United States Army

Kosovo Churches
        Soon after their arrrival to Balkans the Serbian tribes were successively baptised by Christian missionaries and became Orthodox Christians. The consecration of St. Sava as Archbishop of Serbia in 1219 was the beginning of Serbian Orthodoxy.  Kosovo was the heart of that Serbia.  Serbia reached its peak under Stefan Dusan, king of Serbia in 1331.  He was tsar from 1346 to 1355.  The Archbishopric of Pec was correspondingly raised to the rank of Patriarchate. The period before the arrival of the Turks was the time of the greatest flourishing of the Serbian Church. It's greatest basilicas were built at this time.
      I was able to visit three major surviving basilicas.  They are world heritage sites and are among the oldest, best preserved Orthodox Basilicas in the world.  I took US soldiers on several visits to Gracanica (shown left).  I will say more about it below.  I paid only one visit to Decani and Pec, but what a visit it was. 
     Pec is the seat of the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.  It is to Serbs what Saint Peter’s, the Vatican and Sistine Chapel are to Roman Catholics.  Here are the churches of the Apostle, the Virgin and Saint Demetrius.  Each is covered, floor to ceiling, with 13th and 14th century frescoes.  These three major basilicas, shown below left, are attached, side by side, to a single, central entryway.  The whole is nestled at the foot of imposing mountains, their steep sides thrusting up from the brook that runs alongside the Patriarchate.  Click here to view their wonderful web page and see the beauty of the basilicas and icons.
              The Basilica in Decani is best described by its monks on their web page (click here).  Their church is shown below.  In my single visit I fell in love with their work and their church.  Their evening service gave me the deepest spiritual experience I had in Kosovo.   I would love to some day return. 
      The most powerful religious experience of my stay in Kosovo was at Decani monastery. The bell for evening prayers tolled and we went to the basilica. The guardian lions at the portal seemed to move in the faint moonlight.   We entered even as the first monks began their chant.  The only light came from flickering candles. The had rejected electricity for candles made from their own beeswax.  We were whisked back six hundred years to the earliest age of the monastery. 
       The faces of the saints on the walls peered at us out of the darkness.  The walls rose up and disappeared into the gloom, making night the vault over our heads. The monks in their black robes appeared, disappeared and reappeared as they quietly shifted through space, in and out of the candle light.  It could have been a procession of their holy ancestors.  I stepped aside to let one pass and bumped into an elder monk who had been quietly, invisibly standing next to me.  Monk or ancestral spirit, I really can’t tell you, he never said a word.   Each monk entered in full black robes and flowing black head cover.  They bowed and venerated the cross and other icons in the church. 		        Monks came and went throughout the service.  I could not tell whether those entering were replacing those leaving, or if there were just a few who could not sit still.  I should say “stand” still.  There is no sitting, even during the three-hour masses, unless one is very old or ill.  Heavy incense gave the effect that we were being lifted up into the clouds to join the saints around us.  The incense and long day crept up on me and I suddenly felt ill.  I didn’t dare leave, I didn't want to break the spell.  My struggle added to the experience.   I wondered how many sick over the centuries stood exactly where I stood, seeking the grace to be found here. 
       Serbs that could not safely travel to this place during daylight hours had arrived in the dark.  I knew why they came.  Here, for me, was the heart and soul of Kosovo, it’s living history, it’s fervent religion, its creative spirit, its light and its darkness; all of it in this one place and moment.  Here was the light of Christ, shining forth in the darkness, a darkness which could not overwhelm it.  The people came and stood without a sound, only the monks chanted.  At one point, two monks entered side by side.  Both walked confidently, though one seemed to hesitate a step before each icon.  Then I noticed that the other monk held lightly to his cloak.  He was blind.  But his soul could see.
       At first I was disappointed that darkness would not let me to see the frescoes in all of their glory.  But in the candlelight I saw them in their highest glory, portals for the soul to pass through to the divine.  My spirit walked among them.
      Gracanica Basilica.  I expected a gigantic church like Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.  The Gracanica Basilica would fit inside its sanctuary.  Spiritually, however, it is an equal.  The church (see upper left) has solidity with spatial variety.  The outside is not just a box.  Heights and shapes vary.  Care is taken to balance them and create contrasts.  Extended bays form arms of a cross.  They are lower than the central structure and are covered by barrel vaults.  This simplified scheme is formed "by placing one cross-in-square onto another". The church is among the noblest surviving examples of the classic building techniques used in the Byzantine empire in the 14th century and today is a world heritage site. 
       Inside, every square inch is covered with frescoes.  They tell the entire history of the Serb Orthodox faith up to the time the frescoes were painted.  The frescoes are in levels.  The lowest level holds the people of greatest earthly significance.  The higher the level, the greater the spiritual significance.  You see scenes of the Garden of Eden and the final judgement.  The damned are huddled together, naked and grey in the darkest corner of the church.  The saints are brightly colored, standing in the light.  At the lowest levels are the political and warrior saints.  You can identify the kings by their crowns and the warriors by their armor or swords.  Holy women have their own special place.  Higher up are the picture stories of the life of Mary, the Apostles and the Martyrs.  Frescoes of important Orthodox Bishops of Serbian history are closer to the sanctuary.  Their robes have black and white crosses.   In the center of the highest dome, is Christ the Redeemer (left).
   Within a few kilometers of the Kosovo - Macedonia border sits the little town of Letnice.  The road to Letnice follows a stream coming down out of the moutain range that forms the border.  At the end of the road, up on the side of the mountain, sits a simple, twin-spired, Roman Catholic church (left).  It goes by several names, the "Church of the Black Madonna", the "Church of the Assumption," and the Church of "Our Lady of Cernagore".  The people of Macedonia and Kosovo know it as the Church where Agnes Corixha Bojaxhiu received her call to religious life.  The world now knows Agnes by another name, "Mother Theresa of Calcutta."
    The church was spared the destruction visited upon so many of the mosques and Orthodox basilicas of Kosovo.  This was mainly because the Catholic priests and sisters did not take sides in the recent conflict.  They helped and sheltered all in need regardless of their religious or cultural background.
     As a young girl, Agnes went there annually on retreat.  It was a long hard climb up from the valley of Skopje in Macedonia.  On retreat, on the feast of the Assumption of Mary August 15, 1928, Agnes felt the Lord calling her to religious life.  The statue of the Black Madona (insert), much older than the church, is the same one that she prayed before that day.  I was able to take many bus loads of US soldiers to the Church, where we prayed and pestered the pastor to open the small gift shop.  Many bought rosaries which were blessed in the Church.
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