Mother Cecilia and Mother Natalia will speak to the women on August 1 about prayer; their talks are titled, "Being With the God Who Loves You" and "Know Thyself."
Register by July 24.
Mother Cecilia and Mother Natalia will speak to the women on August 1 about prayer; their talks are titled, "Being With the God Who Loves You" and "Know Thyself."
Register by July 24.
Some features of this year's banquet:
--Vespers at St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral
--This year's video will capture some of our reflections on prayer
--MC: Fr. Michael O'Loughlin, co-host of the podcast "What God Is Not"
--Opening comedy act by our own Mother Iliana
--Entertainment: comedy by Shayne Smith
--Free of charge; registration will open in early August
Each person has particular weaknesses into which he or she habitually falls. One of mine is scrupulosity. I periodically get stuck in mental circles considering my actions and thoughts, worrying about whether God and others are pleased with me. If the thought “I’m doing it wrong” enters my mind, I’m ensnared! I immediately try to figure out how to do it “right.” And this mental wrestling turns my gaze away from the Lord. I become like Peter, called by Jesus to come to Him across the water, distracted from the face of his beloved Teacher because of the waves, sinking into them even though the face of Love is right there.
In my recent Confession, I said, “I need to ask for greater love, so that I will want to fulfill God’s will in love, rather than acting in fear—wondering if I’m ‘doing it right.’” This has been my request of the Lord for the Feast of Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit would increase the flame of my love, so that no matter what I am doing it may be for love, and that my concern would be about loving, not about pleasing. I am praying that love would be so stirred up in me that the questions, “Am I doing it right? Am I pleasing to God?” would be only faint, distant echoes because of the roar of the bonfire of love in my being.
And in praying for this, I’ve realized that sometimes the love that needs to be stirred up is a loving gentleness for my own self! I am loved by the Trinity, and in loving myself I am united to the love of God. “Man was created because the three divine Persons wished to communicate to him some measure of their own intimate life” (“The Year of Grace of the Lord” by a Monk of the Eastern Church, p. 216). I can actually cooperate in God’s love for me by loving myself with Him.
I was moved by this line from the ambon prayer for the Divine Liturgy of Pentecost: “Show us to be thrones of [the Holy Spirit’s] spiritual fire, like Your apostles who received His first-fruits, that, by His support, we may be led into the holy land of Your immortality and blessed promise.” My prayer for you is that no matter your particular weaknesses and sins, the fire of the Holy Spirit may be reinvigorated in you, so that in becoming “thrones of His spiritual fire,” love may be what overcomes them all. And I also pray for you for the grace to love yourself with Him.
A huge thank you to our largest-ever Spring Work Day crew of volunteers (down to the littlest helper)! We accomplished an amazing amount of work at the monastery and shrine, from gravel-moving to weeding and cleaning, and many projects in between. The evening concluded with Vespers and dinner at the shrine. Our Fall Work Day will take place on Saturday, September 27.
Here are more photos from the work day.
The letter was written for the purpose of enlightening all Catholics about the riches of the Eastern Churches, as well as for the purpose of unity within the whole Church. St. John Paul II explained,
Our Eastern Catholic brothers and sisters are very conscious of being the living bearers of this tradition, together with our Orthodox brothers and sisters. The members of the Catholic Church of the Latin tradition must also be fully acquainted with this treasure and thus feel, with the Pope, a passionate longing that the full manifestation of the Church's catholicity be restored to the Church and to the world, expressed not by a single tradition, and still less by one community in opposition to the other; and that we too may be granted a full taste of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church which is preserved and grows in the life of the Churches of the East as in those of the West.
The central chapters of the letter explain Eastern Christian spirituality in light of monastic life, giving a poetic synthesis of the essence of Eastern monasticism and inspiring our founding bishop, Bishop John Kudrick, in 2008, to invite interested men and women to consider participating in the foundation of monasteries in the Eparchy of Parma. He wrote,
Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter "Orientale Lumen" ("The Light of the East") devotes considerable attention to monasticism as a necessary "reference point for all the baptized" (9). He states that monasticism is the "very soul of the … church" (9) [All such numbers are references to "Orientale Lumen"].
We cannot deny the blessings of monastic experience, past and present, here and elsewhere in our church, but we must be open to re-visioning. This may take the form of extending a present experience or taking a totally new approach. I envision either a men’s or women’s monastery, or both, that will be based on the spirit of "Orientale Lumen." We must take advantage of the "extraordinary flexibility" of Eastern monasticism to "personalize (it to) the times, rhythms and ways of seeking God … to fulfill the expectations of (this particular) church in (this) period of its history" (13).
Mother Cecilia was moved by Bishop John's invitation, especially the quotes from Orientale Lumen, and though she didn't know much about Eastern monasticism, she soon wrote to Bishop John with her interest.
Orientale Lumen continues to inspire the nuns of our monastery, especially during our current process of revising our monastic typikon (rule of life) which uses the chapter titles of the Apostolic Letter as its outline. The three nuns involved in the revisions are entering deeply into the letter, seeking to more fully understand it and allow it to breathe new breaths of the Spirit into our foundational document.
The photo above is from our "JPII Room," a sitting room in the monastery with books, images and relics of St. John Paul II, a beloved "father" of our monastery. The two books pictured are two original copies of Orientale Lumen, one in English and one in Ukrainian, handed by St. John Paul himself to Fr. Dennis Hrubiak in 1995, who donated them to our monastery a few years ago.
We think that anyone can benefit from reading Orientale Lumen, regardless of their particular Tradition or vocation. It's not a long read. May it help you to more fully understand the Church and her beauty, as well as the gift of monastic life to the Church and to your life.