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.
