Join us for our first fundraising event!

We're excited to invite you to "Mumford & Nuns" BBQ, our first fundraising event, on Saturday, July 11!  Enjoy a BBQ cookout, live music, monastery tours, a silent auction, raffles and more!  “Mumford & Nuns” BBQ is a “play on words” with the name of the popular band “Mumford & Sons” and will take place at the monastery (on Mumford Road!). The event is for adults 21 and older.

We are grateful to a committee of volunteers from Byzantine and Roman Catholic parishes in Northeast Ohio for suggesting and helping with this event. We think this will be a great opportunity for you to visit the monastery, pray with us, enjoy an evening out, have an opportunity to get to know us, and support monastic life during this Year of Consecrated Life.

Visit our BBQ page for more information and to purchase a ticket! Tickets are $60/person or $110/couple. Please purchase your ticket by June 30. We are also in need of table sponsors and event sponsors.

Here is a sneak peak at some of the silent auction items:

• An icon of Christ the Bridegroom hand-painted in the traditional egg-tempera style by postulant Moki Lonchyna
• Framed photographs by Fr. Patrick Anderson
• A dinner cooked for you, and up to six guests, by Mother Theodora
• Themed gift baskets

We hope you can join us for a great evening!

Girls' Camp registration is now open!

Teen girls!  It's time to sign up for Girls' Camp!  Our theme this year is "Beautifully Made.  Wholly Redeemed." 

Girls' Camp is open to girls 13-18.  The camp takes place here on the monastery grounds and is led by us and other young adult women.  The event is sponsored by the Eparchy of Parma Office of Vocations and provides an opportunity for teen girls to discover different vocations in the Church and develop a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.

For more information and to register, visit our Teen Girls' tab.  Be sure to register by June 15! Space is limited!  There is also a camp for boys 8-18, taking place at the same time across the street from us at the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch.  More information is available here. We will close the camp at the shrine with the boys and their families on Sunday, June 28, with a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy with Bishop John, followed by lunch.

Watch our short Girls' Camp video below to see what we do at Girls' Camp!



Click here to view photos from last year's camp

Happy 20th Anniversary of Orientale Lumen!

Today, May 2, the feast of St. Athanasius, is the day, 20 years ago, that St. John Paul II signed his Apostolic Letter Orientale Lumen ("Light of the East").  This letter inspired the foundation of our monastery and the writing of our typikon (rule of life)!

So this letter is a big deal for us, and we recommend that you read it! Why?

If you are an Eastern Christian, we recommend it because it helps us to better understand who we are, our dignity, our gifts and our place in the Church and the world. It also challenges us to pray and work toward the unity of the whole Church, East and West, which is urgently necessary as we face the many attacks against Christianity and the need to be a witness of love in the world. "They will know you are My disciples by your love for one another!" (Jn 13:35). How will the world embrace the truth of Jesus Christ if His body is divided?

If you are NOT an Eastern Christian, we recommend it because it was written for you!  We will use St. John Paul II's own words from the introduction of the document:

"Since, in fact, we believe that the venerable and ancient tradition of the Eastern Churches is an integral part of the heritage of Christ's Church, the first need for Catholics is to be familiar with that tradition, so as to be nourished by it and to encourage the process of unity in the best way possible for each. 

"Our Eastern Catholic brothers and sisters are very conscious of being the living bearers of this tradition, together with our Orthodox brothers and sisters. The members of the Catholic Church of the Latin tradition must also be fully acquainted with this treasure and thus feel, with the Pope, a passionate longing that the full manifestation of the Church's catholicity be restored to the Church and to the world, expressed not by a single tradition, and still less by one community in opposition to the other; and that we too may be granted a full taste of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church which is preserved and grows in the life of the Churches of the East as in those of the West."

So the purpose of this letter for all of us is nourishment and unity, no matter to what Tradition we belong.  And it's not very long! :)

Let's pray in a special way today for unity, so that we may be able to "offer ourselves to God with the pure hands of reconciliation, and the people of the world will have one more well-founded reason to believe and to hope" (Orientale Lumen, 28).