Letter from Ukraine
Some members of McDougall United Church attended a service at St. Stephen Protomaryr Ukrainian Catholic Church on March 18, 2022 in support of Ukraine. The letter that follows was written anonymously about the situation in Ukraine. Father Michael Bombak from St. Stephen Protomartyr RC church passed it along.
Goodness, Truth and Beauty
Michael Bombak
Moleben for Ukraine / Goodness; Truth; Beauty; Anxiety
I received this message from a Canadian-born friend who lives in Kyiv with his family and with whom I made a pilgrimage to Constantinople many years ago. This message was written by an anonymous author on behalf of the Ukrainian people. The original in Ukrainian has gone viral inside the country – it evocatively captures the resolve, anger, frustration, empathy, and determination of every Ukrainian fighting today for their right to live in freedom.
Greetings world!
I know you're watching us. I can see you’re looking at us with the frightened eyes of Poland. With the dithering gestures of France. With the calculated deliberation of Germany. With the nervous cries of Latvia. With the fidgeting and twitching of Hungary. With the sighs and shrugs of Italy. With the deaf silence of Israel. With the far away cries of Canada and the US. And through the eyes of hundreds of other countries...
You watch awkwardly and frequently gaze downward. Especially when you see us leaning over to protect our children during incessant rocket attacks. And, when you finally do dare to raise your eyes - you look amazed! You glance at each other in wonder and ask, what kind of a country is this? She endures a storm of ‘Grad’ (hail) rockets, and she remains standing. She is wasted with cruise missiles, and she still stands. She suffers endless barrages of tank shells, and she remains standing. Meanwhile, she’s offered polite consolations of, “I’m very, very sorry and deeply concerned, but….” Ukraine turns away saying, “Thanks, I’ve got to go now as I’ve got planes to shoot down.” They press a nuclear button between her eyes, and she laughs and silently goes about making her next batch of Molotov cocktails…the Ukrainian version called ‘Bandera smoothies’.
The world holds its breath…and buys iodine in panic. Ukraine remains standing. What kind of iron forged this country? What was in her mother's milk? What do thousands of volunteers feed their soldiers?
You think you know, but really you don't. And we probably didn’t know either. Till now. We didn’t know we had such strength. Such power. And such love. It was always there. It simply lay under the ruins of years of soviet misery, the myth of a ‘Russian world’, the feathers of ‘doves of peace’ and countless other manifestations of ‘soviet love’. She lay waiting to explode. But not with fear. Fear is what you, the world, feels today. But we feel something different.
We feel rage. For every child killed. For every mutilated fate. For every destroyed city. For every ruined future. And this rage gives us strength.
We feel truly liberated. For the first time. In the truest, most visceral sense of the word. Serrated and fearless. We feel naked, vulnerable - and at the same time filled with such powerful freedom. And this freedom gives us strength.
We feel love. Oh, how we feel love! When there’s no difference between close friends and strangers. When everyone is family. When millions of hands methodically pave the way to victory, each in their own way. And this love gives us strength.
So don’t be afraid world. We’ve got your back. And if you’re too ashamed to ask, we’ll say it ourselves: "Yes, spring will finally come, and it will be yellow and blue". Regardless of whether you're afraid or not.
What can we do? Reverence the truth, desire goodness, rejoice in the beautiful
1. Reverence the Truth
• Those who hear the truth hear Christ’s voice
• The truth will set us free
• The truth is at stake in our confused world- especially when lies, propaganda and misinformation keep us in chains.
Not a new war
• From 1946-1991 the UGCC was the largest illegal Church in the world.
• All but one of her heirarchs died either in the gulags (Soviet concentration work camps) or as a result of the conditions and torture they were exposed to there.
• Many Russian Orthodox priests and bishops who refused to play ball with the regime also died alongside our Ukrainian heirarchs.
• My great uncle spent ten years in a Siberian gulag after being discovered as a seminarian and related the story to me of how his friend needed to “hug him back to life” in order for him not to die of exposure and hypothermia.
• This situation is repeating itself now with the lack of basic needs being met and civilian infrastructure knocked out and civilians being bombed and shot.
• We cannot afford to forget this history or to see what is happening here today as an “isolated historical event”
• The Soviet Union is responsible for the deaths of millions of people through the planned and purposeful abuse of their human dignity. It’s desolution was a war for re-establishing human dignity through the Solidarity movement. “Solidat” in Polish- Inspiried in no small way through the preaching work of St. John Paul II.
• This desolution of this regime has been called by Putin the “greatest tragedy of the 20th century” in his public address of 2005.
• I consider it a great mercy that my grandparents were taken by the Lord before they could see what has happened to Ukraine since this time.
How do we reverence the truth?
1. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger- Righteous anger can easily turn to hatred. Hatred only serves our enemy- the Father of Lies.
• Dante- those repenting of anger subjected to smoke- blinds and chokes. Makes them ineffective.
2. Speak the truth-
• Avoid euphemisms- words have power. God created the world through His Word.
• This is not a “conflict” or a “special military operation” it is an invasion, a war, an injustice.
2. Desire Goodness
• Despite all the suffering that Ukraine has undergone through the second world war and the Soviet yoke, faith and piety have been on the rise steadily since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
• The Lord promises that he will work everything to the good for those who love Him.
• I don’t know how this will be worked, but I have seen goodness prevail over the suffering in the past- the Lord will work it again!
Anawim
• Shouldn’t come as a surprise for us- anawim, humiliati, God is the champion of the widow and the orphan. He loves the underdog.
How do we desire goodness?
• Hope over fear
3. Rejoice in the Beautiful
• Rejoice in the work already done- incredible
• We are not powerless- this is a lie from the devil
Let the news inform not inhibit
• Fear porn- easy to get sucked in to this.
• God pleasing religion is protecting the orphan and widow- not worrying about them
• The Lord was “moved with compassion” and then did something about it.
• “Worrying” is not a virtue- it is not a corporal or spiritual work of mercy.
• It is a necessary start but a tragic ending- The Lord will not tell those on his right and left “I was left orphaned and you worried, I was widowed and you thought about me.”
• We are commanded to pray we are forbidden to worry.
If we follow the paths of goodness, truth and beauty we find that at the end of them stands the God-Man Jesus Christ. He is the only answer to this war and the ultimate battle of good and evil. Let us continue to implore Him through the intercession of His mother for the people of Ukraine, and let us be not hearers only of His word but doers in supporting his brothers and sisters, “the least of these” in Ukraine.