Girls' Camp Registration Posted!

Attention all teen girls and parents:  We have posted the registration form and brochure for the 2013 Life in Christ Girls' Sleepover Weekend (Girls' Camp) on the 'For Teen Girls' tab on our website!  Please be sure to register SOON because we are limiting registration this year to 20 teens.  The registration deadline is Wednesday, June 12th.  For more information, click on the 'For Teen Girls' tab!  If you have any questions, feel free to email the Girls' Camp Team at ctbmyouthevents@gmail.com or give us a call at 440-834-0290.  Get excited to learn this year about how We are WITNESSES!

Mothers...Fathers...and work day volunteers!

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to our dear Mother Theodora!...and to all of our mothers!  You have nurtured us with the love of God!

Secondly, we also honor our fathers today...well, our Fathers of the First Eccumenical Council (Nicea)!  On this Sunday after the Ascension, the Eastern Church honors these Fathers who defended the basic truth of our faith that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man (the Arian heresy denied this truth).  These Fathers include saints like St. Nicholas and St. Athanasius.  We owe to them our gratitute for the Symbol of Faith (creed) that we profess at every Divine Liturgy.

And lastly, but not least of all, we want to thank all of our awesome volunteers who came out yesterday, even in the damp, chilly weather, to offer their time and talents to help us with many projects in and around the monastery.  At least 60 people joined us!  All of the many children who came were great workers!  Click on the photo of Sr. Gabriella to see more photos from the work day and cookout!

Join us for our Spring Work Day & Cookout!

Saturday, May 11

Join us for a day of outdoor and indoor work projects, prayer, food and fun at the monastery on Saturday, May 11. Volunteers of all ages and abilities are welcome! The day begins at 10 a.m., includes lunch, and closes with vespers at 5 p.m. followed by a cookout. Come at whatever time you are available, and bring a side dish to share if you can. The monastery is located at 17485 Mumford Rd. Burton, Ohio.

Please RSVP by Tuesday, May 7, to 440-834-0290 or christthebridegroom@gmail.com, so that the appropriate amount of food can be prepared. You may also RSVP on our Facebook Event!

We always have a great time, so we hope you are able to join us!

Spring Newsletter

Please enjoy our spring issue of Pomegranate Blossoms.  In our cover article we share our thoughts about evangelization in light of the paschal season.  How are monks and nuns called to evangelize?  How are you called to evangelize? Inside, we share the opportunities for prayer we've been able to provide in the past few months (although if you've been following our blog you've probably read about them already!). We also give a list of our upcoming spring/summer/fall events!

Happy Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, one of our favorites!

At the sixth hour, You came to the well, O Fountain of Wonders, to ensnare the fruit of Eve; for at that very hour, she had been driven from Paradise by the guile of the serpent.  When the Samaritan woman came to draw water, You said to her, O Savior: Give Me water to drink, and I will give you waters of eternal life.  And the woman hastened to the city and proclaimed to the people: Come and see Christ the Lord, the Savior of our souls. 
--Stichera from Vespers

"Coming from the tomb like a bridegroom"

Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is Risen!

Enjoy this album of photos from our Holy Week and Pascha!


This is the most important time of the year in the Church, but it also has a particular importance for us as Christ the Bridegroom Monastery.

Holy Week is often called "The Week of the Bridegroom" because it is the week in which Jesus gave His life for His bride, the Church. The icon of Christ the Bridegroom depicts Jesus suffering his passion.  But the image of Christ as Bridegroom doesn't come to an end on Good Friday.  We continue to sing about Jesus as the Bridegroom during the paschal season!  Here are some quotes from the Resurrection services:

"Bearing torches let us meet the bridegroom, Christ, as He comes forth from His tomb; and let us greet, with joyful song, the saving Pasch of God." 

"O women, be the heralds of good news and tell what you saw; tell of the vision and say to Sion: 'Accept the good news of joy from us, the news that Christ has risen.' Exult and celebrate and rejoice, O Jerusalem, seeing Christ the King coming from the tomb like a bridegroom." 

"O Passover, save us from sorrow; for today Christ has shown forth from the tomb as from a bridal chamber and filled the women with joy by saying: 'Announce the good news to My Apostles.'"

May your celebration of the Resurrection be filled with the profound joy of knowing Christ's total and particular love for you.

Pope Francis, St. Andrew of Crete, St. Mary of Egypt...

We were blessed to have the opportunity to watch the announcement of the new pope live on the internet (we don't have television).  We delayed the start of our Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (the Lenten evening Liturgy celebrated on Wednesdays and Fridays) to watch, and then began the Liturgy...so it was probably one of the first liturgies to commemorate Pope Francis!  We are thrilled to welcome and pray for our new Holy Father!

Check out this article: Pope Francis is very familiar with the Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgy!

On Thursday we led the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Parma, Ohio, joined by about 30 others who came to pray with us.  The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, prayed in the Eastern Church on Thursday of the 5th Week of the Great Fast (Lent), takes us on a journey through the entire Bible, placing us in the shoes of all the penitents of the Old and New Testaments and teaching us from their examples.  The hundreds of prostrations unite our body and soul as we repent of our sins and experience God's mercy.  It was truly a moving experience for us, not only because of the beauty and intensity of the service, but also because of the unity we felt with those who came to pray with us.    Their deep prayer and perseverance lifted us up off the ground after each prostration and filled us with great energy!  Thank you!

This short video is a small look into this beautiful three-hour long service:

Happy Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt!  (Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast)  We are praying for you as we complete the Fast and enter into Great and Holy Week!

"Once filled with all kinds of evil, now through repentence she appears as a bride of Christ.  Leading an angelic life, she crushes the devils with the help of the Cross.  Therefore, the venerable Mary has become a bride of the the kingdom." (Kontakion of St. Mary of Egypt)

The story of St. Mary of Egypt--a great read if you have time!

“This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”

(This article was written as a reflection for the Byzantine Catholic Vocations Facebook Page - be sure to check out this great endeavor for our metropolitan church!)

On this fourth Sunday of Lent, we commemorate St. John Climacus, a seventh century monk known most popularly for his work, ‘The Ladder of Divine Ascent,’ which is a treatise on the importance of asceticism as a means of attaining spiritual perfection.  The two main ascetical efforts undertaken by the clergy, religious, and faithful of the Byzantine Church during the Great Fast are prayer and fasting.  But why?  Why prayer and fasting?

Prayer is our relationship with God, our connection to the Divine.  It moves our hearts and minds outside of our earthly home, and allows us to lift our “eyes to the hills” because our “help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” (Ps 121:1-2)  Often times though, we have trouble praying because we are very attached to this world.  To things, people, food – you name it, we grasp for it.  Fasting attempts to break the hold of these temporal or transitory goods on us in a tangible way so that we may remember that the good things God gives us are just that – gifts provided by God and are not God in and of themselves.  It allows us to take a step back from these essential goods in our life and remind ourselves that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4), that is Jesus Christ.  In the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, fasting combined with prayer “allow [Christ] to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.”

There are also times in our life (or rather in our hearts) when we experience demons that can only be cast out through prayer and fasting.  We hear in the gospel today about a faith-filled father who approaches Christ on behalf of his demon-possessed son.    Because of the father’s great act of faith, Jesus is able to heal his son – but this healing causes a stir among the disciples.  “Why could we not cast him out?”  Jesus responds, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”  When we encounter such demons, or even harder, the inner reality of our own sinful heart, we realize that prayer and fasting become not just an ascetical effort but a way of life, a necessity to our salvation and a pathway by which we purge our hearts, minds and bodies of the demons or sins that possess us.

According to our Typikon or rule of life, “Fasting is one of the pillars of monastic life and an important tool in attaining detachment, freedom and self-discipline.”  In the tradition of our Holy Fathers, such as St. John Climacus who we commemorate today, monastics participate in the traditional ‘black fast’ for the 40 days of the Great Fast and Holy Week, which means we fast from meat, dairy, wine and oil.  (Yes, there are in fact still some food groups available outside of these categories!)

For monastics, fasting becomes our way of life.  We first learn to fast from food but that external fasting reminds and leads us to the internal reality that I mentioned before – God alone satisfies our hunger.  But we are human – and sometimes are very forgetful. (Perhaps I just speak for myself!)  For this reason, the Church in her Wisdom combines prayer with our fasting.  Again from our Typikon, “However, fasting is not an end in itself….Fasting must always be joined with prayer. Therefore the periods of fasting in the monastery coincide with the liturgical cycle of the Church. In this way, fasting also creates a spirit of expectation and joy as the monastery looks forward to the coming feast.”  By living out our fasting in conjunction with the Church’s liturgical cycle, we are constantly reminded of why we fast  through the prayers we pray and our prayer directs our attention back towards God, the One we desire to fill us.  Just remember, fasting without prayer is simply dieting!  Our fasting must serve a purpose; otherwise we become “a resounding gong or a clashing symbol.” (1 Cor 13:1)

Remember, it is never too late to participate in the Great Fast!  If you haven’t kept your Lenten promises to yourself or you never got around to coming up with any, ‘plug in’ to the wisdom of the Church and pick one of the items of the traditional fast to give up! (Or all of them!)  Find a Lenten prayer service to attend at your church (or at a monastery!) or try praying the Prayer of St. Ephrem.  Offer up these sacrifices for the intention of finding your vocation!  Allow these final weeks of the Great Fast to engage your mind and heart in a new way through the prayer and fasting tradition of the Church, so that when we reach Pascha, you will truly know Christ is RISEN, body and soul!