The Gracanica Monastery is 9 km from Pristina in the ancient Serbian enclave of the same name in the land of Kosovo. Until the 18th century the residence of the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church was here.
In a small dark church on an ancient fresco, Christ is depicted giving the royal crown to King Milutin and his spouse Simonida, who founded the monastery at the beginning of the 14th century. On the right, the holy retainer Mercurije raises a sword. The Gracanica Monastery was founded over 70 years before the Battle of Kosovo, when there was not even the mention of Turks or Albanians being there.
During our stay at Gracanica, word came that the dog, which had bitten one of the pilgrims was indeed rabid. It was vital that our pilgrim immediately be taken to the nearest hospital for further treatment. One hour after she left, we learned that the car, in which she and Veljko Sikirica, a Serbian member of our Washington parish, had been driven to the hospital, broke down along the way. A priest from Gracanica went to their rescue. It was a cause for concern, as the car had broken down in enemy territory. Glory to God, everything turned out all right; the pilgrims made it back, and we continued on to Pec.
Pec is an ancient Serbian city that had been the original center of the Serbian Patriarchate, dating back to the 14th century. Currently, there is a women’s monastery there. The Monastery is centered on a complex under whose roof are three ancient churches: In the center is the Church of the Holy Apostles, on the North side, the Church of Great Martyr Demetrius, and on the South, the Church of the Mother of God Hodigitria [Indicator of the Path], with a chapel to St. Nicholas.
In Pec, we also received a warm welcome, and I was invited to serve the Divine Liturgy. However, I was so exhausted that I served only Matins, and attended, but did not serve, the Liturgy.
From Kosovo, we went over the mountains to Montenegro. Along the way to the town of Budva, where we were to spend the night, we visited the Cetinije Monastery.
By the grace of God, there we were able to venerate priceless treasures – a piece of Wood of the Life-giving Cross of our Lord, and the right hand of St. John the Baptist.
On October 12/25, we commemorate the translation from Malta to Gatchina of part of the Life-giving Cross of Our Lord, the Philerma Icon of the Mother of God, and the right hand of St. John the Baptist. This is celebrated year in and year out, although the Holy Relics have not been in Gatchina since 1917.
The precious body of the Baptizer of our Lord was buried near the tomb
of the Prophet Elisha in the Samarian city of Sebastia. When the Holy
Apostle Luke happened to be in that city while on his way back to Antioch, he
expressed the desire to take the body of St. John the Baptist back with him.
However, the residents of Sebastia allowed him to take only the right hand, with
which our Lord Jesus Christ had been baptized.
During the reign of Julian the Apostate, a cruel campaign of persecution was unleashed upon the Christians. Relics of the saints were wrenched from their tombs and burnt, and churches were reduced to ashes. Hidden in one of the city towers by the residents of Antioch, the right hand survived.
After the death of the lawless king, the Christians brought the right hand of the Forerunner out of the tower. Subsequently, great miracles were wrought before the Relic. On the eve of the Baptism of the Lord, the bishop would raise the right hand. In some years, it would stretch out straight, while in others [the fingers] would contract, predicting good harvest or famine, respectively. When Antioch was taken by the Hagarenes, they also seized the priceless holy relic, literally taking it in captivity.
In the 10th century, during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos, a certain Antiochian deacon, named Job managed to remove the hand of the Baptist to Christian territory, to the city of Chalcedon. From there, it was brought in pomp to the Imperial City. There the Holy Relic visited various churches, including the Church of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. The Imperial City was taken by the Turks in 1453.
Wanting to bring the knights of the island of Rhodes to their side, Turkish Sultan Bayasid II sent to the master of their order the precious right hand as a sign of his good will. However, peace did not last long, and already in 1522 the Turks had conquered Rhodes. The knights fled to Malta, taking with them, in addition to the hand, a piece of the Life-giving Cross of our Lord, and the Philerma Icon of the Mother of God.
These three Holy Relics were kept in the crypt of the cathedral church over the course of 2½ centuries, until 1798, when Napoleon seized Malta. In an effort to save itself from destruction, the Order chose Paul I, Emperor of Russia, for its patron. The Great Relics came to Russia. Emperor Alexander II took them to the Winter Palace in Gatchina.
After the Revolution, Empress Maria Fyodorovna, the mother of Emperor Nicholas II, who was of Danish ancestry, took the Relics to her native land. After her death, her daughters Grand Duchesses Xenia and Olga, gave the Relics to Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky] of Kiev and Galitch, who was then in Yugoslavia. He, in turn, entrusted them to King Alexander of Serbia, in thanks for the refuge and hospitality shown by Serbia to many Russian émigrés.
Their subsequent fate is as follows: before leaving for Great Britain in April 1941, King Peter II Karadjordjevic met with His Holiness Patriarch Gavrilo in the Gorny Ostrog Monastery, and gave him the Relics for safekeeping. Before he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp, His Holiness the Patriarch managed to hide them, entrusting the Relics to the care of Archimandrite Leontij Mitrovic.
In 1952, functionaries of the [ministry of] internal affairs were engaged in a campaign to confiscate church valuables, and took the Holy Relics. It was then that they were taken from the monastery and carried away to Titograd, which is now Pogdornica. In 1978, the right hand of St. John the Baptist and the piece of the Holy Cross of the Lord were given to the Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos in Cetinije, while the Philerma Icon of the Mother of God was given to the Cetinije Museum, where it remains to this day.
The hand of St. John the Baptist is missing two fingers: the little finger and the ring finger. They are in two different locations: one, in a museum in Istanbul, where it is housed in a reliquary shaped like a hand; the other is in Siena, Italy.
After the pilgrims had venerated these great Relics, the hospitable monk Fr. Danilo showed us the rich monastic museum, which includes among its treasures precious gifts from Russian tsars and other faithful.
As we were pressed for time, we decided to return to Cetinije Monastery two days later, so that we might be able to pray unhurriedly before the Relics, and commemorate all those on the numerous commemoration lists we had brought from America.