Please pray for Amy, entering May 20!

On this Great Feast of the Ascension, we joyfully announce the upcoming entrance of Amy MacInnis into our monastic community on May 20! Amy is our first international member, and her entrance is a long-awaited fruit of patience and immigration work! Please keep her in your prayers as she begins her time in the monastery as a dokimos ("one who is proved by testing"), continuing to discern her call here in a deeper way. She will enter fully into our life, as well as participate in the classes, studies and other types of formation given to those in their initial years in the monastery.

Amy MacInnis

Whitby, Ontario, Canada

39 years old

Parish: Protection of the Mother of God Slovak Byzantine Catholic Parish, Oshawa, Ontario

Degrees: MTS (Master in Theological Studies) from Regis College, BA in Philosophy from Tyndale University College, Certificate of Christian Humanities from Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy

From her application: Q: In your own words, what is the purpose of monastic life? A: "The purpose of monastic life is to provide those called by the Triune God to the monastery with the environment best suited for them to deepen their relationship with Him. The monastery is a sacred space set apart from the world, yet embedded in its heart (cf. Jn 17:13-18). Monastics embrace the mystery of a “life...hid in Christ with God” (Col 3:3), since the monastery is like leaven hidden in the dough of the world that secretly grows the Kingdom of God (Mt 13:33). Those called to the monastery carry the sinful and suffering world with them; they are drawn out of the world not due to disdain for it, but because they love the LORD and desire to give everything—themselves and the whole world—back to Him. The environment of the monastery, which fosters the giving and receiving of love, is one of poverty, chastity and obedience, aloneness and community, silence and praise, suffering and joy; its soil is humility, the death to self. Those called to the monastery prize God who is Love (1 Jn 4:8) above all else, and prioritize their prayer—their relationship with Him—in this life, as a foretaste of heaven. Their receptivity to Him in the present moment flows into the world for the sake of the Kingdom."

A life lesson on the trampoline!

A reflection by Maddie

Several weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon, a few of the nuns and I went to the home of a family we’re friends with for a couple of hours. Immediately upon arrival, the kids beckoned for Mother Natalia and me to play with them, but feeling obliged to our adult duties, and promising to play later, we went inside to chat with the other adults. The kids had been patient so when they came back to us asking that we jump on the trampoline with them, we agreed. I’m not sure how many of you reading this have been on a trampoline since you were a kid, but as an adult it’s both terrifying and exciting. Especially when the trampoline is on a slight slant, full of children, whom you’re trying not to crush, and two adults. 

After we had played “Crack the Egg,” a timeless classic in trampoline games, and the children had thoroughly mocked me for any fear I had, one of the kids suggested we play the game “Resurrection.” Mother Natalia and I agreed but admitted we were not familiar with the trampoline game-rendition of Resurrection. The kids quickly explained the game to us. One of the kids would be Jesus, while another one would be Satan. The kid playing Satan had to remain on their knees and would have to try and tag all the other people on the trampoline. If Satan tagged us, Jesus could come, touch us, and resurrect us. Satan couldn’t tag Jesus and the only way for Satan to win and end the game was if he or she tagged all of us before Jesus could resurrect us. The only other rule being that we had to stay on the trampoline. As the game commenced, children scattered everywhere and I found myself sliding on the slick surface of the trampoline trying not fall, step on any kids, or get tagged by Satan, while trying to establish a strategy. 

It quickly dawned on me that the best way to success in this game was not just to stay away from Satan, but simply to stay as close as possible to Jesus. As I thought this to myself, I chuckled because of how true this is of the spiritual life as well. It’s not enough to only run away from Satan. We need to be running towards something, Someone. Eventually we’re going to slip, trip, or get cornered and tagged by Satan. Jesus is there to resurrect us from our sin, but we must keep turning to Him, pursuing Him, allowing Him to be our shield. While I may have said this trampoline game was simple, I did not say it was easy and neither is the spiritual life. However, Jesus just wants us to keep trying and allowing Him to touch and heal us. To keep staying near to Him no matter how much we might slip and nearly fall off in doing so. 

“God reveals His victory not only to the strong, but to the faithful”

This homily of Fr. Iuliu-Vasile Muntean from this Sunday of the Myrrhbearers was very beautiful to us, and we wanted to share it with you. Here is a little excerpt:

"What is the stone I am worried about?

What is the act of love Christ is asking of me anyway?

Where am I waiting for guarantees instead of walking forward in fidelity?

The women did not know how the story would unfold.

But they went.

Joseph and Nicodemus did not know how everything would be resolved.

But they acted.

The apostles in Acts did not have a perfect Church.

But they served faithfully.

And Christ, the Bridegroom, met all of them there."

Spring Work Day, May 23

We invite you to join us for a day of outdoor and indoor work projects, prayer, food and fun on Saturday, May 23, at the monastery and the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch. Volunteers of all ages and abilities are welcome! The day begins at 1:00 p.m. and closes with Vespers at 4:45 p.m., followed by a potluck dinner. Come whenever available, and bring a side dish to share if you're staying for dinner. Please RSVP using this form by Monday, May 18, so that the appropriate amount of food can be prepared. Some tools that may be of help to bring: shovels, trowels, work gloves, wheelbarrow, chainsaw, pruning shears (please mark your name on tools).

The Humility of God — a Reflection for Great & Holy Saturday

Icon by the hand of Mother Petra

By Mother Petra

I have feared God.  I do not mean holy fear, a recognition of the gulf separating the One who is other from me, His poor creature.  The fear to which I refer shows itself in craven cringing, in grasping, in a shame-filled self-rejection that turns me inward and closes my heart to saving communion with the Trinity.  I don’t think this fear is unique to me; I believe, if we are honest, it is a common experience among us who are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses the result of the Fall like this: “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart.”  Adam’s sin resulted “in a loss of trust in God’s goodness” (CCC 397).  We are born bereft of trust in the tender love of God the Father.  We came to relate to Him as a threat rather than a protector, as One who would deprive us rather than the One who provides for us, as an adversary rather than a friend.   

Painful experiences with those in authority—parents, teachers, pastors—can deepen our false fears of God, reinforcing our belief that He is like an angry, difficult-to-please father; a demanding or exploitative boss; a manipulative, controlling leader.  We can be afraid to approach Him in our poverty, terrified of exposing our hurting and vulnerable places, lest we once again be wounded or rejected, used or abused.  Recognizing our reticence and broken trust, in the Incarnation the Father hid His glory and approached us in the lowly form of our own flesh to show us that He is with us in every way.  In Christ, He assumed a human Face so that we could see Him, revealing the Face of the Father (John 14:9); so that we could believe we are beloved sons in the Son.  

Yet God’s love was not satisfied with Incarnation:  He yearned to come even closer to us, His fearful children, to love us to the uttermost extremity.  So He let us abuse Him, allowed us to ravage His flesh and take His life.  God let us kill Him.  I recently painted the icon known as “Extreme Humility”:  The image of the dead Christ, submerged in the Tomb (traditionally, this icon hangs over the Proskomedia table where the Eucharist gifts are prepared).  As I spent hours with this icon, my heart understood that He so longs to come close to me, to dispel the fears that held me back from the vulnerability of union with Him, that He chose to be vulnerable with me first.  He let Himself be killed so that I could understand I have nothing to fear from Him.  He did not come in wrath or rage, but as the Lamb sacrificing Himself to find lost Adam, to give Himself to me.  As radical, even scandalous, as the truth is, He put Himself so entirely into our power—as He continues to do in the Eucharist, putting Himself into the unworthy hands of mortal men—that He needed to be buried!  He did all this that I may understand that I need not fear Him, but can approach Him with confidence in His goodness and love.  One of our prayers captures this shocking condescension: “You who are unapproachable by nature become approachable to me.”    

On this Holy Saturday, as we meditate in silence on the God who descended into Hades to loose our bonds, the God who was most active when He appeared to our blinded eyes to be most helpless, let us receive the radiant gift of His humble love which embraced such extremity for us.  Let us relinquish our fears and approach Him with renewed trust and generous vulnerability.  May we put down our shields and self-protections and allow Christ God to love us back to life. 

My Time or God's Time?

A reflection by Mother Gabriella

Time. We never have enough of it. We do everything we can to maximize it, not waste it, or organize it so we are efficient, productive, etc. Our culture has conditioned us that our most precious commodity, apart from money, is time, and that it must be guarded and used well at all costs. I feel a Simon and Garfunkel song coming on...

As we encounter time during the Great Fast (which can feel like a "hazy shade of winter"), especially in the monastery, we come face to face with our inability to control time (well, anything really, but let’s keep our focus on time). The prayers and services are longer, and, somehow, no matter what you do it feels as if time is not in an hourglass but a colander, always pouring out and draining into the abyss, never to be seen again. This experience can leave us feeling frustrated, angry, disappointed, dissipated or thwarted to name a few.

During the Great Fast, we have two cycles of time in the Byzantine liturgical tradition – one that revolves around each 24-hour day of the week – which intersects with our usual accounting of time from Vespers (evening prayer) to the next Vespers. As these cycles converge, we experience a "perfect storm" with a disorienting and slightly chaotic effect of trying to juggle these two ways of understanding our time each day. It reminds me of an elementary school experiment that I did where we put two pop bottles together to see what the funnel cloud of a tornado or hurricane looked like – shout out to all my 90s kids out there – and we are caught in the center of the storm!

It is in the wake of this convergence that I had an epiphany about time. I was speaking with someone recently who was sharing a struggle with saying yes to too many good things. The person was so blessed to have many friends and people in their life who wanted to spend time, but as a result, they had been left exhausted and without any margins. As we spoke, I had one of those moments where the Holy Spirit speaks something to someone else through me and I realize that actually I am the one who needs to hear what I am saying. I found myself saying that perhaps this person should view their time, not as their own, but as God’s time. That each day is a gift from God, so what if we viewed "our time" each day as "His time" and asked Him how we should use it? Or what if, instead of being angry when things don’t go as planned, I allow the Father to show me that the situation I find myself in is actually His will, and receive whatever interruptions that come as what He wants me to do, rather than keeping me from what I want or think I need to do?

After this conversation, I have been pondering this reality and asking the Father to help me each day to see it as His day, not mine. To see my time as His time, and to be attentive and available to whatever comes as what He wills for me to do in that moment. It has not been an easy or a perfect shift, but it has significantly changed how I view "my day" and "my time." I have been more apt to let go of my white-knuckled grip on all things, and relax more into what is happening. I pray that each of you, especially during these busy days of the Great Fast full of many prayers and church services on top of your normal hectic daily life, can allow yourself to be interrupted by this "tornado of time" and begin to see each day as His, more and more.

Unique prayer opportunities with the nuns for the Great Fast

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete

Join the nuns of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery for a special Lenten service, the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, on Thursday, March 19, at St. Mary Magdalene Byzantine Catholic Church in Fairview Park, Ohio. This powerful service of repentance includes beautiful melodies, plentiful Scriptural and spiritual nourishment, hundreds of prostrations, and the moving life story of the penitent St. Mary of Egypt. The evening will also be a great opportunity for the Mystery of Holy Repentance (Confession) and to venerate a relic of St. Mary of Egypt. Please bring a fasting-friendly potluck dish to share (no meat, dairy, eggs or fish) if you join us for dinner at 4:30-5:30 p.m. in the hall. The Canon will begin at 5:30 p.m. and end at about 9:00 p.m. All are invited to come for part or all of the Canon, even if you are not physically able to participate in the prostrations.

Bridegroom Matins

The nuns of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery invite you to join them for Bridegroom Matins, the monastery's patronal commemoration, on Great & Holy Wednesday, April 1, at 10:00 a.m. in the monastery chapel (17485 Mumford Rd., Burton, Ohio). The readings and hymns of this service help us embrace a spirit of watchfulness and vigilance as we enter into the commemoration of Christ's passion, death and resurrection in the following days. All are welcome to spend time praying in the chapel afterwards.

A song to help you prepare for the Great Fast

In the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), a group of 300 Spartan soldiers were guarding a pass in the mountains against thousands of invading Persians. They were sent a message from the Persians informing them that the Persian army was so numerous that their arrows would block out the light of the sun. One of the Spartan generals sent back the reply, “Good, then we get to fight in the shade.”

When Mother Cecilia heard this story, she immediately saw it as an analogy of the spiritual life. The enemy (the devil and his demons) fill the sky (the mind) with intrusive thoughts and temptations, but we are empowered by the grace of God to continue praying and loving "in the shade." A fruit of Mother Cecilia's prayer, this song is woven with Scripture passages.

The Great Fast (Lent) is a time of greater temptation and spiritual struggle, as we, like Jesus, are led by the Spirit into the "desert" for forty days. We are called during this time of the liturgical year to engage in the struggle of setting aside some of our own desires at the Lord's invitation, to train ourselves to be unattached to them and to give God more space to come and love us and transform us. As we do this, the spiritual struggle intensifies. This is because the devil wants to impede this work, and God allows the devil's arrows in order to strengthen us (by means of our struggle) and prompt us to turn to Him for shelter and help, thereby helping us to grow in communion with Him. Our ascetical efforts are not ends in themselves; they are means to greater communion with God. In addition to fasting, we are called to an increase in prayer and almsgiving, which allow us to encounter the love of God for us and to love Him and our neighbor with the fountain of living water which is His presence within us. We become springs of water in the desert—the desert of the world that thirsts for God, and the desert that is our own struggle.

When we feel discouraged by our failures in our Lenten practices and resolves, let's turn to our loving God and recall that even a failure in the "means" doesn't necessarily mean a failure to reach the "end," which is love. Even if we are standing in the shade of the arrows of the enemy's accusation, we are still with the Lord, who Himself hung on the Cross "in the shade." 

Lyrics by Mother Cecilia

Music by Mother Cecilia and Gina DeFilippo

Produced by Gina DeFilippo

Courses/Retreat on Monasticism

Happy feast of the Father of Monks, St. Anthony the Great! 

Check out these upcoming free courses (and an online retreat) on or inspired by monasticism offered through the Institute of Catholic Culture!

Rules for Life 

Lent with the Monks

Desert Voices

Praying Through Suffering

Updated Theophany Schedule & Reflection

Our Theophany Eve schedule has changed significantly. Please take note of the new times:

Accepting My Humanity With Jesus

A reflection by Mother Cecilia, hegumena

A couple days ago, I was angry with myself for a mistake I had made. With a lot of effort, I turned to Jesus in prayer. Lately, when I’m struggling with something, I’ve gotten in the habit of asking Jesus, “When did You experience something like this?” Each time I’ve asked, He’s come through with an example from Scripture, encouraging me and helping me to be conformed to Him. Usually, I know the answer before I even finish asking my question; in the act of articulating what I’m experiencing, I become aware of the way Jesus had this same experience. 

Well, the day I was angry with myself for making a mistake, I thought, “I can’t ask Jesus about this one. He didn’t make mistakes.” But I knew I had to talk to Him; there was no other way to regain my peace. So, with great hesitation, I started to articulate my struggle: “Jesus, did You ever make a mistake or struggle to accept the weakness of Your humanity?” And it hit me before I finished the sentence: what I’m actually upset about is not simply making a mistake; I’m upset about the imperfections and limitations of my humanity, and Jesus took these on WILLINGLY! As God, He didn’t need to do that. God is infinitely powerful, all-knowing, uncontainable... And He chose to join Himself to the limitations of our humanity. It’s mind-blowing to consider God taking on even the simplest human limitations and needs: He experienced hunger…He had to stop working and sleep… 

I understood immediately that if the all-powerful God chose to take on the limitations of humanity, I, who am a created human person, can willingly accept my human limitations rather than being angry about them. With Jesus, I can even lovingly embrace them, because that is what He did, and with Him in me and I in Him, I can do that too. 

At this time of the liturgical year, we celebrate several landmark moments of the Incarnation—of God’s taking on of human limitation: the Nativity (Dec. 25), Theophany (Jan. 6) and Presentation in the Temple (Feb. 2). These are special times of deepening our awareness of God’s love for us through His humble condescension; they are also times of rejoicing and thanking Him. Listen carefully to the liturgical texts (at Divine Liturgy, Vespers, Matins, Royal Hours, etc.), sit quietly with the readings from Scripture, and maybe even speak to Jesus about your struggles with your humanity. Notice the unique ways that He personally speaks to you about His love for you.

Here is a beautiful text that makes me cry every year! It’s from Vespers for the first pre-festive day of Theophany (Jan. 2). I love that the Jordan River is personified and cries out to John the Baptist:

O come all you faithful ones. * Leaving the regions of Judea, we shall cross the wilderness of the Jordan; * and today we shall see Him who revealed Himself in the flesh for our sake. * In the streams of the Jordan, * He is asking the Forerunner for baptism. * John refuses and cries out in fear: * I do not dare to touch the divine Fire with my hand of clay. * The Jordan and the sea fled, O Savior, and then returned. * And I, how shall I place a hand on Your head which even the Seraphim fear? * The Jordan fled when Elisha received the mantle of Elijah; * how will it not go into the Abyss * and into the depths when it sees You unclothed in the stream? * How will the Jordan not burn me when I touch the fire? * The Jordan then cries out to John: * Why do you hesitate to baptize my Lord? * Why do you delay the purification of so many people? * He has already sanctified all creation. * Let me also be sanctified together with the nature of the water. * For this reason, He has come into the world.

May these beautiful feasts fill you to overflowing with joy and grace. We are praying for you!

An idea for incorporating some of the daily liturgical prayer of the Byzantine Church into your daily life: try the ECPubs app. This free app is especially helpful for praying Vespers (evening prayer); the entire text of the service for each day is compiled in order. In the app, click on “Vespers,” then the date (of the following day, since Vespers is the first service of the new liturgical day), then “Reader service” (this option gives instructions for praying Vespers without a priest). We nuns use this app when traveling.