This month, we’ll be welcoming thousands of friends, neighbors and visitors to our parish for this long-awaited, much-anticipated festival. It’s a tremendous amount of work to prepare for, which spans the whole year and not only weeks or months, and it’s also a tremendous joy. What could be more Christian than practicing true hospitality, welcoming old friends and new, and basically sharing our Church and community spirit with so many people?

Yes, we must allow ourselves to take joy in this. After so many hours of preparation—personal and community sacrifices—to finally sit back, laugh, enjoy old friends and new, and take joy in having done the Lord’s work.

Let me share some personal joy with you—a little story that may illustrate just how important our Festival is to the heart, mission and real meaning of our parish community. At last year’s festival, there was a constant swarm of people touring the Church. Having the doors wide-open throughout the festival equated to a brilliant, passive outreach effort. Of the many enjoyable people I met, one made a particular impression.

She was a wife and mother in her early 40s, visiting us from out of state, who shared with me that, although she was “cradle Orthodox,” she had not been in Church for over twenty years. She told me that being here, now, amid the candles, sweet incense, and beauty of our iconography, made her really think about her life. In the presence of the saints, she was moved to think about many things, right there, right then. With eyes filling with tears, she wondered: What had she been pouring energy into over the last two decades? Where was her anchor; why did she feel empty so often; why had she kept herself from the faith; what would her beloved yia-yia—who loved the Church so much—think of her life if she were still alive? She even asked, with still more tears, if I believed God still loved her.

I told her what I thought the truth of these things was, and that I was very sure of one thing: God’s love for her. I told her that this was a day of rejoicing—that she had come home. That He never forgets his children. I told her that’s it’s never too late to start over, to re-connect with something precious that was once lost … and now found. I told her there was something very wonderful inside of her. I told her that it’s good to finally come home. She agreed.

Just before she left, she placed a little tulip in front of the icon of the Dormition on the icon screen. She said she hoped the Virgin would pray for her, and that I would too. I left that little flower right where she left if for weeks. When there wasn’t much left of it, I sprinkled the remains into the burning censer, offering her little flower—and our mutual prayers—to the Lord.

I prayed for her then; I pray for her now.

This is why our festival is important to me. This is why the self-sacrificing work our community does in preparation is all worth it. This is why I’m looking forward to October 12th and 13th. This is why I take joy in what’s coming. I’m sure you agree.