Fr. David contact info - Confessions heard by appointment.
Text or call cell: 262-352-3346 E-mail: frdavidmoga@gmail
Bio: PART 2
During the service I thought how many times can these people say “Lord have mercy? ”. Afterwards, two founding members invited me down for a dinner and the talk on the Icons. Being Great Lent they served a lentil soup. Again, not knowing anything about Orthodoxy, my reactions were that these people were culinary inhibited. The first talk on the Icons was given on the Tranfiguration Icon. Never in my years of being a Catholic had I ever heard the depth of theology that is contained within that Icon. I was hooked, being amazed at the depth of theology found in Icons, expressing a view of Christianity that I had never known. In my heart I knew that I had “found the pearl of great price”, I knew that I had to become Orthodox. Linda was more hesitant. After all, she followed me from Lutheranism, into Catholicism and now Orthodoxy? But her heart also was searching for a Church where the Holy Spirit found real, true expression, and presence. After some months we gradually gave up our commitments to the Catholic Church as Eucharistic Ministers and Bible Study and began attending Divine Liturgy exclusively. Eventually I told Linda that I wished to become Orthodox, she agreed. I think at one time early on, she said “what are you getting us into now?”
Having fallen in love with the Orthodox Church, I wanted to be there all the time.The flexibility of my job afforded me the opportunity to attend many services, reading on Sundays and weekdays and eventually serving as a Acolyte at the Altar. The first time I served at the altar was an amazing experience being so close to the Heavenly Throne.
There was a program offered by the Antiochian Archdiocese called the St. Stephens Study Program. I wished to take it only to learn more about Orthodoxy. It was a course where we were given a list of books to read then we had exams to take each semester. Technically we were reading more than the seminarians had to read. We had to go to the Antiochian Village outside of Pittsburgh, once a year for a week, at the end of summer for in person classes.
My second year was tough in many ways. The studies were very demanding. Perhaps it was fear, but I really did not wish to attend the summer session. When arriving at the Village , I was very uncomfortable being among people were far more spiritually advanced than myself. I did not want to be there. In retrospect it was most likely spiritual harassment. I was assigned a single room, which was very unusual. That night I was weeping in my bed wondering why I was even there, I planned on leaving the next morning. By His Grace there was an Icon of the Theotokos in that room, as I wept, the Theotokos spoke to my heart “Dave do you think that I knew what I was getting into when I said ‘yes?’ An image overcame me of a leaf on a smooth river with the the leaf was being carried along the by river , peaceful yet moving steadily underneath, along to somewhere unknown. After that I knew that I was supposed to be there, despite my desire to leave.
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PART 1
To the readers: This is not meant to be an ego trip for me, but a rather poor example of how if we live with God things can happen. From my very earliest memories I was always drawn by the Mystery of God, despite my “youth of many passions”. Forgive me if at anytime of this reading you are offended, for being the first among sinners, I remain a weak sinful man.
Born and raised in an active Roman Catholic family in St. Francis Wisconsin. Serving as an altar boy we had to learn the Latin for Mass which later helped me in learning Spanish. Our neighbors had a private exchange student and we became close friends. He invited me to his country and after grade school graduation (I was 13) traveled to Venezuela by myself, to spend the summer there, returning again 3 years later again for the summer. Linda and I had our first formal date on October 19, 1969 and have been together ever since. None of my story could be written without her, as she has been my best friend, a loving critic in all our life together. We both attended UW-Whitewater she in Phy Ed as a teacher, me as a double major in Spanish and Latin American Studies. In sophomore year I was an exchange student at Grambling College in Louisiana. Everyone was talking about the Civil Rights Movement so it was an opportunity to live it. When in a very rural setting of Louisiana being one out of 18 whites in a college of four thousand primarily black students, you learn to see things differently. Linda giving up her Lutheran Heritage became Catholic. We were married in the Catholic Church, March 1st, 1975. Our daughter was born a month early later that year in October. No, she was conceived after our marriage and because the insurance did not kick in until the day after she was born it took us four years “to pay her off”. Our son was born two years later, and Linda almost died during an emergency C-section. We were active members of the same Catholic Church where I had grown up. Linda and I were among the first to be trained as Eucharistic Ministers in the Milwaukee area. Eventually we moved to Grafton, then to the Town of Cedarburg where we reside today. We attended the Catholic Church in Mequon and I taught Bible Studies for almost 18 years there. The Orthodox Study Bible came out and I began to use it in my classes as the footnotes were excellent. It was also during this time that Icons became a topic in the media and St. Nicholas Church in Cedarburg was offering a class on the meaning of Icons. Wishing to learn more I attended. It was the first Pre-sanctified Liturgy of Great Lent. Entering the Church I saw the Icons of Jesus, Mary, John the Baptist and St. Nicholas and others, my reaction was “my friends are still here!” In the Catholic Churches we no longer had the saints around the Church as we once did, so this was both shocking and welcoming to me. PART 2 next week
