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| Praying the Akathist |
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| Trying to keep warm! |
We traveled to Washington, DC, last weekend with the ByzanTEENS for Life to participate in the March for Life. Traveling with a Byzantine Catholic group is a unique experience that most marchers don't witness, so here are a few things we do: sing our traditional Marian hymns on the bus to practice for the March, sing Marian hymns the entire time we are marching and carry icons and icon banners, pray the Akathist to the Mother of God with our bishop at the end of the March by the Supreme Court building, get herded away by the police because we are the last ones there because our prayers are so long..., visit the Ukrainian Catholic seminary and sing a few hymns in their chapel, head to Holy Transfiguration Melkite Catholic parish where we will stay for the night, pray Compline in the church before going to bed, pray Third Hour in the church in the morning, pray Great Vespers with our bishop in the Byzantine-Ruthenian chapel in the crypt of the National Basilica and attract the attention of other pilgrims by all our awesome singing, pray Compline again at Holy Transfiguration parish, witness an adult baptism at Holy Transfiguration parish on Sunday morning and participate in the parish's amazing Divine Liturgy (both of these together being about three hours), and board the bus and sing "God grant you many years" in thanksgiving to the parish for our stay. Well, we did some other things too...but these are the ones that make our trip truly unique, and as some would say, hard-core! It was a blessing to be able to participate in this pilgrimage with this great group of teenagers and to pray hard for the end to abortion and for the protection of all human life. Keep an eye out for episode 3 of "LIVE from Mumford Rd"...we'll share some of our video footage so that you can have a little taste of the Byzantine March for Life experience!
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| Praying Compline (Night Prayer) at Holy Transfiguration Parish |
Beautiful! Reminds me of an unplanned trip back from WYD '93 on the Byzantine bus....not unlike an evening in Taize, but harder corps on the hours, like into the wee! Ride on, Christian soldiers :):):)
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