Today July 20th our Church celebrates the prophet Elias.
This great prophet is honored by the Church on July 20. Many traditions and customs of our country have been associated with this celebration. Nostalgic walks and excursions to visit the small churches which in most cases are placed on the mountain tops, popular pilgrimages and festivals.
Many people even have the “favor” to do the route on foot, while many patients call upon its help to cure their illnesses. In many areas, especially in Thrace and Macedonia, the prophet Elijah was considered the master of rain, thunder and lightning.
This is explained by the events recounted in the Old Testament about the drought imposed by Elijah and the opening of the heavens after three years for rain to fall again. In fact, the villagers of Northern Thrace, who came to Greece in 1923 and settled mainly in Macedonia, offered the saint a “sacrifice”.
The danger from the sun’s capsule, but also from the summer downpour, was associated with the prophet Elijah.
In other parts of Macedonia, the legend about the prophet’s pursuit of the devil is found in a variant: Ilias is not chasing the devil but the “lamia”, which destroys man’s crops. Christians in Bulgaria believed that the saint hunts the “lamia” sitting on a golden chariot and pursues the dragon that eats their crops in the fields. As soon as the prophet sees him, he throws the thunderbolts against him.
The prophet Elijah is honored at the top of hills, heights and mountains (“on the heights”).
Many peaks bear his name and most have small churches or iconostasis dedicated to him for this reason. The explanation for this honor “on the heights” is linked to various regional traditions of the people.
In Achaia they tell that “Ai Lias was a sailor, and because he suffered a lot at sea and many times almost drowned, he got tired of traveling and decided to go to a place where they do not know what the sea is and what ships are. So he puts his oar on his shoulder and goes ashore. He asked everyone he met what it was that was weighing. As they called him “paddle” he pulled higher, until he reached the top of the mountain. He asks the people he found there what it is, and they tell him “wood”. So he understood that they had never seen the oars and stayed with them up there.”
According to a variant of this tradition in Kefalonia, the saint is in the peaks, because he never set foot on the plain, nor was he buried in the ground. He turns with his chariot in the sky and only on the peaks he stands and breathes. And when he was alive, that’s how he liked to be in the mountains.”
Source: ekklisiaonline.gr
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