For Ukrainian Orthodox in U.S., war casts a pall

Hearts break here over reports of genocide, brutality

The rituals leading up to Easter are the same. The solemn Good Friday processions. The Holy Saturday blessings of foods avoided during Lent. The liturgies accompanied by processions, bells and chants.

But while Easter is the holiest of holy days on the church calendar, marking the day Christians believe Jesus triumphed over death, many members of Ukrainian Orthodox churches across the United States are finding it difficult to summon joy at a time of war.

Many are in regular contact with relatives or friends suffering amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“This is a very strange Easter for us,” said Rev. Richard Jendras, priest at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Allentown, Pa. “It should be a joyous holiday, and it’s all about new life, and yet here we are being confronted with the harbingers of murder and killing and genocide and death.”

Many believers “are walking around like zombies,” he said. “We are going through the motions of Easter right now because it’s what we have to hang on to.”

His cathedral is part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA.

Most Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter last Sunday, but Eastern Orthodox are celebrating this Sunday. They use a different method of calculating the date for the holy day.

Some Ukrainian Catholics, particularly in Ukraine itself, also are celebrating this Sunday. But many Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S. celebrated last Sunday.

Among those celebrating Easter last weekend were congregants at Transfiguration of Our Lord Ukrainian Catholic Church in Shamokin, Pa., one of the oldest surviving Ukrainian Catholic churches in America.

Their priest, the Rev. Mykola Ivanov, 41, came from Ukraine in 2005. His elderly parents are in Lviv, which has been thronged with refugees from elsewhere in Ukraine; his older brother is fighting with the Ukrainian army on the eastern front.

At every Mass since the war started, the service has included a “Prayer for Ukraine.”

For Orthodox Ukrainians, Easter is being marked on both sides of the battle lines. Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion in Ukraine and Russia, as well as in several neighboring lands. A schism among Ukrainian Orthodox — with one group asserting independence and the other historically loyal to the patriarch of Moscow — has reverberated worldwide amid competing claims of legitimacy. But the two main Orthodox bodies in Ukraine have both fiercely opposed the Russian invasion.

In the United States, many people with ties to Ukraine are monitoring the war closely and sending funds there, said Andrew Fessak, president of the board of trustees at St. Volodymyr.

While Orthodox in America can celebrate freely, “our relatives and friends in Ukraine are under pressure from an invading army and aren’t as free to celebrate as they wish,“Fessak said. “They may not be able to get to churches. They may not be able to walk about town like they wish. They may not be able to have traditional foods they might have on Easter.”

And yet he takes heart in the strength of the Ukrainian resistance.

“The Ukrainian population has shown they are highly keen on retaining Ukrainian independence,” he said. “That’s at least a strong comfort to us, to see there is such a strong civic pride and sense of patriotism.”