2025 Summer Retreat Spirituality Day (Friday)

This year we have a very exciting Spiritual day planned! As requested at previous retreats, we have tried to increase our integration of prayer into each of the days, but Friday will be our “pedal to metal” day for prayer and spirituality. 

As a general outline for the day, we will be following as best we can the Daily Office of the Byzantine Catholic Church that involves prayer services at various times of the day. For those that may not know, our monastics are following this schedule of prayer on a daily basis. It is rooted in the command of St. Paul to “pray without ceasing.” There are the hourly services-first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, in addition to vespers and matins. First hour takes place at sunrise, typically around 6 in the morning. Third hour is prayed at 9am, which is when we will begin our daily services. Sixth hour is at noon, and ninth hour is at 3pm. Vespers is prayed in the afternoon, matins in the morning. Many monasteries also pray the all-night vigil which is a blend of vespers and matins that very well last all night!

As stated above, we will have our first prayer service at 9am after breakfast. Following this we will have our keynote talk from Father Thomas Loya. We will follow this pattern of prayer and talks for most of the day. In the afternoon, we are planning to split up the women, to be led by Mother Natalia and Mother Cecilia of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and the men, to be led by Hieromonk Seoirse of Holy Resurrection Monastery. These speakers are Byzantine Catholic prayer and spirituality par excellence, and we are thrilled to have them join us and teach us about their experience with prayer. We will post biographies of each speaker in the coming weeks so you can get to know them better ahead of time.

We will round out the evening with an Akathist to the Mother of God which is one of the most prayerful and beautiful services in the Byzantine Catholic tradition. Our hope is that this “boot camp” style schedule will really help our retreatants immerse themselves into the depths of prayer and spirituality that our Church treasures so much. By praying alongside and learning from those that devote their entire lives to service to the Lord and others, we hope that we can all learn more fully just how to pray as the Lord calls us to.