Anna Kallis is our Woman of the Week, nominated for her work with Crossroad Institute and with the Myrrhbearers ministry at Saints Peter and Paul, Glenview, IL. We asked Anna to tell you about her journey to those positions. You see her here running a youth retreat back in 2017 for SS. Peter & Paul, which she included because she feels “it fully encapsulates the joy I feel when engaging with young people in our journeys of faith!”:
“I was raised in a very faithful home. We had a very full community that was the center of our lives. I had wonderful friends, and our church had wonderful youth ministry programs. I really needed these people and older mentors around me while I was growing up, and I was very blessed to have them.
“But as I grew up, I developed many questions about our faith, a faith that often felt rigid to me and even stifling at times. I had an opportunity to attend CrossRoad Summer Institute as a high schooler, but I did not want to go. My parents actually bribed me to go!! And when I got there, I experienced Orthodoxy more profoundly than ever before. It was very freeing, very powerful. I experienced the power of Christ’s love and forgiveness and recognized that His arms are open and holding us, inviting us to attend to the condition of our hearts. And, I also ended up with a lot more questions about Orthodoxy.
“At the time, I thought I wanted to go into business. My dad is a businessman, as are a lot of my family, but I could barely pass accounting in college. When I returned to Holy Cross for a CrossRoad alumni retreat, I was so drawn in by the content and had a lot of wonderful people around me who could answer my questions and engage with me in conversation. Back at college, I was determined to spend more time digging into this. I ended up spending a year at Hellenic College instead of studying abroad. I then graduated from Illinois Wesleyan, and decided to pursue seminary.
“I focused my studies on religious education and youth ministry. A part of me had always wanted to be a teacher but didn't think the school system was for me. I love working with and helping people, so youth ministry was a natural fit. That led me to where I am today! I’m grateful for the people around me who carried me through my journey and helped me grow. Faith has become such a stabilizing, peaceful part of my life.
“I also met my husband in seminary. I grew up in Chicago, and after we graduated he was assigned to my home parish. He is now assigned to Saint Andrew’s in the city, and I work part-time for Crossroad Institute while raising our two children.”
Axia!
We asked our Woman of the Week, Anna Kallis, to tell us more about the Myrrhbearers Ministry for girls to participate in the liturgy and other church services, and what that has meant to her parish. You see her here giving a Myrrhbearer’s training for the SS. Peter & Paul Myrrhbearers just before Holy Week (2023), and running a Telos workshop:
“There can be a misconception or misperception about the Myrrhbearers ministry, that we're pushing an agenda: that we think we need to bring the church into the 21st century or something. The actual point is to draw young people closer to Christ. There's no deeper agenda, no other motive. I try hard to take bias and ego out of what I do (although we can never do that perfectly). Because drawing closer to Christ and living in a Christ-centered community has given me so much peace, I want that for other people. That informs all my work for Crossroad and the Telos Project, and in our parish’s Myrrhbearers Ministry. (My husband and I also run another summer program called Lighthouse, which is all about grounding young people in Christ and community offering spaces where they can be supported, loved, nurtured, and formed in a positive way as they graduate high school and enter the next phase of life.)
“I am getting older, but I am aware of how young people engage in their daily life. I don't want to demonize phones and social media, but there are such massive forces pulling us away from what I think is reality, and numbing us. We are working against some powerful forces. The closer we can pull young people into what is actually happening in the liturgy, the more this is an equal and opposite force. It's not enough to put them in the pews: we need to put them close to the altar.“Some of the churches in Chicago are huge, and congregants are situated hundreds of feet away from the altar. Kids have no idea what's going on during liturgy. We aren’t singing communally, or we’re singing in a language they don’t understand. The liturgy is designed to be participatory. In order to get so much out of it, we need to engage in it. I think we especially need to find more creative ways to engage young people. For us at Saints Peter and Paul, that has meant pulling both the boys and the girls into those spaces.
“Liturgy demands the whole person: body, mind, and spirit. Even if you think you're concentrating, you have to pay attention differently the minute you have to stand up and do something. At Saints Peter and Paul, we've always had a boy’s acolyte program, and now we've added the Myrrhbearers. On any given Sunday, we have about eight girls and boys that are serving, which means 16 young people in the altar on average. The total number of girls engaged in this program is probably 12 to 15. I feel like I've hardly lifted a finger to get girls involved in Myrrhbearers, but these 12 girls simply came on their own in response to an email. I've had moms say to me, “My daughters are dressed at 8:30, not just ready to go to church, but excited to go to church, without our having anything to do with it.” It's beautiful. They are fully engaged.
“Now that we’ve been assigned to Saint Andrew’s, we hope to bring a Myrrhbearers ministry here. My daughter is almost three years old, and my son is five. I love that my daughter has been watching the older girls participate, and knows them all. When the Great Entrance comes around, she’ll say, “Look, there's Father Rick, there's Deacon Ted,” and she loves the older girls and says their names as they go by. It's so amazing that she's having this experience as a three-year-old watching girls engaged in the liturgy this way. So I hope that by the time she gets a little bit older, she can have the same opportunity.”
As always, we asked our Woman of the Week, Anna Kallis, to tell us about her morning routine. She is also sharing photos of her prayer corner and her family on the beach:
“Anyone who knew me prior to having children would laugh at this question, because I used to have zero morning routine. I hated mornings! But since the early hours have become the only time I can get things done, I've actually developed quite a morning routine. Right now, I wake up an hour before my kids get up. I have a little coffee and breakfast. I try to read the daily reading or listen to a little bit of a book, something edifying. Then I work out for half an hour. When I come back, my husband has fed the kids their breakfast–and then we go from there.”
Thank you, Anna!