Mother Cecilia's Institution as our Hegumena

 

On Sunday, December 31st, 2023, Mother Cecilia was officially instituted as our hegumena. Below are some of her reflections on the day of the institution as well as the meaning behind the design of her staff. 

May God grant Mother Cecilia many blessed years as our shepherdess! 

About the Significance of Today’s Date

I suggested today’s date to Bishop Robert as a possibility for my institution as hegumena because it is both the leave-taking of the feast of the Nativity (the Nativity having a lot of significance to me in my spiritual life) and because today, the Sunday after the Nativity, is the Byzantine feast of St. Joseph, the patron of my home parish. The Lord, however, had even more reasons in mind.

Recently, when I prayed and asked about the significance of the day, what immediately came to mind was that today is not only the feast of St. Joseph, but also of King David and St. James the Brother of the Lord (the day commemorates these important people in the family of Jesus). I asked what their significance is for this day. And I immediately understood: they are all shepherds, just like I am becoming! And they had shepherd’s staffs, just like I am receiving from the hand of the shepherd of our eparchy! David was literally a shepherd, and also became the king and shepherd of Israel. St. Joseph’s staff bloomed as a sign that he was to be chosen as the betrothed of Mary, and he was the shepherd of the Holy Family, protecting them and leading them to Egypt and back. And St. James was the first bishop of Jerusalem, with his bishop’s staff signifying that a bishop is a shepherd of the Church.

About the Design of My Staff

My staff was carved by Kyle Rosser, seminarian for the Diocese of Cleveland. I’m really grateful for his willingness to take on this project, and for his prayerful work. I sketched a design, and he turned it into a carving. I’d like to share with you the meaning behind the design (and the Lord will probably keep showing me His meanings!).

The first line of Psalm 22(23) is carved into the center of the design: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Even though this staff is being handed to me as a symbol of the protection, care and guidance that I must give to this monastic flock, it is really the Lord’s staff—the staff of the Good Shepherd. He is shepherding me as I shepherd, and shepherding through and with me.

This first line of the psalm also signifies for me the entire psalm, one of my favorites. The symbols carved into the staff represent parts of the psalm. The chalice signifies for me the line, “My cup overflows,” or, in the Septuagint, “Your cup inebriates me like the best wine.” I see myself as the cup, and the wine as the love of God (which is really God Himself). I feel called to consent to being empty so that God can fill me with Himself, and to focus most especially in my spiritual life to letting myself be loved. I believe that letting myself be loved is what God truly most desires, because this is why He made us, to love us. And I believe that letting myself be loved is the most important step in loving others, because we need His love with which to love, and in this way, “my cup overflows.” I believe that even as hegumena, my first and most important call is to let myself be loved.

The branch behind the chalice is an olive branch, and the staff is also carved out of olive wood. This symbol signifies oil, and refers to the line, “You anoint my head with oil.” Oil is used in Scripture and the Holy Mysteries (Sacraments) in connection with the descent of the Holy Spirit. Kings were anointed with oil, and Christians are also anointed, chosen by God for Himself and for a special mission. Although a hegumena is not anointed with oil in the institution service, she is chosen by the Holy Spirit, and is called to “anoint” others with the other purpose of oil: healing.

Wine and oil…these are the medicines used by the Good Samaritan on the wounds of the man beaten by robbers. Wine to sanitize and oil to heal. I pray that the Lord bring healing to each of us, in the monastery and beyond, beaten by the robbers—the demons, and left half-dead by our passions. I desire to do my part to help Him bring about this healing—healing, which at its deepest level, means communion with the God who is love. This is why we nuns are in the monastery, and why each person was created. By looking at my staff, may I remember.

“A Man of Trust” -- Father Vasyl Lonchyna

 We'd like to share with you the story of the life of our very own, Mother Iliana's, great-grandfather, Father Vasyl Lonchyna, who was martyred for the faith on November 21st, 1946. Recently, his story was translated into English by Christine Gilbert, and so we are blessed to be able to share his story with you.

He was born on February 1, 1886, in the family of a wojt* in the village of Derniv in the Lviv region. He finished German gymnasium and Theological faculty of the Lviv University. In 1912, he got married (in marriage he had three children) and was ordained a priest. Until 1915, he was parochial vicar in the village of  Hlyniany (Lviv region). After that, he labored in the church of St. Paraskeva and its daughter church of St. Nicholas, both in Lviv.  He was a prisoner of  Thalerhof. He was very active in church ministry. Father Lonchyna was imprisoned on October 22, 1945, and in the spring of 1946 he was condemned to ten years  imprisonment and was sent to a camp in the Donetsk region. There, after  a brutal beating during an interrogation, he died on November 21, 1946.

Humble and gentle by nature, with a soft and compassionate heart, Father Vasyl showed amazing resilience, courage and uncompromisingness when there was a concern about important things  –  his faith in God, Church and parishioners. He never left his faithful, he never renounced the Greco-Catholic faith, he despised threats because, as he used to say, “I know what I will die for.” He consciously accepted his arrest, exile, and, eventually, his martyr’s death.

Born in a family respected among the villagers (Father Vasyl`s father was the wojt) and the boy was raised well and obtained a good education. While he was studying at the Lviv University in Theology Faculty, he attended the Third Velehrad Congress. The young student became enamored of the idea of the union of churches towards which Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was striving. The young man dreamed to become a genuine apostle of Christ, sacrificial and selfless…

Already in the first month of the 26-year-old priest’s ministry in the village of Hlyniany, he was noticed as the person with excellent pastoral and organizational skills. In 1915, Father Lonchyna was transferred to St. Paraskeva Church and the daughter church of St. Nicholas in Lviv,  where he labored until his arrest in 1945 (first as vicar, later as a pastor). 

Before long the priest faced a serious challenge:  he was suspected in “russophilism” and the Austrian government sent him to Thalerhof  (one of the most terrible concentration camps  of   the  20th Century;  there, in a picturesque area at the foot of the Alps, the imprisoned died from cruelty, hunger, and inhumane conditions).Who knows if Father Lonchyna would come back if the protohegumen of the Basilian Fathers had not interfered. After almost two years of imprisonment, the priest returned again to his family and parishioners. Being thankful to God for salvation, the shepherd returned to work with zeal. At the parish, he founded fellowships and fraternities, which developed successfully, in particular, The Apostolate of Prayer, the Fraternity of St. Nicholas, the Fraternity of Good Death (the first one in Lviv), and the Marian Sisterhood. In addition to that, Father Vasyl during a long period of time was head of the “Cantors’ Mutual Help” fellowship, since  he understood very well the value of the art of cantorship in the preservation of the Ukrainian tradition of liturgical singing. On the whole, Father Vasyl’s activity was multifaceted and active, and so his part in Theological Scientific Society should be mentioned here. 

Father Vasyl was not only a wise and good spiritual father for his flock, but also a wonderfully practical man. St. Nicholas church was not in its best condition, so the pastor, together with the help of his faithful (mostly poor residents of Zhovkva and Krakow suburbs), did not only rebuild his church:  thanks to his efforts the exterior of  the church was decorated by the work of the famous painter Petro Kholodny. 

Despite his comprehensive and fruitful activity, Father Lonchyna remained very mild and modest in everyday life. His daughter recalled: “Daddy was gentle, calm, noble, and very much loved by all. He always prayed with me before bed, teaching me to be good, kind, obedient, and to obey the elders…” 

The priest`s calm and sincere nature did not impede him to stand for his principles, for in such cases he was completely imperturbable and unbreakable. For example, in the so called “language case” in 1930 when he and two other priests were sued for daring to use the Ukrainian language in correspondence with the government. The priests managed to win the case, which was a great rarity at that time. 

Father Vasyl showed indomitable character in those difficult times when Soviet soldiers occupied Galicia and started the first persecutions of the Ukrainian Church. He did not have any illusions about the new government and said to his family that the priesthood will be in relative safety as long as Metropolitan Sheptytsky lives. The pastor, as his faithful, understood well the danger. More than once parishioners tried to convince the priest to leave the region. He invariably answered, saying that he will remain with his congregation until the end, and will not betray his vow. 

They began to call the priest in for questioning. One day when he was at the district prosecutor’s office, he heard a loud noise behind the door – it was indignant parishioners come to free their priest. The enraged prosecutor promised to release him. Amazed by the father`s authority among those people, the prosecutor tried to persuade Father to enter the service of the new government. He asked the priest does he not fear imprisonment and death… No, Father Lonchyna was not afraid, because “he knew what he will die for”. This whole story ended with the wife of that same prosecutor (who  really  did release him) bringing her child to Father Vasyl to be baptized. Obviously, they decided that such priest can be trusted. 

But the government didn’t leave Father Vasyl in peace, and he continued to be called in for  questioning. Fr. Havryil Kostelnyk who was infamous for his“reunification” activities, tried  to convince Father Vasyl to  transfer to Orthodoxy. Finally, on October 22, 1945, they arrested the unbreakable  priest. The “socially dangerous priest” was accused of many “sins,” such as being “a man of trust” during the German occupation (as the Ukrainian Central Committee called community representatives who protected their community’s interests).  Being in that position, Father Lonchyna especially cared for poor families in need of help. 

Father was convicted to ten years in prison. The priest was sent to Donetsk region in Novobutovka’s mine in the Makiyivka district where there were truly inhumane conditions: exhausting work, hunger, and dysentery, since the prisoners often ate straight from trash cans. And in all this horror, Father Vasyl preserved his human dignity and faith. He drew his strength from prayer. This made an impression on the prisoners: when they were unable to think about anything else other than finding something to eat, they saw someone next to them calmly, praying over a crumb of the daily ration and consuming it nobly as is from God’s hand. They often saw the priest  as he sat tired on a bench,  and having humbly bowed his head, spoke something to the Lord… 

In the camp Father lost his health very quickly. But even in this state the government did not leave the nearly powerless priest in peace. They again started to call him for questioning. During one such interrogation he was beaten so hard that he could not stand on his feet again. In his 60th year of life, on the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, November 21, 1946, Father Lonchyna departed into eternity. Another wonderful person passed away, a person who knew how to love God and people and be faithful to the ideals of his own faith up until his last breath.

*“A Polish senior civil administrative officer and the highest representative of the government of a rural gmina, i.e., of a commune (gmina) comprising only villages... The word wójt is derived from Latin  advocatus  via German Vogt.” –Wikipedia.

Conservation of Love -- a reflection and poem by Mother Natalia

As we finish up the Nativity Fast, we wanted to make sure we shared this beautiful reflection from Mother Natalia with you. She wrote it for our eparchial magazine, Horizons. Even though the fast is now coming to a close as we are now in the prefestive days, we hope it will bless you and give you some inspiration as we prepare for the Feast of the Nativity of Christ. 

When I was studying engineering physics, a basic concept that often came up in our courses is

that of the conservation of energy. Simply put, this law indicates that energy can be neither

created nor destroyed; it just is. And this energy that exists is merely converted from one form

into another. So if I need solar energy, I can’t just create it out of thin air; I have to harvest it

from the energy source that is the sun. Similarly, when I convert one kind of energy into another

–kinetic energy into thermal energy – it can go from kinetic into thermal energy, but it doesn’t

just disappear into nothing.

I was reminded of the principle when an engineer visited the monastery to go on poustinia.

During this personal retreat he shared this idea: In the universe there exists not only the law of

conservation of energy or the conservation of mass, but there is also the law of the conservation

of love.

This concept struck me and stayed with me, so much that I took it to prayer with me on my own

poustinia. This concept that brought together two of my great loves – physics and the spiritual

life – brought together for me two passages from the apostle John. At the beginning of his

gospel, he writes about God’s creation of the world: “All things came to be through Him and

without Him nothing came to be” (John 1:3). And then in his first epistle, he tells us that “God is

love” (1 John 4:8). Everything that was created exists in God, and it is good, and it was created

in love by Him who is Love.

As we enter into the Nativity fast we are given an opportunity to re-order our loves. But as we do

so we must not fall into the trap of thinking that rightly ordered love means to turn away from

food or drink or other material things because they are bad. These are good gifts given to us by

our good Father. But they lose their goodness when they become the object of our love as

opposed to a gift received in love. Nor does love of God in the Christian life mean turning away

from human love/love of neighbor. Quite the contrary! As we read throughout scripture,

especially in Matthew 25, the very act of loving our neighbor is loving God. C.S. Lewis reminds

us that our desires are “not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about

with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants

to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a

holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory).

God placed in us a desire for the infinite; this desire is like a magnet inside of us drawing us back

to Him, because only He – the infinite – will satisfy our deepest longings. When we turn our gaze

from God, we divide our love among other things, or worse, we place our infinite desire on finite

things, turning them into little gods. This not only gets the proper order of things wrong, flipping

it on its head, it also means that I’m not loving all of these things and these people with fullness.

We have to go back to the law of conservation of love: I can’t just create love out of thin air. I

have to harness it from a pre-existing energy source, and St. John tells us what – or who – that

source is: God. “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His

Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another” (1

John 4:10-11). I must first go and receive from the Source, and having done so, I can and must

transfer that love to the world around me: to my neighbor and to my daily work.

The Nativity fast is, as all fasting periods are, an opportunity for us to refocus on where we are

directing our love and our desires. Are we willing to sacrifice passing or temporal pleasures for

the sake of conserving and appropriately directing love? In order to receive God’s love, we have

to remove all those little gods that distract us from him; temporarily removing them so that we

can return to them with a proper love, a love without idolatry.

Conservation of Love

Nothing brought into being

can just slip into non-existence.

And all that is,

ever has been,

or still is to come,

came into being through Love.

Thus love must be conserved,

even if it changes form.

It can move

from God to mammon

to sex, food, or sleep.

In each, love aches for the Good.

But the ache isn’t enough.

We must pursue love

in its purest form.

For when spread out,

we find a disintegration,

each separation feeding into destruction.

Yet herein lies the paradox

that when love is focused

singularly on Love,

we find it permeates

even sex, food, and sleep…

when in everything we seek You.

The forms can be deceptive,

for really, there are only two:

I can love You

or love myself.

And each day, hour, moment,

You offer me this choice.

Your Brother Will Rise -- a reflection by Mother Iliana

When the war broke out in Ukraine, my heart was torn to pieces. My own people were being slaughtered. I felt so helpless – what could I do to help them so far away, here in a little monastery in Ohio? My heart was filled with grief for all the broken families, and all those who have lost or been separated from fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, friends, and even their precious little children. As I sat in the chapel one day, I heard the Lord speak to my heart, “Your brother will rise,” and I wept. I did not understand what His words meant, but I was consoled to hear them, because in hearing His word, I understood that He was with me and with each of them. “God is with us, understand all you nations” we sing over and over at Great Compline, especially during the time of the Fast.

During Matins on Lazarus Saturday, as we sang the Praises, these words came off the page –though they were simply retelling the story directly from a very familiar Scripture, in that moment they became alive. “Martha and Mary said to the Savior: Lord, if You had been here, our brother would not have died.” Is this not the cry of every heart in the midst of tremendous human loss? “God, if You had been here, my brother, my sister, my child, my parents, my nation, my dream would not have died! If You had only done something, I would not have this grief in my heart day and night” (see Psalm 12). As we continued to sing the Praises, again a line jumped out to me: “Martha said to Mary: The Master is here!” While I think, “If He had only been here,” Martha reminds me that “the Master is here.” Here, in the midst of this sorrow and grief, He is here, and what does He say to me? “You brother will rise.” 

St. John Chrysostom says: “We do indeed die, but we do not continue in it; which is not to die at all. For the tyranny of death, and death indeed, is when he who dies is nevermore allowed to return to life. But when after dying is living, and that a better life, this is not death but sleep” (Christ Our Pascha, pg. 79). Jesus, when He raises Jairus’ daughter, says, “the girl is not dead but sleeping” (Mt 9:24), and before raising Lazarus He says, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep” (Jn 11:12). “Today, Lazarus rejoices in Your word, O Word of God, as he begins his life again” (Lazarus Saturday, Hymn of Light). And the word he hears, this brother who will rise, is the Incarnate God calling him by his name. “Through Lazarus, O Christ, You have already despoiled Death; where is you victory, where is your sting? Now You bear the grief of Bethany! Carrying branches in our hands, let us all praise the victory of Christ” (Lazarus Saturday, Hymn of Light).

The Weight of War: A Mother's Lament - A Reflection from Mother Petra

The war sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a poignant, throbbing backdrop for my experience of the Great Fast this year.  On the second day of Lent, I read these words of St. Sophrony of Essex: 

“I have been in continuous and terrible pain as a witness to the nightmare of men—who are all brothers—killing one another.  At times, this pain causes me to howl like a wild animal, to yelp like a poor dog whose paws have been crushed by a car.  And just like a dog, shaking from pain, to crawl away from the paths of men.  But when the pain in the heart reaches the limits of our physical endurance, then the invocation of the Name of Jesus Christ brings PEACE which alone keeps us alive.” 

My prayer, around which all of my life revolves, has taken on a deeper urgency, and I glimpse the global (even cosmic) dimensions of the prayer of the Church.  I understand that when I pray, the whole Church prays in me, and this prayer is for the whole world.  The pain in my heart is but a taste of the great ocean thundering across the globe.

During the Fast, we once again start reading Scripture at the beginning, with the book of Genesis.  Woven throughout our Lenten prayers is the theme of the Fall, the suffering of Man who has exiled himself from Eden by his sin.  Recently, Genesis 4:8-15, which recounts Cain’s slaying of his brother Abel, was given me to read aloud during Vespers.  My heart grieved as I chanted the dialogue between Cain and God:

[Cain] “[A]m I my brother’s keeper?”

[God] “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground…. [Y]ou shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth…”

[Cain] “My punishment is greater than I can bear…from Your face I shall be hidden…”

Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord…

Once again, Man is exiling himself by the spilling of his brother’s blood.  We taste anew the bitter cost of sin.

The next day, we read the conclusion of this same chapter in Genesis:  “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, ‘God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him’” (v. 25).  Often I have meditated on Cain’s killing of Abel, but never from the perspective of their mother.  Eve, who apparently had never yet known human death, experiences the death of her son Abel, and she clearly understands he was murdered by her other son Cain.  In effect, she loses two sons, the slain and the exiled.  Surely, her agony is compounded by the awareness that she had in some way contributed to this fracture, this rending of her family, by heeding the serpent and grasping after the knowledge of good and evil.

I’ve been praying in recent months about the nature of motherhood as I experience the reality of my own spiritual motherhood:  both the sobering weight to which I consent when I accept a spiritual son, and the mysterious, hidden ways in which I am a mother to souls across the world.  From this vantage point, I looked at Eve’s grief and recognized my own lament over this war in Slavic lands and the choices of my children closer to home as an echo of her lament.  Crying out to the Crucified One as I live these dark days, I have prayed for God’s people, both those with whom I have personal relationships and those suffering in Ukraine and Russia.  Yet I am haunted by the conviction that my own sin has made me in some manner complicit; I am not an innocent bystander.  I also am one who seeks self, objectifies my brother, desires domination, and have harbored hatred in my heart.  As we sing in the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, “I have followed in the footsteps of Cain, I have chosen to become a murderer; for I have led my poor soul to death by living according to the flesh in the wickedness of my deeds” (Ode 1).  This conviction fuels my repentance. 

Repenting in my prayer, I suddenly saw Eve’s suffering mirrored, not in my poor heart, but in the pure heart of the New Eve:  The Theotokos looks down from heaven and weeps because one of her sons slays the other.  Each day this blood cries out from the ground!  But Mary stands at the foot of the Cross, ready to receive as her sons both the apostle and the criminal because she knows her first Son died in order to open the way back to Eden for all Mankind.  The flaming sword has been quenched by the blood and water gushing forth from His side.  As disciples of Jesus Christ, she pleads with us to embody His love by living His Gospel of peace in the power of the Holy Spirit given us in baptism. 

So as we journey deeper into this desert, of the Great Fast and of human wars, let us offer the Father our repentance as a worthy sacrifice.  Let us assume our great dignity as disciples of Christ by being our brother’s keeper.  Let us vigorously fight evil, not by the world’s violent means, but by the spiritual weapons of the children of Light—prayer, penance, fasting, and self-sacrifice.  And let us keep our heart’s eye fixed on the promise of the Resurrection.

A Letter from Sr. Natalia

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Beloved Friends and Family,

As I was praying very intentionally with the profession service on my pre-profession retreat, I was moved to share part of those reflections with all of you. I find that there is a common misconception at the tonsure of a monastic that I’d like to clarify. I know that some come to this service thinking, “Wow. How beautiful! This woman is giving up all the goods and beauties of the world for the sake of the Lord. This is the epitome of virtue. Of holiness. She is entering the life of holiness.” There are truths in all of this, but really none of these capture the fullness of what a monastic tonsure is, and I think they can even distract us from the reality of what you will witness today.

As Sr. Petra and I come down the aisle in our simple white garment (which we will be buried in some day), we are barefoot. Hair untied. Hands crossed across our chest as though they were bound. Because at this point we are bound—by our own sin. We walk down the aisle totally poor, with nothing to offer but ourselves. And as we make our three prostrations (a sign of penance), the hymn being sung is not “Here Comes the Bride,” but it is the troparion of the Prodigal Son. Proclaiming our deep sinfulness, and our deep need for mercy. I remember when a monk, who has been fully professed for many years, gave a retreat at our monastery. He said, “When you are making that final prostration, and you are praying to be received into the ranks of the penitent, your prayer should be, ‘Lord, I need this life of healing. I need this life of recovery.’” This is very similar to what St. John Climacus writes in the Ladder of Divine Ascent, “Let no one, by appealing to the weight and multitude of his sins, say that he is unworthy of the monastic vow...Where there is much corruption, considerable treatment is needed to draw out all the impurity. The healthy do not go to a hospital.” At the ordination of a Byzantine deacon or priest, when they receive each article of their vestments, the priests and people cry out, “Axios!” meaning “He is worthy!” You will notice today that when Sr. Petra and I receive each article of monastic clothing, the priests and people cry out, “Lord have mercy!”

Please don’t misunderstand me. Though this is a day in which Sr. Petra and I enter the ranks of penitents and promise a life of self-denial, it is by no means a gloomy day. On the contrary, it is a day of great rejoicing. But I firmly believe the joy is that of Luke 15:7, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” In this sense, today you are all joining in with the rejoicing of the angels over two sinners who desire to transform their prodigal pursuit of sin to the prodigal love of their Bridegroom.

Please pray for us that we may fully embrace this life of joyful penance. And be assured of our prayers for each of you as well.

In Christ our Bridegroom,

Sr. Natalia

See the previous post for more information about the upcoming life profession of Sr. Natalia and Sr. Petra on Sept. 26.

"To hold the fire in your hand": St. Barlaam of Antioch

St. Barlaam of Antioch (d. 304): Feast day – November 19

By Sister Petra

My first year in the monastery, when I heard the story of St. Barlaam of Antioch read in our chapel before Vespers, I was captivated—tears came to my eyes, and a sense of exultation lifted my heart.  I re-read his story after the service, and began asking for his prayers from that day. Every year since then, I’m more deeply moved by this martyr and father in the Faith. And I’m realizing that, like me, most people have never heard of him.

His story begins in a fashion typical of the early martyrs; he stands out only for his age: Barlaam an old man, in his 90s. During the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian in 304, he was dragged before the governor and urged to cast incense before the pagan gods of the empire. Of course, he refused, so his captors devised a way to mock the elder: They placed burning coals and grains of incense in his hand, certain he would drop the embers, thereby allowing them to deride him by saying that he did, after all, cast incense before the gods. Instead, Barlaam responded with the stillness of faith: holding the burning coals in his hand, he stood unyielding as his hand burned away. Some accounts say he then rendered his spirit to the Lord, others that the governor, enraged, killed him. Either way, this martyr’s love was tried by fire and proved worthy.

St. Barlaam has a special significance for me in my vocation. He is an emblem of the faith and trust required to remain in the purifying fire of monastic life. He offers me an image of celibate love: to hold the fire in your hand in faithfulness, and to refuse to drop the fire under the pressure of our society. But, most of all, a line from a homily of St. John Chrysostom pierces my heart with the meaning of this saint’s sacrifice: He “was both the altar and the priest and the sacrifice.”  We—all of us, not only monastics—are called to offer as priests the sacrifice of our very selves on the altar of our bodies.  

Telling my spiritual father about this saint one day last year, I burst out, “It’s impossible—impossible! Nobody could do that! Nobody! Yet—he did!!!” By the power of the Holy Spirit burning in him, St. Barlaam scorned the enemy’s fire and entrusted himself, body and soul, to the Lover of Mankind. May each of us allow the same Spirit to consume us, that we, too, may be radiant torches testifying to the luminous reality of Divine Love.  

Note on this icon: This past summer, my friend Mother Pelahia worked with me on this icon of St. Barlaam of Antioch.