Here are text and photos by our friend James C., who is now living and working in Italy. It’s from an e-mail he sent me. I publish it, and the photos he embedded within it, here with his permission.

You bring out more disturbing confirmation that we are falling into a dark age of ignorance (despite the sea of available information). A frightening future is being prepared for us. How much are we willing to sacrifice to keep a grip on our faith, whole and entire, in times of searing trial? I’ve been thinking about that question lately on my journeys in southern Italy. Right now I’m in Otranto in Puglia. An ancient warren of white-stone streets on the deep blue sea. Exploring the maze this evening, I came across this and thought to myself, “It’s Greek to me”:

And of course it was! It’s a church built in the 9th century under the auspices of the See of Constantinople. Inside it’s covered in Byzantine frescoes. Astonishing.

There’s a more famous church in Otranto, the cathedral. Inside is an incredible 12th-century mosaic floor as well as the skeletons of the 800 martyrs who were beheaded when they refused to convert to Islam after the Turks took the city in 1480. To be able to pray before all those sacred bones, glorified by their common and total witness to Christ, well, there are no words:

Are we prepared to do the same, together?

Over the All Saints holiday, I was in the remote mountains of the Pollino in Calabria. Nestled in these mountains are a remarkable collection of Italo-Albanian villages. These were settled as refuges centuries ago by Albanians who fled there, determined to hold onto their faith in exile rather than submit to the Turkish armies overrunning their homeland. I say they are remarkable because they have maintained a particularity of distinct cultural characteristics despite centuries of exile and pressure to be absorbed into the surrounding milieu—language, food, and even the Byzantine church. I stayed at the home of one of these families, and I slept soundly under a large icon of Christ Pantokrator. The family’s children are friends with the bearded parish priest’s own kids. The Italo-Albanian Divine Liturgy was certainly a welcome respite from the standard Novus Ordo. And I got to see the whole town come out to the church to see off one of their own in a solemn and spirited funeral procession.

The town:

It was a wonderful experience, magnificent food included:

My couple of days in that mountain region got me thinking about one critical element of the Benedict Option: If we wish to maintain the faith we must cultivate it. We must foster a shared, distinct and stable culture that supports that faith and is supported by it. In a cultural vacuum or a cultural maelstrom, it cannot easily take root. The faith must be tilled together in good, solid earth.