...The moment we gain the sense of sacred
There are very few places where sanctity is felt like a physical presence, as concrete and evident as a person standing near by. For us, Eastern Orthodox Christians, every Orthodox church is a dwelling of the Holy Spirit, both in the literal and mystical sense - the small chapel in a desolate Bulgarian village being no less of a church than Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople or The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The moment we gain the sense of sacred is usually something one does not forget. To me, it happened in an early fall many years ago, during a trip through Kosovo and Metohia, Serbian Holy Land.
Vladimir Lossky
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
$11.53
Serbian churches in Kosovo and MetohijaThere was a continuous drizzle of bone-chilling rain splashing the windows of dilapidated buses that were taking us on a school-tour to Serbian greatest medieval churches and monasteries. The fertile Kosovo soil was quickly turning to mud, and so were the roads, the endless desolate fields and ominously fenced-in villages we were passing by. In socialistic Yugoslavia these excursions were not meant to evoke a sense of pride in Serbian children once they are introduced to their tradition and amazingly rich spiritual, artistic and cultural heritage. And they certainly were not supposed to awake a sense of sanctity, buried deep under the muck of "humanism" and "brotherhood and unity" we were raised to believe in. "Brotherhood and unity", by the way, that kept us ignorant beyond belief regarding the level of animosity and hatred some of our Yugoslavian "brethren" really felt toward all things Serbian. These excursions were meant to be purely educational and in a superficial sense at that, as if Serbian kingdom, her Orthodoxy, history, majestic frescoes predating Renaissance, her monasteries, churches and Patriarchate itself were just a small part of "Yugoslav history", no more significant than an Albanian herder's sheep hut or any 20th century mosque minaret piercing the pearly grey of Kosmet skies. | |
Prayers in stoneFor us, a bunch of fifteen year olds brought up believing in Great Equalizer, a Leader who evens everything out, where all is the same and all equally worthy, or equally worthless in the end, the only appeal of such excursion was that, after seeing a few of these and some of that, we would be taken to a hotel and party, spend time together, have fun and do whatever we wanted. So, the way we figured, we simply had to survive nauseating bus rides and muddle through all the boring stops feigning interest before the main event can take place in the evening. But seeing the splendor of these churches built hundreds of years ago, radiating through morose autumnal mists like prayers in stone, unexpectedly loosened the rock that was sealing the entrance to the sacred grounds of my soul. It was like seeing the bright light of a prayer candle on a stormy night, left in the window to guide a weary traveler. Suddenly, I was home. |
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