Camp Nazareth Groundbreaking!

MERCER, PA  [Camp Nazareth] -- On Thursday morning, October 18, 2015, a few priests and lay people gathered together at Camp Nazareth to celebrate the groundbreaking service for the beginning of the Camp’s Cabin Expansion Project. It turned out to be a beautiful day on which to celebrate outdoors and say the prayers together to begin this project.

The service was celebrated at the Holy Innocents Shrine. The Holy Innocents are the patron saints of the Camp itself. Their shrine is located in the grove of trees in front of cabins 4 & 5. The shrine was beautifully adorned with Fall plants and flowers; fitting for the task at hand. The service itself was beautiful. The Very Rev. Protopresbyter Kenneth Bachofsky, who is the Camp Overseer, mentioned after the service was over that St. Paul exhorts us to pray at all times, to pray constantly, as a way of both putting and showing our trust in God, and as a way of defeating the evil one. During the service, we prayed that God would bless our good intentions, that He would allow us to complete it without any obstacle, that He would guide our hands, that He would assign a guardian angel to banish every enemy and obstacle, and that He would see that the project was ordered in wisdom and end in perfection by the grace of His Holy Spirit. We were reminded by the Epistle from the Holy Apostle Paul to the Philippians that “…God is at work in [us], both to will and to work for His good pleasure” and we ask that we would work according to His will to build up this particular part of His Kingdom on earth which has been entrusted to us. The Gospel lesson in the service reminded us to ask, and seek and knock; to beseech God who is in heaven to bless and order this project according to His holy will. We must ask God to bless every aspect and part of this project. “You can do nothing without Me,” our Lord said, and the service reminded us that God has “…ordered us to do all things for [His] glory.” We believe and know these things with simple faith and simply by faith, and we go forward simply in faith trusting the word of God.

It was comforting to hear as we turned over the ground the cabin additions would be built on, that the ground was being “broken” (turned over) “…in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” How do we begin such a project in the Church where we have such high hopes? We begin by turning over the ground in the Name of our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A very humble beginning as it should be. There are great hopes for what the cabin expansion project will do for Camp and our campers, but we begin as we should, calling on God to bless, help, guide and protect us; humbly and with hope.