vaskrs 2017

Описание: MONASTERY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF MOTHER OF GOD
Ovchar – Kablar Gorge

Cut by the Zapadna Morava River, as it passes through the steep mountainous heights of Ovchar and Kablar, this Gorge was inhabited since prehistoric times, during ancient history all the way through the medieval age – the time when Orthodox Christian monks started to raise their dwellings while fleeing from Mount Athos and Sinai before the conquest of Turkish forces.
Naturally isolated and hardly passable, the Gorge was the ideal place for the life of devoted monks - in particular, ascetics and desert-dwellers. The Sinaites, (monks from the Holy Mount Sinai in Egypt), following their unique hesychastic tradition, settled in many hardly accessible caves within the Kablar cliffs and founded a house of prayer in the largest one, where the spring was located (called the St. Sava’s spring), dedicated to the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ. At that time and in the years to come, other coenobitic monasteries were established in the impassable areas of the Gorge’s thick forests.
Remembered as the Serbian Holy Mountain, this unique group of monastic dwellings was secured by high watch towers on the prominent tops dominating the Gorge’s entrances. The western tower used to be above Blagoveštenje on a conically shaped hill and the eastern one on the hill above Jovanje, guarding the eastern approach to the Gorge. The towers were used for constant watch of the surrounding area and its access; moreover, they provided shelter for the monks and the monastic valuables during the times of danger and enemy siege.
According to tradition, on the elongated Kablar ridge, slopping into Morava’s riverbed, there used to be a fortified tower with a bell tower above Jovanje monastery announcing prayer hours to the other monasteries in the Gorge. Monastic manuscripts of the divine service books witness that there existed a scriptorium with a dungeon below. Since this fortified tower was referred to as the “Ladder”, the dungeon might have been a place of voluntary ascetic labors through which monks were trying to attain the spiritual heights as described in the writing of St. John the Ladder, the ascetic from Mount Sinai - “The Ladder”. Within the tower, there was a church dedicated to the Assumption of Mother of God. Likewise, the fort above Blagoveštenje Monastery had a temple dedicated to Old Testament Prophet Elijah (Ilinje). After the destruction of the forts which were protecting the approaches to the monasteries within the Gorge of Zapadna Morava, monks and laity preserved the tradition and the dedications of their sanctuaries. Both places of veneration - holy churches of St. Elijah’s and The Assumption of Mother of God – were restored by the Bishop of Žiča (Zhicha), Nikolai Velimirović, just prior to the Second World War. He also rebuilt several other dilapidated monasteries in the Gorge. This fort was destroyed, but the memory of this holy place was preserved by the monks and local people.