Montenegro defends itself against extremism and unanimity. With its layers, it is too big a bite for anyone who wants to push it into one of the ideologies of this world. It sounds true when we say that it is a country like any other, but we will not be wrong if we point out all its peculiarities. Personally, I like to play with its name and notice how Montenegro is a kind of Holy Mountain. From the abundance of her sufferings, torments and trials, a series of monuments (material, written, traditional) and achievements of the human spirit have grown, according to which she is closer to heaven than her magnificent mountain peaks.
Montenegro eludes simplifications and is difficult to fit into the frames that people prepare in advance in their heads. If you assert that it is a country that is exclusively mountainous, you will be denied by the sea coast. And if you say that this same coast is the most beautiful thing that this country has, the Black Lake denies you... Cyrillic is complemented by Latin, Latin does not go without Cyrillic. And so on. Montenegro.
Morača monastery stands in the middle of Montenegro. Endowment of grandson Stefan Nemanja. An artistic complex of various styles and traditions. The testimony of Christ's gospel that spread from Palestine, through ancient Greece, through all traditions and environments and reached us in the most beautiful possible form. Its central position is not only geographical, but also temporal. Just as its spatial position is in the very center of the state map, so also in the time of Morač's creation, it stands mathematically exactly between the first monuments of Christianity in these areas (Duklja, Zlatica...) from the fifth century and us now in the 21st century.
The White Nemanjic Lavra and its rich history deny the wrong and quarrelsome "science" that the Saint Sava tradition in Montenegro is something foreign and imposed from the outside. Because Morački monastery is not a remnant of something behind us, but always, even now, the center of gathering, fraternal agreement and emancipation of people in Montenegro. Morača is not just a museum, but a centuries-old school, a parliament and a living community.
This is how the enlightened Montenegrin Prince Nikola sings about it, in his "Morački kola":
"Above Morača, where he jumps/ the white jump of Svetigora./ the pious Nemanjić/ hands raised courts to God.
It is the frog of the Moravians;/ there they bathe, they pray to God;/ there the council deliberates/ to resist the enemies..."
Among the distinguished people from this region who were not only born in the area of Morača, but who were brought up on the values and traditions of the ancient sanctuary, I would like to point out two people from Morača who marked Orthodox spirituality in Montenegro during the 20th century. The first is the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić, previously the Metropolitan of Peć and then of Cetinje, and the second is the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, Amfilohije Radović. Both are among the most educated theologians of their time, and both significantly marked church and national history. Metropolitan Amfilohije made his hometown famous with his appearance and work, but perhaps many people miss the fact that he named the metropolitan publishing and information institution after the miraculous waterfall that erupts under the monastery church. Since Amfilohi's time, that waterfall no longer only jumps into the element of the Morača River, but its blessed water floods homes, people, travelers, all over the world, through the waves of Radio Svetigora, the pages of the magazine of the same name, the titles and contents of numerous editions. It is safe to say that Amfilohije redirected the flow of Svetigora from nature to people. He turned the river towards the people, and moved the people into the river, in a blessed procession.
Morača is, among other things, a gallery of the most beautiful frescoes we have. It is difficult to decide whether the painted biography of Saint Nicholas in the small Morača church is more beautiful, or the famous masterpiece in which the raven brings food to the Holy Prophet Elijah. Rarely anywhere else, these frescoes show the original purpose of church fine art - to be a visual lesson in theology, even for those who cannot or cannot read.
This year's jubilee, the 770th anniversary of the Morača monastery, is being celebrated together with the many-decade-long abbot, Archimandrite Rafil Kalik, who has served God among us since the time of the blessed Metropolitan Danilo Dajković, and who, in good old health, welcomes this anniversary as well. I take the opportunity to thank him, on behalf of the priests, believers and numerous other visitors of this monastery, for the skill and sacrifice he made before the Morac altar, but he also distributed them through the Morac flower gardens and beautifully shaped streams.
Today, we often know to count 70 years of something with delight, and with what ceremony to mark such a series. Well, for 770 years, Morača deserved at least this reminder, in a daily newspaper that itself began to seriously twist the calendar garlands.
Bonus video:
