Journey to Mount Athos: A Spiritual Pilgrimage from Joliet to a Greek Orthodox Monastery on the Holy Mountain

A young men's fellowship group is formed in Joliet, IL in 1987. The four college students and a young professor began reading Greek and Russian Orthodox books on aestheticism and plan to visit Mount Athos, a peninsula in Northern Greece devoted to monastic communities and still governed under Byzantine law. The first half of the book describes the misadventures of the boys as they perform clean-up operations at Greek food festivals in the Chicago area to raise money. Finally, miraculously, they are able to fly to Greece. The second half of their adventure takes them through the churches of Thessaloniki and Mount Athos. This account was written one chapter at a time and read to the group as they continued to meet through 1988. It is an accurate account of their experiences, although decidedly from the author's perspective. The descriptions, history, and views of Christian Orthodoxy presented here reflect the groups perceptions of the Church and are not intended to be in any way authoritative.