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From July 28–August 3, seventeen young adults from the Orthodox Church in America participated in SUPRASL Summer 2026, the fifth annual international gathering of Orthodox youth held at the Monastery of the Annunciation and the Supraśl Academy in Supraśl, Poland.
The gathering brought together some 85 participants from more than two dozen countries including Australia, Palestine, and several European countries for a week of prayer, friendship, service, and creative exploration around the theme “Image and Likeness: Creation and Creators.” The theme was chosen in connection with the 130th anniversary of the birth of Saint Sophrony of Essex and his teaching on the human person as created in the image of God and called to grow into His likeness.
The OCA encouraged its young adults to participate and made scholarship funding available for one participant from each diocese. The seventeen young adults were part of a 23-member OCA group that also included His Grace Bishop Gerasim of Fort Worth, Locum Tenens of the Diocese of the South; Archpriest Gregory and Matushka Miho Ealy of Saint Paul Orthodox Church in Dayton, OH; and their children.
“SUPRASL offers something that is difficult to replicate within our normal youth and young adult ministry,” said Archpriest Justin Patterson, Project Manager for the Departments of the OCA. “These international connections can help us cultivate the future lay and clergy leadership of our Church, while also giving our young people an experience of Orthodoxy beyond the borders of the United States.”
For Orthodox young adults from North America, SUPRASL offers a distinctive experience within the Orthodox world: international fellowship, theological and cultural education, monastic and liturgical life, practical service, and the opportunity to encounter Orthodoxy in a setting far beyond one’s own local experience.
This year’s workshops approached the theme through poetry, music, photography, theology, culture, ethics, and attentive vision. Father Gregory Ealy explored the poetic structure of Orthodox hymnography, while Matushka Miho Ealy spoke about growing up Orthodox in Japan. Zoran Matić, Serbia, introduced participants to the music and spirituality of Arvo Pärt; Georgia Gleoudi, Greece, led “PhotoVoice,” a workshop on learning to see through photography; Ioanna Knights, Greece, considered how the ways in which we see shape the ways in which we live; and Athanasios Kelpis, England, led a discussion on responsibility titled “It’s Always Someone Else’s Fault.”
A distinctive feature of the gathering was a four-day iconography workshop led by Sophronia Kelpis of Essex, England. Participants painted the Icon of Christ Made Without Hands, slowly contemplating the face of Christ through patience, attention, prayer, and the repeated act of looking.
The week also included a “Human Library,” in which participants became “books” and shared their lived experiences through small-group conversations centered on listening rather than debate. Participants spent two afternoons painting the monastery fence, continuing a service project begun in 2025, and joined hundreds of local faithful for the parish feast of the Holy Prophet Elijah in Białystok.
SUPRASL 2026 was the first gathering at which a bishop participated for the entire week. Bishop Gerasim shared meals and conversations with participants, attended workshops, joined in the cultural evening, and offered a question-and-answer session on questions of faith, responsibility, and discerning the will of God.
“One of the most valuable takeaways was that participants came from so many different countries,” Bishop Gerasim reflected. “It highlighted an important point: being an Orthodox Christian does not depend on belonging to any one national culture. SUPRASL placed no emphasis on such categories, and our cultural night was an excellent illustration of this. Sharing and fellowship took place throughout the gathering, and people came to know one another gradually.”
The international character of the gathering was especially evident during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy at midnight, when hymns and responses were sung in a dozen languages. The experience provided a tangible reminder that the Orthodox Church is at once local and universal.
For Hannah Lee, an OCA participant from Dallas, Texas, the experience was transformative.
“I had an incredible time at SUPRASL,” she said. “I knew going in that it would be a great time, but wow, SUPRASL truly exceeded any expectations that I had. It truly changed me and how I interact with others.”
For Samuel Estrada of Bethesda, Maryland, SUPRASL was “a place of growth where my sense of duty, faith, and respect for diverse traditions truly took root.”
“Sharing those few days with other young Orthodox Christians from all over the world reminded me that I’m never alone,” he said. “I found a community where we can understand and uplift one another and be bound together in the love of Christ.”
The gathering also encouraged OCA participants to reflect on what Orthodoxy in North America can contribute to the wider Church.
“It was really encouraging to me to see how interested people are in Orthodoxy in America,” said Hannah, a participant from Billings, Montana. “It made me feel that we have something real to offer the Orthodox world, even if we are younger and smaller.”
For Nathan of Falls Church, Virginia, the gathering’s importance was particularly evident in the connections it created among young people from places where the Orthodox Church is small.
“I really appreciate SUPRASL’s vision of being a place for people who fall between the cracks—if there’s not a strong Church in the country where they live, or if there’s simply no youth ministry in the church they attend,” he said. “I saw a lot of people at SUPRASL coming from countries that don’t have a large Church, and that was something really special.”
Father Gregory Ealy’s participation connected the gathering with an earlier generation of OCA international youth ministry. Father Gregory participated in an OCA-sponsored youth camp in Moscow in 1992 and in the SUPRASL Summer Institute, the forerunner of today’s gathering, in 1998.
“These events have left a lasting impression on me,” Father Gregory said. “It was great to see that the same spirit and connections people forged back then are still being made today. If the experiences that affected me so positively are now affecting others in the same way, I think it points to great things ahead for the Church. Honestly, I was very, very encouraged by everything.”
Founded in 2022, SUPRASL creates spaces of encounter where Orthodox Christian young adults from around the world can experience the unity of the Church as a lived reality and be formed to serve Christ and His Church. It offers young Orthodox Christians the opportunity to see one another not simply as representatives of jurisdictions, nationalities, or cultures, but as fellow members of the Body of Christ. SUPRASL works with the blessing of Orthodox hierarchs around the world, but does not belong to any one local Church and maintains constructive relations with the leaders of all Orthodox Churches.
Perhaps most importantly, it offers young Orthodox Christians the opportunity to see one another not simply as representatives of jurisdictions, nationalities, or cultures, but as fellow members of the Body of Christ. Commenting on this workshop leader Georgia Gleouid noted, “what united them was not a shared nationality or profession. It was something far more difficult to define: a desire to encounter one another beyond labels, assumptions and first impressions.”
Drawing on the teaching of Saint Sophrony, Archdeacon Joseph Matusiak, Director of SUPRASL, told participants at the beginning of the gathering that every human being is “an unrepeatable mystery—not a category, not a stereotype, not a profile, not a role: a mystery.”
That conviction shaped the week at SUPRASL and, for many of the young people who participated, may prove to be one of its most lasting gifts.
To learn more about SUPRASL, including its new residential gap-year initiative, The Meadow, and how to become involved, click here.
Download a PDF of SUPRASL’s Impact Report and Proposal for Further Development, a participant list, and verbatim excerpts from the Focus Group.
