Please do not allow our work day to deter you from attending the 100th anniversary celebration for the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church in America, taking place in New Jersey October 12-13. Our work day was scheduled before we knew about the event! We will be keeping our Church in our prayers in a special way that day.
Tools and supplies that would be helpful to bring: Garden gloves, trowels, pruners, shovels, chainsaw, wheel barrow. Does anyone have the ability to grind down a large tree stump?
Dear friends of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery,
We hope that you are well! We are having a year blessed by God, full of liturgical and contemplative prayer and times of community-strengthening recreation, and blessed with volunteers to help with outdoor projects, including the clearing of trees fallen in storms (our buildings were spared from damage!), volunteers for technical maintenance issues and household needs, a productive little garden (so many sunflowers, tomatoes and cucumbers!), pilgrims stopping by on their way through Ohio, other surprises and delights from God, and grace in our struggles.
Thank you for your understanding. We are disappointed to not share this beautiful evening with many of you, but we plan to return to the usual event next year. Please save the date of November 1, 2025, at the Astrodome Event Center in Parma, Ohio.
If you feel called to support the Bridegroom’s Appeal, you can donate online, or you can mail a check to the monastery with “Bridegroom’s Appeal 2024” in the memo line. Those on our mailing list will receive a mailing with a return envelope. All donations through the end of the year, up to a total of $100,000, will be doubled! The funds raised through this appeal will support our life of prayer and hospitality and will also go towards future building projects such as a larger monastery building when the time comes, and more poustinias. Your time and talent can also benefit the monastery; we invite you to let us know about any of these offerings even if you are not able or called to make a financial gift. And finally, your prayers are the most important gift of all! You support us in our spiritual struggle, and in turn, we hope that the life in which we are upheld is a witness and gift to you.
We thank you so much for your support! May God bless you and strengthen you in your particular vocation. May you allow yourself to be loved by Him.
In Christ our Bridegroom,
Mother Cecilia
Hegumena (Abbess)
A Reflection by Mother Petra
During the Great Fast, we were blessed to visit the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. We arrived in time to join the nuns for prayer in their chapel at noon, then joined them for lunch, spent the afternoon in conversation and sharing, prayed Vespers with them, and departed for our own monastery.
In these nuns, who have decades more experience than our young monastery, we saw a mirror of the beauty and significance of our own monastic life. A friend recently said to me, “Sometimes, while I’m driving around running errands, I remember all of you here, praying in your chapel, and I think—that’s why the world continues to exist.” Of course, being immersed in our life, I don’t have any such sense myself! Yet as I stood in their chapel, I looked upon these beautiful nuns and glimpsed the same reality: Faithfulness like this upholds the world. Like Abraham before the Face of God, interceding for Sodom (“Will You spare it for ten righteous men…?”).
We were moved by our conversations with the nuns, and grateful to receive spiritual wisdom and insight both from Mother Christophora, their abbess, and from the other nuns. At once point, the topic of sickness in community emerged, and I asked Mother Christophora if she would speak about illness in the monastic life. She explained that, upon entering the monastic life, it is a common experience to become ill. Perhaps this is an attack of the evil one to discourage a young monastic, perhaps it is trial permitted by the Lord to try her vocation or purify her motivations, perhaps it is simply the natural result of the real intensity of our monastic life which takes a toll on the body. But then she shared words of Fr. Thomas Hopko which deeply impressed each of us: “In this country we don’t have elders, so our illnesses are our elders because they teach us obedience.” She concluded with her own observation, “Afterall, He [Jesus] didn’t say ‘Take up your cross and fight it’!”
So often, it can seem that illness is an impediment to “real” life—keeping us from fully participating in liturgical prayer or other forms of asceticism, from fasting or keeping vigils to the extent we would desire, from accomplishing as much work as we would prefer, from accepting invitations to give talks or spiritual direction. Yet isn’t this thwarting of personal expectation, desire, and preference the very definition of asceticism? Bishop Benedict Aleksiychuk of Chicago recently commented to us that illness is an asceticism the Lord is giving us; we are not choosing it. Therefore, it is a better asceticism because there is no self-will in it, but rather has the purity of coming direct from the mind of God.
As a nun who has poor health, I am often
pained to see the strain my illnesses place on my sisters. But what a paradigm shift if we came to see
each of these limitations, not as arbitrarily imposed by circumstances beyond
our control, but rather as an invitation to deeper surrender and obedience in
conformity to the will of the Father!
Since our visit, we have begun referring to our diagnoses as “elders”
and “eldresses,” coming to recognize the necessities and treatments (all of
them inconvenient!) as an obedience—an asceticism—given by the Lord to the
whole community.
I hope those of you who suffer from illness in the world will also be granted grace to trust that nothing touches you that does not pass through the hands of the Father, and that He knows what He is asking of you: Perhaps not the service or work you desire to do, but trustful rest, slowing down, the willing sacrifice of pain offered to the Lord with faith in His goodness and power to transform our suffering so that it, like Christ’s, becomes a source of redemption in the world and in our own souls.
I was recently reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church
regarding the Sacrament of the Sick. It
teaches that “in a certain way he [the sick person receiving the anointing] is consecrated to bear fruit by
configuration to the Savior’s Redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin,
acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of
Jesus.” Further, the sick Christian “contributes
to the sanctification of the Church and to the good of all men for whom the
Church suffers and offers herself through Christ to God the Father.” (CCC, 1521-1522, emphasis mine). Sickness is not useless, not
meaningless!!! Our surrender to the
Father’s will in our sickness is tremendously significant work! This does not mean we do not seek to alleviate
suffering (we should!), but when our efforts fail, or when the treatments
themselves prove to be a form of suffering (or, at the very least,
inconvenience), let us pray for deeper faith to bow in obedience to the will of
God revealed in our circumstances. Let
us cry out with Jesus in the Garden—after
pouring out our pain and distress to our good Father, Who attentively gathers
all our tears and holds us as we weep—“Yet not my will, but Your will, be
done.” May we be so conformed to Christ,
the Obedient One Who was “obedient unto death” (Phil. 2:8), that we consent to
be obedient unto sickness, as long as the Lord allows.
Mother Petra praying at the grave of Mother Alexandra (born Princess Ileana of Romania), the foundress of The Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration, whose life and writing were significant in her own monastic formation.
Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me over the last three years since I entered the monastery. I'm so grateful for your support, and I am especially grateful to the nuns for all of their sisterly love, generosity, and prayer during my time in the monastery and now as I continue on. The last three years have been a tremendous gift. I love the nuns so much and so deeply appreciate my time at Christ the Bridegroom Monastery. Please continue to pray for me while I transition back into the world.
We are grateful for the years when we were blessed to share daily life with Olivia! She has our love and prayers as she continues to pursue the Lord.
Earlier in the month, Bishop Benedict (Venedykt Aleksiychuk) of Chicago graced us with his prayerful presence by bringing three of his priests to pray Vespers with us. We are grateful for the opportunity to pray with our fellow Eastern (Ukrainian) Catholic fathers and brothers!
Please remember our first ever Summer Picnic is coming up on Saturday, July 6—and you are invited! We’ll gather at the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch (across the street from the monastery: 17486 Mumford Rd., Burton, Ohio 44021) for Vespers at 4:30 p.m. in the outdoor chapel, followed by a picnic dinner. We’ll be happy to visit with you until around 8:30 p.m. For those who have never visited the monastery before, we’ll be glad to give you a brief tour of the monastery and chapel. Please bring your own picnic dinner and beverages. You may also want to bring a picnic blanket or lawn chairs in case we run out of room at the shrine’s picnic tables. If you plan to attend, RSP using this form so that we can have enough booklets available for Vespers and notify you if anything changes.
