Dečani Monastery

Visoki Dečani Monastery, Serbian Orthodox Church, official account in English, covering Church life, human and religious rights. Serbian Account @DecaniManastir

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

On Sunday, 18 October, over 400 faithful from Kosovo and Metohija, central Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and beyond gathered for today’s Divine Liturgy at Visoki Dečani Monastery.

Abbot Fr Sava presided, with the monastery’s hieromonks concelebrating.

#DecaniMonastery #SerbianOrthodoxChurch #Kosovo

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Among the many pilgrims and visitors from around the world at Visoki Dečani today, we were delighted to welcome Orthodox Christians from Elbasan (Albania) with their priests, led by our long-standing friend Fr Spiro Peci.

#VisokiDecaniMonastery #OrthodoxChristianity #Kosovo

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

The Patriarchate of Peć celebrated its patronal feast, the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos, with the Divine Liturgy presided over by Bishop Nikon of Jenopolje.
“There is no wiser, no more beautiful place to be than at the Divine Liturgy, for it is here alone that we are truly together. [...] Here we are all one in Christ!”

#PećPatriarchate #SerbianOrthodoxChurch #Kosovo

[Црквени Гласник @CrkveniGlasnik]

Пећка патријаршија прославила храмовну славу Покров Пресвете Богородице, Светом службом Божјом началствовао Владика јенопољски Никон:

„Нема паметнијег, нема лепшег места од Литургије, јер смо овде једино у правом смислу заједно. [...] Овде смо сви једно у Христу!“

🎥 gorazdevac

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Admiral George M. Wikoff and New KFOR Commander Major General Roberto Vergori Visit Gračanica Monastery
https://t.co/HmPIenxX34

#Gračanica #Kosovo #KFOR
@NATO_KFOR @JFC_Naples

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

The Divine Liturgy at Visoki Dečani Monastery was celebrated today by Archpriest-Stavrophor Radivoje Krulj of the SOC Diocese of Düsseldorf and Germany, with five priests concelebrating and the monastery’s monks chanting.

[Црквени Гласник @CrkveniGlasnik]

“Everyone is an icon, so we must love the icon in every person. Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

Bishop Irinej, Eastern American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

The Head of UNMIK, Peter Due, met with Metropolitan Teodosije of Raška and Prizren to discuss the protection of religious and cultural heritage of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, as well as relations between communities.
During the meeting, Due reaffirmed UNMIK’s continued commitment to promoting dialogue, mutual respect and confidence-building among all communities, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo announced on the social media platform X.

[UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo) @UNMIKosovo]

SRSG Peter Due met Metropolitan Teodosije of Raška-Prizren to discuss the protection of religious & cultural heritage as well as inter-community relations. SRSG reaffirmed UNMIK’s continued commitment to promoting dialogue, mutual respect and trust-building among all communities.

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

On 9 October (26 Sept Julian Calendar), the Orthodox Church celebrates the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, the beloved disciple of Christ, witness of His glory, His Cross and Resurrection, and the great apostle of divine love.

St John teaches us that the deepest truth about God is revealed in love: “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 Jn 4:16).

His Gospel leads us into the mystery of the eternal Logos made flesh, while his life reminds us that true theology is born not simply from knowledge, but from closeness to Christ, prayer, faithfulness and love.

May the prayers of St John the Theologian strengthen us to remain in Christ and to bear witness to His love in the world.

Fresco of St John the Theologian, Visoki Dečani Monastery, 14th century.

#StJohnTheTheologian #OrthodoxChristianity #VisokiDecani #SerbianOrthodoxChurch #OrthodoxFaith

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Faith, tradition, and community in action. 🍇
Today, Dečani’s vineyards in Velika Hoča were harvested thanks to the selflessness of many hardworking hands who answered our brotherhood’s invitation for a communal harvest (moba), assisting Father Kirilo at the monastery winery.
Monks and faithful, young and old from across Kosovo and Metohija, stood united as one body. Just as in the Divine Liturgy, their joyful labor was offered in praise of God and in honor of our Holy King.

#DecaniMonastery #SerbianOrthodoxChurch #Kosovo

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

TWO TREES AND TWO WAYS OF LIFE
Part 4 of 4

Today, therefore, we venerate the Cross not as an instrument of suffering, but as the Life-giving Tree and the sign of Christ’s victory. We bow down before the crucified Lord, whose love reveals that true life lies not in possession but in communion, not in self-enclosure but in self-offering, not in the fear of losing something but in the trust that what is offered to God in love cannot perish.

May the Lord grant us to cease reaching out for a life we seek to possess, and to open our hearts to the Life that is freely given to us. May He free us from the fear that we shall lose ourselves if we surrender to Him and open our lives to our neighbour. And may the Cross of Christ remain not merely a holy sign that we wear and before which we bow, but become the measure of our lives: a path from grasping to thanksgiving, from self-love to love, from self-enclosure to communion, from death to life.

For the Tree of Life that man lost in Paradise is revealed to us anew in the mystery of the Cross, and its life-giving Fruit is Christ Himself, who gives Himself for the life of the world.

Therefore, today, with the whole Church, we confess and sing:

“Before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify.”

Visoki Dečani, Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 2026.

#OrthodoxChristianity #ExaltationOfTheCross #Resurrection #VisokiDecani

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

TWO TREES AND TWO WAYS OF LIFE
Part 1 of 4

On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross

Visoki Dečani Monastery, 14/27 September 2026

Today the Church lifts up before us the Precious and Life-giving Cross of our Lord, the Tree upon which Christ was crucified and which, once an instrument of shameful death, became the sign of victory and the source of life. To understand more deeply why the Church calls the Cross the Life-giving Tree, however, we must return to the very beginning of the biblical story, to Paradise, where Holy Scripture speaks of two mysterious trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

These two trees are not merely a detail in the Old Testament account of the first man. In them we may also discern two possibilities open to human freedom, two ways of relating to God, to creation and to ourselves. The entire drama of human history, from Paradise through Golgotha to the Heavenly Jerusalem, may also be seen as humanity’s passage between these two ways of being.

In Paradise, God had given man everything. Man had created neither himself nor the world nor the life he had received. Everything had been given to him as a gift and a blessing, and he was called to live in communion with God, to receive creation with thanksgiving and, through it, to ascend to the Creator. The Tree of Life in the midst of Paradise was a sign that man does not possess life within himself as a self-sufficient or self-existent being. Rather, he receives life and lives in communion with God, the only source of life.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, on the other hand, was bound up with the mystery of human freedom and obedience. The tree itself was not evil, just as knowledge is not evil. The Holy Fathers emphasise that the problem lay not in the nature of the tree, but in the transgression of God’s commandment and in man’s attempt to seize, apart from God, what was meant to be given to him in communion with God.

This is precisely where the tragedy of the Fall begins. The serpent urges man to take the fruit, promising: “Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5). The temptation, then, was not to desire something foreign to man’s true calling. Man was indeed created for deification, for communion with God and participation in His life. Yet the path the serpent offers is deification without God, fullness without communion, a life that is not received as a gift but seized as a possession.

In the hand reaching out to take the forbidden fruit, we can recognise the entire drama of fallen humanity. Ever since, man has continually sought to secure his life by grasping and possessing. He accumulates, safeguards, controls and conquers, binding his existence ever more closely to what he owns, to his standing, power and knowledge, and to the image he has fashioned of himself. Instead of receiving the world as a gift, he turns it into his private possession. Instead of seeing the other as a unique person and an icon of God, he begins to regard him as a means to an end, a rival or a threat. Instead of drawing his life from God, he tries to become his own source of life, to make himself a god.

The Tree of Life is thus associated with wisdom and the intellect that directs us towards the eternal, while the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil symbolises a life governed by the senses, in which reality is reduced to pleasure and pain. When we take the senses alone as our measure, good becomes whatever gives us pleasure, and evil whatever causes us pain. When, however, we live by spiritual discernment, we learn to distinguish the passing from the eternal and, through creation, to ascend to its Creator.👉

#OrthodoxChristianity #ExaltationOfTheCross #TreeOfLife
#DecaniMonastery #SerbianOrthodoxChurch #Kosovo

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

TWO TREES AND TWO WAYS OF LIFE
Part 3 of 4

Here, too, the profound Eucharistic dimension of the Cross is revealed. Just as the Tree of Life in Paradise was bound up with the life that man receives from God, so from the new Tree of Life Christ Himself is given to us. He who offers Himself upon the Cross for the life of the world is the same Lord who says to us in the Eucharist: “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). The fruit of the Tree of Life is Christ Himself. To receive Him is not to acquire some magical pledge of immortality, but to enter into communion with Him and participate in His life.

We cannot, therefore, truly approach the Eucharist while obstinately continuing to live according to the logic of the old Adam, in grasping, self-love, selfishness, hatred and fear. As we partake of Christ, we are called gradually to make His way of being our own, to receive life as a gift and transform it into thanksgiving, love and offering. This is the Eucharistic way of life.

Then we also begin to understand what it means to bear our own cross. The cross is not simply every misfortune that befalls us, nor is Christianity a religion that glorifies suffering. God does not desire pain for its own sake. Our cross begins when, in the concrete circumstances of our lives, we refuse to live according to the logic of the old Adam and choose Christ’s way of being. When we are wounded but do not allow our wounds to lead us into hatred; when we could take revenge but choose forgiveness; when we could take for ourselves but choose to give; when, instead of asking what belongs to us, we begin to ask what we can offer and share with our neighbour: then the Cross ceases to be merely a sign before which we bow and becomes our way of life.

This is the kenotic path of Christian existence, the way of self-emptying, not as the annihilation of the person, but as liberation from false self-sufficiency. For the false self lives by fear, possessiveness and the constant need to secure itself. The true person (hypostasis) lives in communion. A person does not lose himself in self-giving; rather, he finds his fullness precisely in giving himself. This is why the Lord says: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25). What the “old man” tries to preserve by closing in upon himself he ultimately loses, while what a person offers in Christ comes to share in a life that death can no longer destroy.

Holy Scripture ends, in a wondrous way, where it began. At the beginning, in the Book of Genesis, we see the Tree of Life in the midst of Paradise, to which man no longer has access after the Fall. At the end, in the Revelation of St John, the Tree of Life stands once more in the midst of the city of God, beside the river of the water of life. It bears fruit continually, and its leaves are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). Thus the entire biblical journey stretches from Paradise, through Golgotha, to the Heavenly Jerusalem. At the centre of that journey stands the Cross of Christ, the true Tree of Life.

This is why the Church lifts up the Precious Cross before our eyes today. Not merely so that we may recall the historical finding and exaltation of the Precious Wood of the Cross, but so that we may see afresh which way of life we are choosing. For even today, two possibilities lie before us. We may live by constantly grasping, securing ourselves and measuring everything by our own advantage. Or we may receive life as a gift, give thanks for it and transform it into love and offering. The first path appears to be the way of self-preservation, yet in the end it leaves us empty and afraid. The second appears to be loss and the Cross, yet it bears within itself the Resurrection as new life.👉

#OrthodoxChristianity #ExaltationOfTheCross #Resurrection #VisokiDecani

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

On the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Divine Liturgy at Visoki Dečani Monastery was celebrated by our Abbot, Archimandrite Sava. Concelebrating with him were Father Sava of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Milton, Canada, Father Philip from Belgium, Hieromonk Pavle of Danići Monastery in Herzegovina, Fathers Dragiša and Filip from Munich, and the hieromonks of our brotherhood.

Around 300 faithful from various regions took part in the service, joining the steady stream of pilgrims who, with tireless devotion and despite every obstacle, continue to come to venerate the relics of the Holy King Stefan.

#DecaniMonastery #SerbianOrthodoxChurch #Kosovo

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos Solemnly Celebrated in Gračanica

The feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, traditionally known as Mala Gospojina, and also observed as the Day of the Municipality of Gračanica, was solemnly celebrated with the Divine Liturgy at Gračanica Monastery, followed by a festal procession through the streets of the town and the blessing and cutting of the slava bread in front of the municipal building.

The Divine Liturgy was celebrated by Father Jovan Cvetković, with the concelebration of local clergy and the prayerful participation of the sisterhood of Gračanica Monastery.

In his homily, Father Jovan recalled the example of the Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna, emphasising the power of prayer, patience and repentance in the life of every Christian.

Following the Divine Liturgy, a large number of faithful took part in the solemn procession through Gračanica. The celebration concluded in front of the municipal building, where the festal bread was blessed and cut, bringing together the Church and the local community in prayer and thanksgiving.

#SerbianOrthodoxChurch #Kosovo

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Kosovo-Online: EULEX on reinstatement of suspended police officers: We are monitoring the case; contact Kosovo Police regarding this matter

https://t.co/5OaqIpfQWn

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Police officers in brutal mistreatment of a Kosovo Serb citizen case returned to duty with no information on investigation results

(From media sources)

On 21 September 2026, Kosovo Police confirmed that the two officers suspended over the alleged severe mistreatment of Nenad Rašković had returned to duty in the North Mitrovica region because their suspension had expired. Their reinstatement followed approximately one month of suspension. KoSSev, Kosovo-Online and other media report and police confirmation⁠

Neither the Police Inspectorate nor the Basic Prosecution in Mitrovica has publicly disclosed what the investigation established, whether criminal proceedings remain active, or what safeguards accompanied the officers’ return. EULEX stated only that it continues to monitor the case and referred questions about reinstatement to Kosovo Police. EULEX response⁠

This development reverses the principal precautionary accountability measure reported on 20 August. It does not legally exonerate the officers or establish that the investigation has ended, but their return before any publicly explained conclusion weakens confidence in the effectiveness and transparency of police accountability. It is directly relevant to assessments of greater Kosovo Police involvement around sensitive Serbian Orthodox sites, including Visoki Dečani. The reinstatement of Kosovo police officers suspected of brutal mistreatment of a Kosovo Serb citizen, additionally undermines in Serbian community confidence in professionalism and impartial role of Kosovo police.

The officers’ present assignments, whether they may operate in Dren or contact Rašković and witnesses, and whether no-contact, reassignment or evidence-protection measures exist have not been disclosed. No prosecutorial charge, dismissal of the case or final Inspectorate finding has been announced.

[Dečani Monastery @DecaniMonastery]

Kosovo Online: Serb List seeks explanation over officers’ return to duty: No question in Raskovic case must remain unanswered

https://t.co/xaxx1EiwoK

[Kosovo Online @KosovoOnline]

Petkovic: Police officers who beat Raskovic reinstated to continue torturing Serbs in northern Kosovo @PetkovicPetar https://t.co/7oL5auKE4D