THE FIRST ANNUAL INTERSTATE MOYA SEMINAR

By Maja Zmejkoska from Sydney

October, 2007

In honour of the 40 years of the renewal of MPC , MOCDANZ with the blessing of His Eminence Bishop Petar and in implementation of o.Gavril – abbot of the monastery of Saint Prohor Pcinski and MOYA, with the support of o.Tone, priest of St Petka Church Mill Park, which also this year celebrated their 10 year anniversary from when the church was bought and who financially supported the seminar for the Macedonian Youth. It was the first year the seminar was held, and we hope it will become a traditional event that will take place every year.

On Saturday 22nd September, a group of Sydney youth parishioners visited the Macedonian-Orthodox Monastery, St. Prohor Pcinski in Donnybrook, arguably home of the freshest-smelling air in Australia. The plane trip to Melbourne was made for the First Annual Interstate Macedonian Orthodox Youth of Australia (MOYA) Seminar.

The drive into the beautiful Monastery grounds led to a modest-looking church, where the 9am liturgy had just started. The church’s bare exterior was not telling of the heavenly, elegant beauty inside. The light fragrant smell of temjan lingered in the warm air upon entry in the church. A four-voice choir led the parishioners in traditional Byzantine hymns with graceful singing and weaving melodies. That morning was particularly special to attend, as several priests and monks assisted the Bishop Petar in a Liturgy, a sight not too often witnessed. Looking around the congregation, one could notice the particularly inspiring respect and commitment of the parishioners for their religion. The women wore long skirts and a scarf over their hair and stood on the left side of the church, while the men dressed in long pants and closed shoes, standing on the right-hand side. The Liturgy ended all too quickly as it evoked a relaxing, dream-like state for its attendees.

At the end of the liturgy, the tall, smiling Otec Gavril warmly greeted his visitors, and his invitation to wander the grounds before lunch was gratefully accepted. Tame peacocks, ducks and geese waddling freely in and out of vegetation and people, undisturbed and emitting an unusual tameness.

A cottage-like communal cabin provided comfortable couches and dining tables for the lunch feast, prepared by the cook volunteers at the Monastery. While beautiful icons and unique paintings rested against the striking oak wood walls. Only a small cottage evoking a cosy country house feel, the communal cabin reminds one of their grandmother’s house in Macedonia, almost as though the air was aromatic with the smell of kosteni roasting in the air.

Bishop Peter opened and blessed the First MOYA Seminar He tied the teachings of Fr.Gavril and Sr. Virginia and in his exposé told: The Kingdom of God we can not seek anywhere and anytime but in the Liturgical time here and now . Because st.ap. Poul said that God’s Kingdome is in our heart. For us to reach to this we need to beat the struggle to clean our hearts from the passions with confession , communion, prayer , repentance and every humble gift to our Lord.

Fr.Gavril was giving for about The spiritual live in Christ. He told that: God created the man for to be a perfect … The heart is the center of the psycho-physical being of man. The essence of the mind is in the heart. When God created man, his mind dwelt in the heart, performing there the unceasing mind-and-heart prayer - that is, man unceasingly communicated with God.

But when Adam fall The heart became impassioned and captured by the passions, and the mind’s energy became darkened. It is therefore that Adam fell from sin to sin.

From then on man has been in perpetual struggle for restoration of his original nature and of the continual union with God.

There are three stages in spiritual life:

Purification of the heart from passions

Illumination of the mind

Deification of man’s entire person

As we have already said, after man’s falling away from God, he became ruled by the passions. Man’s principle passion is SELFLOVE.

Selflove is divided into three main sub-passions:

Love of glory - Vainglory

Love of pleasure – Self-indulgence

Love of money – Avarice

In this, not small, struggle it is an imperative for us to have our own spiritual father who has previously passed these stages in the spiritual life.

In this struggle there are three basic rules of spiritual life:

Non-identification with one’s thoughts, desires and feelings

Proper confession

Intensive physical struggle until the moment of the opening of the heart

These three basic rules have their own opposites, and these are:

Disobedience

Judging and condemnation

Inconsistent struggle in moments when grace withdraws

And after we have purified our heart from the passions, the physical struggle is not that important, because then the mind, in a way natural to it, descends into the heart and here performs the unceasing mind-and-heart Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

And Sr.Virginia said:

“Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” When we hear the Priest give this exclamation at the beginning of the Liturgy - we all know that ‘the time for God to act’ is set in motion.

We need forgiveness of sins so that we may be fully able to receive God’s Grace. We long for the fullness of the Kingdom of heaven: we who receive God’s Gift in Holy Communion, receive Christ who is King of the Kingdom ever more fully into our Hearts.

The gift of God’s life in Holy Communion feeds and nourishes, preserves and enables His life in us.

We offer praise also to the Holy Theotokos, Mother of Christ God, who has by her obedience made this whole salvific process possible for us.

St Symeon is absolutely clear that the reign of God begins right here and now. We are to pay close attention to which kingdom it is which we ought to seek. This is definitely not just for the distant hereafter, rather it is for each one of us who would accept and follow Christ, so that He may be indeed our King, the One who reigns in our hearts. We are to seek first the Kingdom and glory of God. (Third Ethical Discourse 137 - 8).

Conditions for Kingdom living: ‘Watchfulness of soul, forgiveness of sins, communion with your Holy Spirit, for the fullness of the kingdom of heaven, for boldness before you not for judgment or condemnation.

Watchfulness is a continual fixing and halting of thought at the entrance to the heart.

The Fathers are teaching us how to guard our hearts so that we grow right here and now to recognise the Presence of God’s Grace, of His heavenly Kingdom, within. Our tool and weapon in the growth process is the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy! Jesus Christ is present in His Name, and we begin to recognise that presence.

The key to the kingdom of heaven is prayer. He who uses this key as he should sees what blessings the kingdom holds in store for those who love it. He who has no communion with the kingdom gives his attention merely to worldly matters.

Another grand meal followed the vespers service, and allowed further opportunity to meet more parishioners. Following dinner, the guests that had settled in the living room couches for the evening meal were soon joined by the rest of the congregation. This allowed for the session of the First Annual Interstate MOYA Sinaxis to be called to order, headed by Otec Gavril. A relatively less formal question-answer period ensued, and an opportunity for guest and local parishioners alike to observe the origins of the MOYA mailing lists. Every few weeks, those that had signed up to the MOYA mailing list would receive an email with a bible studies handout attached from this Melbourne group. To Macedonian-Australian’s that may not have very strong ties with the Macedonian language, reading about the Orthodox faith in English is an appealing feature. However the bonus feature of the MOYA handouts is that the topics are inspiring and specific to Macedonian Orthodoxy and for Macedonian-Australian’s this is not so common to come across.

The discussion then opened up into an interesting thread of conversation.

Our faith should not be viewed as a series of restrictions to complicate your life, Otec Gavril said, rather it is one’s path to freedom, a way of releasing oneself from the uncertainties life presents. The more one thinks about this, the more it makes sense. Pride is self-sufficiency of narcissistic proportions, where one consciously or subconsciously ignores God’s help. Every person struggles with this when coming to terms with God and faith. But when one surrenders to God, the guidelines are already defined. A person is already steered in the right direction, because their search for answers is contained. The struggle for freedom from our captivity of our passions is the struggle we go through in order to climb to perfection and unity with God. This freedom relaxes the mind, heart and soul. In this way too, Otec Gavril began his path to monasticism with this path to freedom. Otec Gavril as he led a very different life before monkhood but can relate to normal youth with unique insight.

We then went on to watch a film. The film which we watched was called Time Changer. The lesson from this film was that Lord Jesus Christ is our criteria for every good deed, in our lives without Him we can not do anything. Life which is based only on moral does not lead us to good and to perfection because the moral norms can change into bad. Our Lord Jesus Christ Who is the way, the truth and life is the same unto all ages.

With this new enlightenment in mind, the end of the night drew closer and the group of youth parishioners settled in front of a toasty warm fireplace in the communal cabin. The chatter was lively, and atmosphere was sociable as the group happily lined up their sleeping bags like sardines, swimming in thick blankets and rugs on the cabin floor. On Saturday evening, Otec Gavril popped his smile through the living room door offering an invitation to those wide awake for some polnokno jadenje. The kitchen provided an amusing scene as a few people had quickly volunteered their stomachs for the dinner leftovers being brought to the counter by a couple of motherly female parishioners also staying the night.

The cabin room stayed blissfully warm throughout the night in much admiration for the fireplace. A few in the group could not divest the excitement of the day from mind or body, so stayed up late enough to greet Sunday morning.

For those whom the number of hours spent talking greatly outnumbered the hours spent slumbering, there was a greater sense of regret than expected as Sunday dawned. Nonetheless, a certain refreshment and positivism was sensed by all those attending the morning liturgy, and the vivid mood remained throughout breakfast.

Sunday was quickly beginning its end and the farewells soon had to delivered in a flurry of hugs, camera flashes and awesome MOYA t-shirts. There was a few exchanges of emails and invitations to visit the respective homes of the parishioners, as both parties felt as though they were parting from long-lost relatives. A feeling of fulfilment in developing such connections subsisted as the guest parishioners drove out of the Monastery grounds for the final time that weekend, hoping to take that peaceful frame of mind back to Sydney.

The tour of Melbourne was not yet complete for the Sydney visitors. Otec Gavril accompanied by a couple of St. Prohor Pcinski parishioners started the Melbourne Orthodox church tour for their visitors at St. Petka, a stunning church in the suburb of Sydenham. The local priest there provided a brief history of the church. The interior was a memorable design, being a most amazing embellishment all from the generosity of parishioner donations. Later, St. Petka’s garden supplied the backdrop for tea and cake as part of another warm reception.

With Sunday afternoon nearly over, enough time only remained to see the new Soborna Crkva, currently under construction. Walking under its walls, one feels inundated by its size and grandeur, and the scale of the plans. It will be surely be a sight to behold. The tour concluded with an evening liturgy in the existing church beside the Soborna Crkva, during which the Sydney guests acted as a stand-in choir. The evening liturgy was an opportunity to centre oneself to the peace the weekend had created. To reinforce that God helps one to maintain happiness through prayer and love.

Cynics would claim any other number of factors as the source of peace that weekend. The quiet countryside, or perhaps being removed from the hectic routine of city life. In point of fact, it would be an insult to claim such a thing. While these arguments certainly made contributions, they merely supported the peace one felt from the liturgies, the church atmosphere, close friendships and growing faith. The organic forging of friendships between fellow parishioners is too frequent an occurrence to be brushed off as coincidence. Fellow parishioners have such a connection due to their mutual acceptance of God’s will, with the priorities He intended. Admittedly, the struggle to maintain such faith and trust is a daily test. Essentially however, learning to follow God on whatever path He sees fit for any personality should be perceived as a form of empowerment. It saves much wasted time as it allows the freedom for one’s search to begin in the right place. How many times does one hear wiser and more experienced folk extol religion as our link to the Lord, and that this is the source of inner and communal peace, sanity, hope and love for each person.

Conducting a quick google search can demonstrate the signifance this Monastery represents for the Macedonian community both domestically and globally. It is fair to state that Macedonians are unified in agreement that the world knows little of our beautiful homeland and all it has to offer. Faith is part of our cultural identity. Love of God and country runs deep through the veins of every Macedonian. Each one of us takes great pleasure in sharing Macedonian culture, and the Monastery is a way of reaching the world with this information through peaceful means. St. Prohor Pcinski’s advertisement on Australian and Macedonian government websites means greater awareness opportunities for the Macedonian culture in the wider community.

By supporting and learning about the Macedonian-Orthodox religion through places like St. Prohor Pcinski, one should take solace in this as a powerful contribution to raising Macedonian cultural awareness, and ultimately the sanctity of our religious and national identity. Though without doubt, much hope should be shared for the next Annual Interstate MOYA Seminar in anticipation that the number of attendees will only multiply. Tremendous gratitude is offered to both Bishop Petar for his blessing of this event and to Otec Gavril and his parishioners for their profound kindness. Upon embracing their guest parishioners as though they were one of their own, they demonstrated truth in the saying that we are all God’s children: brothers and sisters in His eye.

God Bless.

St. Prohor Pcinski Monastery is located at 130 Springs Road, Donnybrook in the state of Victoria.

All are welcome to subscribe for the MOYA Mailing List by emailing moya.mpc@gmail.com