But today it is the largest “ghost town” in Asia Minor.

Below Levissi, the modern Turkish village of Kayaköy looks like any other tranquil Aegean village – with its sleepy cafés where old men sit outside in the shade playing backgammon and sipping coffee.

Today, the town has become a cultural centre, home to festivals and many international events each summer. The current project reported in the Turkish media last week has been on the government agenda for several years, but a first auction organised last year was without success.

Turkish critics of the project claim that the town, like many other Mediterranean resort towns, could lose its authenticity and originality at the hands of investors seeking to maximise profits.

Legal experts point out that the town does not have a construction plan designed to protect its cultural assets. Despite complaints from local Turkish people, the village is quickly falling victims to cheap tour operators who are turning the place into a quadbikes’ arena.

The children and the grandchildren of the original population, expelled without compensation, point out that they are still the legal owners of the houses, shops and buildings in Levissi.

During the first auction, activists launched a Facebook page called “Save Kayaköy” in the hope that restoration work should be planned and carried out in co-ordination with Greece, and that they should respect and enhance the environment and the area's history.

But the same government that destroyed Taksim Square in Istanbul despite persistent protests by ordinary people is going to go ahead with the destruction of Levissi unless there the international community expresses its outrage. And in wiping out the memory of Levissi, it is trying to wipe out the memory and evidence of an appalling act of “ethnic cleansing” that shame all Europeans.

No-one is coming home to Levissi for Easter this year

The abandoned houses, churches and streets of Levissi remain on the slopes above Kaya Köyü (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The success of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières since it was published in 1993 has been enhanced by the beauty of John Madden’s 2001 movie, with Nicholas Cage as Antonio Corelli, Penelope Cruz as Pelagia, and John Hurt as Dr Iannis, with its evocative cinematography and locations on the Greek island of Kephalonia.

Louis de Bernières received less acclaim for Birds Without Wings (2004), a poignant prequel telling the earlier stories of many of the people in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and how they came to live in Kephalonia. In these novels, de Bernières is kinder to Atatürk than he is to Mussolini, and more understanding of Turkish national aspirations than of Greek nationalism. Yet both books are captivating, and I am disappointed that Birds Without Wings has not yet been made into a movie.

We visited Kephalonia a few times after reading and seeing Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and so it was natural when we were staying near Fethiye in south-west Turkey some time ago to visit the Anatolian village that inspired de Bernières as he wrote Birds Without Wings. The book’s title is provided by one of the characters, Iskander the Potter, who says: “Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows.”

Birds Without Wings is set in Eskibahçe, a small village in south-west Anatolia, and tells the tragic love story of Philothei, a Greek-speaking Christian, and Ibrahim, a Muslim Turk, as the Ottoman Empire crumbles, World War I is waged, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rises to power, with the Battle of Gallipoli taking place halfway through the narrative.

The characters are caught up in events outside their control in a story about religious intolerance, over-zealous nationalism, and the wars they create. Some of the other characters and families in Birds Without Wings include Abdulhamid Hodja, the local imam; his wife Ayse; her best friend, Polyxeni; Polyxeni’s husband Charitos, and their children Philothei and Mehmetçik; Philothei’s best friend Drosoula; Ibrahim the Goatherd; Iskander’s son, Karatavuk, whose real name is Abdul; and Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Karatavuk fights for the Ottoman Empire in World War I and against the Greeks in the early 1920s. On returning home, he loses his right arm when his father shoots him. No longer able to follow his father as a potter, and becomes the village scribe.

The wealthy aga or landlord, Rustem Bey, abandons his disgraced wife Tamara to a life of forced prostitution, and later he is deceived into thinking his mistress Leyla is Circassian, although she too is in a Greek Christian. Mehmetçik, whose real name is Nicos, is Philothei’s younger brother and Karatavuk’s best friend. And there is Ali the Broken-Nosed, Ali the Snow-Bringer, the Blasphemer, Daskalos Leonidas the teacher, the Dog, Enver Pasha, Father Kristoforos, Mohammad the Leech-Gatherer, and Stamos the Birdman.

Fiction founded in tragedy

Just as the stories in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin are based on real incidents and tragedies in the history of Kephalonia and Greece, the stories and people in Birds Without Wings find real foundation in the tragic history of Anatolia and the Aegean. The village of Eskibahçe and neighbouring Telmessos are real places with their own real tragedies.

Louis de Bernières found his inspiration for Telmessos and Eskibahçe in the coastal city of Fethiye and the once-thriving, abandoned nearby town of Kaya Köyü. Fethiye is close to resorts like Hisaronou and the picture postcard beach at Oludeniz, with its white sands and blue lagoon. Some tourists also manage to visit Kaya Köyü, the ghost town of 8 km south of Fethiye that provided the haunting inspiration for Eskibahçe and Birds Without Wings.

The Lycian tombs and graves that feature throughout the book are dotted across the countryside and continue to provide the backdrop for the port of Fethiye, for this is an important region for those interested in classical history. For much of its history, Fethiye was known by its Greek name, Telmessos. The city was dedicated to Apollo and surviving monuments point to a once rich and cultured city with Hellenistic, Roman and mediaeval remains. They include Lycian rock-tombs and sarcophagi, a classical theatre built by the Romans to replace an earlier Greek theatre, and a crusader castle once used by the Knights of Rhodes.

During the Hellenistic period, the symbol of the city, the Tomb of Amyntas, was carved into the rocks overlooking the bay, with a façade in the style of an Ionic temple. The nearest Greek island is Rhodes, and for centuries Christians and Muslims lived side-by-side in prosperity and peacefully in Telmessos and the neighbouring towns, villages and islands.

The lives of everyone in Eskibahçe are shattered by war, the collapse of an empire, the rise of Atatürk’s new nation, and the disasters that follow the war between Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s. “Population exchange” is still used as a euphemism to describe how Muslims and Christians were expelled from Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s. Many of those Turks expelled from places such as Thrace in Northern Greece and from Crete were Muslims who spoke Greek as their first language. Many Greeks expelled from Anatolia were Christians who spoke Turkish. These people were intimate friends with their neighbours – they went to school together, worked with one another, cried with and comforted each other, and sometimes they married across the divide. The sole criterion for defining national identity was religion, and terms such as “population exchange” or “ethnic cleansing” hide the horror of the cruelties perpetrated against them.

A small population now lives in the scattered settlements on the plains below what was a bustling market town until its population of Orthodox Greeks was deported forcibly in 1923. The people who once lived in Kaya Köyü were mainly Greek-speakers who knew their town as Levissi, and who were proud that it was built on the earlier Hellenistic town of Karmylassos.

Crumbling churches and homes

Today Levissi is slowly decaying. As we walked through its once-cobbled streets and squares, between the crumbling houses, shops and churches, the air is filled with a marked poignancy. It is hard to imagine that this was once home to 3,500 families – perhaps more than 15,000 people – although official Turkish figures still only put the numbers at 6,000.

Although it is sometimes called a ghost village, this large town once had 3,500 homes, two large churches, 19 smaller churches and chapels, two schools, shops, tavernas, a hospital, a library, two public fountains, two windmills, artisan workshops and factories. As we walked through the melancholy old town, we snatched glimpses of colour remaining on the walls of ruined houses, homes and mansions, and could imagine the decorations still crumbling on the inside walls.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the square in the upper town, close to the once-grand Church of the Archangels, full of men sipping coffee as they fingered their worry beads or that I could hear mothers calling their children in for a meal or do their school homework. I allowed myself to smell the coffee wafting from the coffee shops and the incense rising in the churches and the chapels, to hear the children at play in the streets and alleyways and the priests chanting the liturgy in the churches and chapels.

The once-elegant Church of the Panayia Pyrgiotissa, with an intricate Dodecanese-style pebble floor mosaic in the narthex dated 1888, is an eloquent if sad reminder of a once proud community. Now the streets are empty, the houses are crumbling, and the churches are tumbling down, with the eyes gouged out of the images on the frescoes. In some instances, the churches are being used to store building materials. Inside one building, I could see the impression on the walls of two large Stars of David – even the Jews of Levissi abandoned their synagogue and were forced to leave because they spoke Greek too and were not Muslims.

The frescoes in the churches in Levissi were defaced and their eyes gouged out (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sad departures

When the people of Levissi left their homes, in the account recreated by Louis de Bernières, Father Kristoforos led them out carrying the town’s most sacred and most cherished icon. Similar tales are recounted by many Greek novelists, most notably Nikos Kazantzakis in The Greek Passion or Christ Recrucified (Ο Χριστός Ξανασταυρώνεται), in which the people expelled from the village of Sarakini by the Ottomans are led to the village of Lycovrisi by their priest, Father Photis.

As they left Levissi in haste, it was impossible for these people to bring the bones of their ancestors with them. Instead, they carried off their skulls, carefully and tenderly wrapped, to bury them once again in villages and town across Greece. The bones they left behind were piled high in the charnel house beside the Church of the Panayia Pyrgiotissa. Nobody visits those bones today, no prayers of remembrance are said here anymore, and the church, once whitewashed in a brief attempt effort to convert it into a mosque, is bare inside but for the remains of the original icon screen, where the icons at the top were too high to be defaced and erased.

The bones in the Charnel House beside the Church of the Panayia Pyrgiotissa are all that remain of the dead of Levissi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The people of Levissi, like people from the neighbouring villages and islands, moved to Rhodes, Crete, the northern Aegean and Nea Levissi in Athens. Turkish-speaking people from Western Thrace in northern Greece were invited to move into their empty homes, but many were too superstitious to live in what they saw as a ghost town. For a few years at least, some houses were protected by caring but distressed former neighbours and one-time friends. But today it is the largest “ghost town” in Asia Minor.

A silent presence

The Turkish government has plans to restore Kaya Köyü as a centre of friendship, peace, science, culture and art. Sometimes, the grandchildren of those who were forced to leave return to see their family homes, and Patriarch Bartholomeos stayed here at the start of the new millennium. But no Epitaphios or bier of Christ will be carried through the streets this Good Friday, and no exiles will return home to celebrate the Resurrection and Easter Day.

On the planes below, a new Turkish village has grown up. The old men in the cafés look like old men in cafés across the neighbouring Greek islands as they sip their coffee and play cards and backgammon. In the evenings, tourists ensure the restaurants below the old town prosper. But as the sun sets and night falls, no incense rises in the churches and chapels, there are no priests to sing the Evening services, no children are called in from the streets, no-one is coming home, and no lights come on in the houses in Levissi.

Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation at the Church of Ireland Theological College. This essay was first published in March 2008 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel and Ossory).

© Patrick Comerford 2008