Mariapoch draws highest turnout in years

Barbara Zaborowski from St. Joseph Parish in Brecksville, Ohio, was perhaps the person present having attended the most pilgrimages to the shrine.

Zaborowski recalls pilgrimages when the shrine was an outreach of St. John Hungarian Parish in Cleveland, before the eparchy assumed ownership in 1984. She said she has only missed one pilgrimage since the shrine began.

“This is the most people I’ve seen here in a while; I hope the bishop can keep up the unity,” she said.

Saturday highlights included Vespers and a campfire talk with Bishop Lach, as well as an Akathist, celebrated by Father Andrew Summerson. Sunday morning highlights included Matins, Slavonic Divine Liturgy, celebrated by Bishop Emeritus John Kudrick of Parma, and a rosary for the unborn prayed by the statue of Our Lady of Fatima on the shrine grounds.

In addition to paying homage to the Mother of God, the eparchial pilgrimage, Aug. 12-13, offered pilgrims the opportunity to meet and learn more about Bishop Lach, SJ.
Bishop Lach was the guest speaker during the Aug. 13 afternoon session of the pilgrimage. He spoke of his experience growing up and discerning his vocation in then-Czechoslovakia.

He began, however, by thanking the volunteers who organized the pilgrimage, calling it a “vocation of love, one to each other.”

Bishop Lach introduced himself to the people. He was born in 1973 into a Byzantine Catholic family in Kezmarok in the Tatra Mountains, located in present-day Slovakia. His family home was close to a river, so winters were occupied with ice hockey and summers with soccer. He has three brothers; one, Father Peter Lach, was present with him during his first few weeks in Parma.

Bishop Lach said like all families, they had tensions, but there was “space for forgiveness.” He said his family was hard-working; he was trained in humility and his family prayed together.

“Please pray together as a family,” he told the more than 200 pilgrims gathered. “Maybe 10 minutes a day to create unity, a nice example for children. Jesus Christ invites us to make praxis, not theory,” he said.

Bishop Lach very emotionally described his years of living under communism.
“Our church was destroyed completely,” he said. Then, in the 1968 “Spring of Prague,” the Byzantine Catholic Church was permitted to exist, to have its own bishops, he said.

At the age of 13 or 14, Bishop Lach said, he began to hear the call to the priestly vocation. Then a priest, Archbishop Jan Babjak, SJ, of Presov was his parish priest. Bishop Lach said he decided to be a priest “to help people, to be close to God.”

In 1989, a new period began for Czechoslovakia; travel was opened to Austria and people were able to return with religious items. Bishop Lach said until then he didn’t know anything about monasteries or monastic life. He had to decide whether to remain celibate or to become a married priest. His decision was to remain celibate.

“This was my way,” he said. He wanted to enter a religious order “but always to remain Byzantine Catholic. I cannot refuse my roots,” he said, citing that his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were all Byzantine Catholic.

In 2001, Bishop Milan was ordained a Greek Catholic Jesuit priest. In 2004, he studied in Rome at the Pontifical Oriental Institute; American Byzantine Catholic Jesuit and liturgist Father Robert Taft was among his teachers. In 2009, he returned to Slovakia and in 2013 was named auxiliary bishop for the Archeparchy of Presov.

During the question-and-answer period, Bishop Lach was asked about the cause for canonization for two Slovak Byzantine Catholic bishops, who were martyred during the communist era, Paul Gojdich and Basil Hopko, both from Presov.

Bishop Lach said there was a need to develop further the devotion to these two blesseds.
“We could make some pilgrimage here (in the United States) to Bishop Gojdich,” he said. “I invite you all to pray for some miracles to the martyred bishops.”

He said any parish priest could write to the archbishop of Presov to request a relic of the martyred bishops for veneration in the parish church.

At the conclusion of Bishop Lach’s talk, Father Dennis Hrubiak, assisted by Fathers Richard Plishka and Stephen Titko, administered the sacrament of anointing of the sick. The nuns of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery and Subdeacon Bryan Scotton led the singing of Marian hymns until the beginning of the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy.

The new icon of Our Lady of Mariapoch led the entrance procession for the Divine Liturgy. The choir from St. Nicholas Parish, Barberton, Ohio, led the singing.

In his homily Bishop Lach spoke about the mother-child relationship and how people like to return home to their moms. In the same way, the pilgrimage is a way to come home to the Mother of God.

“We are here for the simple reason to say ‘Thank you, Mom. Mom, I have a problem; I need your help,’” he said.

Bishop Lach said Mary teaches her children how to listen to the Word of God.
“This is fundamental for all Christians — to listen to the Word of her Son. This is the answer to all the questions we have,” he said.

Others may offer solutions, but, he said we must be careful and ask, “Is this really good for us?” ( Read larger excerpts from his homily in the Voice of the Shepherd).

At the end of liturgy, shrine director Deacon Bill Fredrick thanked Bishop Lach, the volunteers and those in attendance.

“This is a new part of the history of the shrine,” he said, adding that the new icon will be available for parish visits after the shrine season ends.

Bishop Lach then thanked Deacon Fredrick, volunteers and benefactors for the care of the shrine.

Following liturgy, pilgrims stayed for food and fellowship.

Patricia Johnson, from Holy Protection of the Mother of God Parish in Morgantown, West Virginia, came to the pilgrimage for her fifth year, bringing four of her eight family members. She said the pilgrimage was as beautiful as always.

“It was great to meet the new bishop; I think he will serve us well. The way things are going now, we may need someone like him to lead us,” she said.

Teens Georgianna Hartung and Maryanna Masters attended the youth activities provided by Christ the Bridegroom Monastery during the pilgrimage.

“It was a lot of fun; the nuns are always the best,” said Hartung from St. Barbara Parish in Dayton, Ohio.

Caption 1: Leading the procession for the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch Aug. 13 in Burton, Ohio, Deacon Daniel Surniak (in blue vestments) helps to carry the new icon of Our Lady of Mariapoch commissioned for the shrine.
 
Caption 2: Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, was the guest speaker at the annual pilgrimage Aug. 13. He shared his experience of church and growing up under communism, how his vocation developed, and how things changed after the fall of communism.
 
Caption 3: Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, makes use of a microphone to share his vocation story around the campfire on the shrine grounds on the evening of Aug. 12.
 
As published in Horizons, Aug. 28, 2017.