Shcho to za Predivo: What a wonder! Glad the news I bring you

Every so often I find a carol or hymn in another language that appears not to have a translation that would enable it to be sung in English.

Among the abundant patrimony of Christmas carols, in which the culture of Ukraine abounds, especially among the Greek Catholics, is this poignantly tender and beautiful beautiful meditation on the news that the Virgin who has given birth to Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man, is also the first to adore him; how Joseph who is identified as an old man helps to bring in the newborn Christ as Saviour. It also hints how the mother who holds Jesus in the swaddling clothes will one day hold him when he is taken down from the Cross, to be wrapped this time in graveclothes. Yet she does not weep for the loss of her own son alone, but loves the Son who has come as the Lord himself, the Saviour of all.

It is not easy to translate from Ukrainian metre into English verse, as the patterns of the languages, and thus who they are sung, are different. But I hope this offering, with a few rhymes within, will work and enable people to sing with the Christians of Ukraine with tenderness and adoration - and indeed faith and hope. A YouTube link to a lovely rendering of it by a student choir in America, to the setting by Vasyl Barvinskiy, is here:

The translation, such as it is, I dedicate to me dear friend and fellow pilgrim in Australia - Sister Marie Farrell rsm.

Hristos rozhdayetsya! Christ is born: Happy Christmas.

Glad the news I bring you:

"Earth to joy restored;

For to you a Saviour,

Christ is born, our Lord."

See the holy Virgin Mary,

She who bore Him, then adore Him:

“Jesu, my dear Son!”

 

In that cave the old man,

Joseph, see prepare

cloths, to swathe Messiah, 

Jesu, with all care.

Mary mild see in them fold Him,

to her heart more closely hold Him,

Pure Mother of God.

 

Ukrainian traditional carol for the Nativity of Christ. Translation © Mark Woodruff 23.12.2022

The Great Martyr: Sermon on Low Sunday and the Feast of St George, Parish Church of St George, Hanover Square, London W1, 24th April 2022

Christ is risen!

So little is known of St George that in the 1960s his feast was downgraded in the Calendar of the Roman Church and it was even suspected that he may have been legendary. But surely that is the point of our following Jesus Christ, that it is not for our achievements and significance that we are remembered, but simply for taking up our Cross after him, faithful unto death. So it is for this that he is venerated in the Christian East, as one of those known as the Great Martyrs on account of their exceptional witness to Christ, in the face of exceptional barbarity.

This was a career-soldier of such great skill, integrity and loyalty that he served in the elite guards of the Emperor Diocletian in the late third century. Diocletian was an able ruler and military leader, bringing peace and stability to the vast empire under tensions within and from without. Yet economic and political problems shadowed the image of an all-competent autocrat, and it was convenient to blame religious minorities for supposedly undermining the imperial administration. You can imagine George’s pride in his part in restoring law and order in the Empire, and the despatch of its external enemies under Diocletian’s generalship. George would have been a man set for great things, as his service record extended with further honours and rising prospects for promotion in the Praetorian Guard. Except, that he was a Christian. Previously his problematic religion may have been tolerated; but now it was to blame for poor government performance, according to those who spin popular opinion. It seems that George had earlier come to Diocletian’s favourable attention, since, after the official exclusion of Christians had begun in earnest in 302, followed by outright persecution in 303, Diocletian and his officials may have sought to retain him, while others were put to the sword. Privations and tortures in mounting severity were meant to deter him from his Christianity; easing them an incentive to embrace the official Roman religion and its cult of the Emperor. You may imagine his protest of unimpeachable loyalty, and his appeal to his exemplary service record. There is even a story of the Empress Alexandra, and how the brutality led her first to admire the dignity and loyalty of the soldier who had done nothing to deserve such dishonour, and then to recognise the power of his faith in Christ as her own.

Not more than a few hundred yards from this Church is the road along which Christian martyrs were carted for many decades from Newgate prison at the City of London to their cruel dismemberment and execution at Tyburn, protesting their loyalty to England and to Queen Elizabeth I, but rejected as traitors for being Catholics and priests, such as I am. We know from contemporary accounts how many of them were loved as pastors and holy people by the wider population, not just the Catholic community. We also know that these martyrdoms, whatever the exuberance of some elements in the crowds, were also observed with silence and grave respect by others. I should recall that the executions of Protestants under Queen Mary were no less ill-advised and repellent to humane Catholics, who no more sought for the Reformation Protestants the violent repression that their co-religionists had endured under Henry VIII and Edward VI and would again endure under Elizabeth. By the time St George’s was built, England had exhausted itself of religious blood-letting and civil war. St George’s was to provide a new sacred space of godly learning and glorious music, especially that of Händel, that has been part of the shaping of our nation’s culture and Christian civilisation. Even while penal restrictions on Catholic Christians persisted, another nearby sanctuary of God’s adoration and freedom in the Holy Spirit arose for Catholics, at the Church of the Assumption and St Gregory on Warwick Street. Today we address our differences with the honest reconciliation of memory, and the practice of ecumenism and friendship, as well as in united service of those in need. We realise that we do not defend separate sides but are heirs to a history held in common. We are able to love, because we have been all been brought to our knees by the suffering of those who went before us, whose lives were called out of their bodies for being faithful to Christ, and because the hardness of heart in all of us has been melted by beauty and forgiveness, in worship and its music.

Both St George’s and the Assumption quietly stand in monumental witness to what has been sacrificed for faith in the past, and what is held in store for those who hope and trust. As St James has reminded us this morning, “The trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire” (James 1. 3-4). St George was certainly patient in his faith sorely tried in 303. His remains are venerated to this day in the Holy Land, and the crown of a life made perfect and entire is his. In his company are the martyrs whose relics are enshrined at Tyburn Convent, St John Southworth at Westminster Cathedral, and those Reformers whose memorials stand close to Smithfield at St James’s, Clerkenwell.

Yet these are not remembrances of death, but of life. The feast of St George that we celebrate today has fallen in the Octave of Easter; and he and they are witnesses that all who have been baptized into Christ, were “baptized into his death, thus buried in order to be raised with Him from the dead through the glory of the Father, and walk in newness of life” (Romans 6. 3-4). The remains of St George at Lod and of the saints in all kinds of other shrines, together with all the Churches raised in their honour, are not memorials to a life that receded into the past, but they are, so to speak, relics of Christ’s act of resurrection and edifices of the Kingdom that is now and for ever. For “every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (John 15.2). Our holy and honoured martyrs and heroes were not destroyed, but made fruitful for more vigorous growth and enduring life: life that is not mere survival in this world, but the fulness of life in eternal heaven lived now upon temporary earth.

Today in our Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, owing to ancient calendrical calculations by which we and the West over time fell out of step, it is Pascha, Easter Day. We sing, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs giving life.” We are singing this dozens of times today because yesterday we sang, “Today the Abyss sighed and cried out, My power has been destroyed. For I received a dead Man as one of their dead, but I could not hold Him. Then I also lost with Him all those who were under His power. From the beginning I held the dead, but now this One raises them. Glory to Your Cross and resurrection, O Lord.”

I cannot fail to recall those people who are our fellow Christians in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the Reformed Baptist Church, Ukrainian Jews and Muslims, and other Ukrainian people, all of whom have done nothing wrong and provoked nothing, but only served and lived, like St George, with faithful love, integrity, and loyal virtue. This week we have heard of horrific sexual attacks inflicted upon children, women and even young soldiers taken captive. Several of our churches around the world have been desecrated, and a priest managed to save his children with only moments to spare after his wife was woken and saw an intruder light petrol poured through their door while they slept. At the beginning of Lent, a priest was confronted at gunpoint by a soldier pretending to be a monk ordering him to abandon his Catholic faith by either becoming Russian Orthodox or a pagan, saying, “It makes no difference”. And at the end of Lent on Good Friday, a car was driven at speed right into our cathedral at Ternopil, destroying the Cross and the Shroud of Christ that we lay out for the people who pour out their love and devotion before them.

We have no argument with our Russian and Russian Orthodox friends - our people wish they had no argument with us. What we cannot understand is why Christian hearts, after the receding past of enmity and estrangement, should abandon the dialogue of love and instead turn on other Christians, harming the innocent on the days of Christ’s own trials, even on the feast when He brings nothing but life and peace - and not destruction, but salvation and his own divine beauty. St George’s is a haven of this beauty that saves the world, a potent symbol of faithful discipleship in the footsteps of Christ, and the beacon of St George its patron who followed Him as far as death and into the kingdom of life that is everlasting. So may St George, who is also the patron of this our beloved homeland, as well as patron of the City of Moscow, by his patient endurance, by the perfection with which he was crowned, pray for those entrusted to his intercession, break the hearts of those who have chosen to be evil, and share with them the gift he himself has received – peace and resurrection, and the life of a Kingdom that is not of this world but which we pray every day will come on earth as it is in heaven.

St George the Great Martyr, pray for us. Glory to England. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory for ever. Christ is risen.

Music: Prayer for Ukraine

Here are again are the Latin-script transliteration and my attempt at a verse translation of the Prayer for Ukraine, Ukraine's national spiritual anthem, by Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900).

Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Voli i svitu prominnyam,
Ty yii osiny.

Svitlom na-uky i znannya
Nas, ditey, prosvity,
V chystii liubovi kraiu,
Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.

Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,
Ty na liud nash zverny.

Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,
Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,
Dai, Bozhe, narodu
I mnohaia, mnohaia lita.

Translation:

Lord, God alone, the Almighty,

Hold our Ukraine in your hand;

Shine with the rays of your glory

Liberty on our land.

 

Lighten our learning and wisdom,

Keep your children in your heart;

Love that is pure for our homeland,

Lord our God, now impart. 

 

Merciful God, the Almighty,

Guard our Ukraine in your care.

Turn to our people and country,

Send your grace at our prayer.

 

Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,

Guide all our endeavour;

Bless us, God, our land and people,

And grant us many, many years, for ever.

Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959- ). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.

Here is the music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912) with the Latin-script text in Ukrainian.

Here is the music with the English translation.

Glory to Jesus Christ: The Church in Ukraine and its faithfulness to the Eucharistic Lord, Homily for the Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament, Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Maiden Lane, 3rd March, 2022

 + Glory to Jesus Christ!

Father Alan, whose birthday it is today - and we wish you many congratulations - asked me some weeks ago to preach on the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist from an Eastern Christian point of view and I prepared something. In light of the last seven days, I was not happy with it at all and I tore it up. So what I'm going to tell you about tonight comes straight from the heart of the Ukrainian Catholic Community in London, where I serve week by week, month by month.

I look after the Liturgies for English-speakers at the Cathedral of the Holy Family and I am a trustee of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy, on loan, so to speaks, as a priest of the Latin diocese of Westminster. I stand before you having come from that community in the most terrifying week since the fall of the Soviet Union when all hopes rose that the hell of communist persecution of Christians and the suppression of our Catholic Church was over for good. Yet now we face being back in 1944 when the empire of Russia at last managed to seize the whole of Ukraine and closed down our ancient Church and expropriated all its patrimony, its people, and martyred its bishops. In clear view of the threat to all Ukrainians, the Prime Minister came to us on Sunday to show his unequivocal support. Yesterday came the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to encourage us. It has been an amazing week, as the priests have been absorbing the anxiety of the people and their worries about their homes, their family, their loved ones, as well as their land and their future.

What I want to tell you about today, in describing what they have been going through, is why they are who they are and why they are important to the Roman Catholic Church - because this is one of two dozen other churches that are much smaller than the Latin Catholic Church, but are full Churches in their own right in fullness of Communion with it and, through the Church of Rome led by the successor of Peter, all  with one another. I hope you will understand, as I set out some of the history and some of the recent stories of people, why this Church and our union of East and West is so important; and furthermore why it is the Blessed Eucharist that we share with each other as fellow Catholics (in the hope of Union with the Orthodox too) that is the centre of our lives, and why it is the shining light, bringing brilliance from another world into this dark period.

Most people tend to think that the East is a separate church - the Orthodox Church. Well, the lands that we now call Ukraine, along with other parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, were evangelised in the 9th century in a joint mission from Rome and Constantinople - the Church of the East and the Church of the West together, but from out of the Greek Christian culture. Part of the reason for this was because the Slavic people did not want to be dominated by the Western Christians rulers in Germany, which would have been easier if they were to become Latins like them. They wanted a Christian religion, culture and form of worship of their own. Thus it was that in the year 868 Pope Adrian blessed the books in the Slavonic language that had been prepared by SS. Cyril and Methodius, whom you may remember were made joined patrons of Europe along with St Benedict by Pope St. John Paul II.

This evangelisation had been under way, extending well into Ukraine when In the year 987, the Grand Prince of Kyiv, which is at the centre of the land called Rus’ (a word from which we later derived both the name of Ruthenia and Russia, even though it was appropriated by a new empire around Moscow to the exclusion of the original people around Kyiv), Volodymyr (also known as Vladimir) decided to pacify and unite the people under his rule in a single faith, and decided that, after decades of living and ruling as a pagan, he and they would be baptised as Eastern Christians. I am sure you have heard the famous story that he sent emissaries across the known world to assess which religion would be right.

He no longer saw that the love that the people held for their many and rival gods was a true and loving faith, as it was rooted in fear and violence rather than peace and good law. The emissaries examined the religion of the Muslims and Volodymyr rejected the prohibition of pork and alcohol. They considered the faith of the Jewish people, but reported that it not only prohibited pork but seemed to be missing the heart of its own religion with the loss of Jerusalem. They went to the Latin rite Germans and so no great beauty there. But from the Great Church in Constantinople - the vast Cathedral known as Hagia Sophia, that is now a mosque again, they returned with a report that, having witnessed their Divine Liturgy, “We no longer knew whether we were in Heaven or on Earth, nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it. We only know that God dwells there among the people, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations.”

When he heard this, Volodymyr knew that he had found the path forward to lead his realm and people in the faith of Christ. The following year, in the Greek city of Chersonesus, at the south-western tip of Crimea, Volodymyr was baptised before his people and married the sister of the Byzantine Emperor. In other words, he had received the gift of faith and thus for ever formed the Christian identity of Eastern Europe, by the pledge of grace that would come for him from the sacrament of the Eucharist.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!” (John 20.29)

Still at that moment, the churches of East and West in Europe were in union. Sadly, this disintegrated after the Great Schism began in 1054, and so developed a division of the Churches into Catholic and Orthodox. But the memory of the integrity of East and West remained foundational for both, and there were repeated attempts to achieve re-integration. Substantial misunderstandings grew about theology and language that have kept both traditions wary of what re-union might imply, as they seek to be faithful to the tradition they have received. In our century I believe we have become very close to solving them. There are semantic and doctrinal difficulties that need not, after all, be church-dividing and which can be put right with faithful mutual understanding.

Indeed, there was a major attempt at repair arising from the Council of Florence-Ferrara in 1439, but efforts to win its acceptance did not survive the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.  It was not, however, forgotten. When the Church of Kyiv and the surrounding Rus’ or Ruthenian regions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth found themselves variously threatened by Muslim forces from the south and east the other Orthodox, and also a new state that had freed itself from the Muslim yoke in the form of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, they strongly sensed isolation from other Orthodox churches and because of the missionary activities of both Latin Catholics and Protestants. They could not easily be in communication with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, the ancient mother Church, because he himself was under the control of the Ottomans. So, in 1596, the Church of the Rus’, with the support of Constantinople, decided that its future security and development lay in the restoration of the unity that they had had with the Church of Rome in the beginning, and hope for better days when the unity of all Catholics and Orthodox might be recovered. So began the Eastern Catholic Church in the east of Europe.

Over time, this unity with Rome of the Eastern Church in Kyiv which had originally covered Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and parts of what are now Poland and Russia, dissolved. First, Muscovy became the newly named Russian empire and absorbed the Rus’ lands, and imposed its own form of Orthodoxy on the Rus’, Ruthenian, Ukrainian people, out of communion with Rome. By the time of the 19th century, the remaining Greek Catholics – Orthodox Christians in communion with Rome - were confined to the west of what is now Ukraine, no longer in Communion with their fellow Byzantine Christians in the rest of the historic lands. Going forward to the Second World War, although it survived in the diaspora and underground, the continuance of this Church body in its homeland was no longer possible. With the invading Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church is imposed upon the Greek Catholics of all Ukraine. A false Greek Catholic synod is set up in Kiev in 1944, but without the Church’s bishops, who are puts into prison and concentration camps. The Soviets force the clergy to accept union with Moscow and to abandon centuries of Catholic communion. The bishops are martyred; their churches are taken away from the people as well as the practice of their Eastern Catholic faith; the seminaries are closed; the hospitals that the Church ran, all the aid and social agencies that the Church had built up were destroyed, or expropriated and given to another Church, or else given to profane use by the Communists. This is in living memory for some people. It is also living memory for some of our priests who were ordained in the catacombs to serve the faithful, meeting in the forests and cellars at the risk of their lives.

Just this last weekend, the priests were once again in people's basements, underground metro stations, or in forests away from the bombs, celebrating the Holy Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, for the faithful. Once again, the bishops have not escaped the threat of evil or left their people, standing with them and ready for what may come. Once again the people’s faith, even though it be suppressed, is strong, believing not against other Christians, but in favour of Catholic unity and the solidarity of the Church. In Ukraine for many years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has been at the forefront of building bridges and creating a “civilisation of love”, trying to make a just and truthful, independent and glorious society, that is not bowed under tyranny, but stands under the freedom of the rule of law, itself founded in the Christian virtues and goodness that our Church stands for and seeks to live by.

A few weeks ago, we managed to extract two of our seminarians, who are not Ukrainian - one British and one American – to bring them back here. They were meant to continue their studies here. Every day they have had their lectures and seminars from the seminary in a village outside Kyiv online. On Thursday, however, it became clear that the seminary could no longer continue on site. So we set up our own makeshift off-shoot seminary for them in London, and I am their spiritual director. They have been in daily touch with their confrères, and seen for themselves how the seminary has had to be abandoned for the time being in the face of the threat of invasion. The neighbouring village has already been destroyed, so this is a time of great danger for them. The villagers, who are mostly Orthodox, had turned to them because they knew they always had a welcome from the Greek Catholics; so the seminary has given the buildings over to the villagers as the basement can serve both for storage and a shelter from bombs. In return, the Orthodox people said to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic students, “Take our cars! Get away home to your family!” Some of the students have gone to Kyiv, just a few to the west, to be with our patriarch, the Archbishop, remaining with the people at the cathedral in Kyiv. Some of them have gone to seminaries in Ternopil and Lviv. Some others have joined units to fight for the defence of Ukraine, their homeland, thus to give spiritual support to the other soldiers. Some have gone to help at medical facilities, or to train as firefighters, or to other relief and rescue tasks.

You can imagine the frustration of our two seminarians in London. One of them, who was a journalist in the US before he began in seminary, asked for a blessing to go back to be with his fellow seminarians in what they were doing, but to offer his skills as an interpreter and journalist, so that the international press could show what is going on and the evil that is being perpetrated. The English seminarian is doing his part in supporting our London cathedral parish, helping the faithful in their prayers and hopes, and joining in the preparations for the many displaced people that we are expecting.

Why is all this important? It is not just a tale of exile. On Sunday, we heard that Father Maxime, an Orthodox priest, belonging to the Ukrainian, not the Russian-linked Orthodox Church, was found by Russian soldiers. When his identity and his Church was revealed, they killed him, a martyr for the sake of Christ, a priest who ministers at the Altar and feeds the faithful with the Body and Blood of Christ, which we have come here today to celebrate and to venerate. They did not even allow his body to be taken away for burial. Then yesterday, as the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall came to our Cathedral, we heard that a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, one of the brethren of the priests that I work with, was confronted by a soldier dressed up as a monk with a rifle, who said to him, “Renounce your Catholic faith and become Russian Orthodox. If you don't want to become Russian Orthodox, it makes no difference to us if you give up Christianity entirely and become a pagan. We don't care, as long as you are not a Catholic.” Thanks be to God, this man was a rogue and, when the people arrived, off he went and the priest’s life was saved. Also yesterday, after the Royal Couple had gone home, somebody turned up at our door -a refugee priest. He had been here to see his family in Manchester, and was now trapped able to get home to his wife and children. He speaks excellent English, so we are going to keep him, and try and get his family to England to be with him. But it gives you some idea of what is so deeply at stake.

Now I just want to approach the end by adding this point. I know a lot of traditional Catholics in this country have admired Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for his apparent alignment with the Orthodox faith, and his commitment to traditional Christian values, when he describes the West as abandoning them. The statistics on the protection of unborn children, marriage and divorce, poverty and the treatment of minorities and state repression of freedom and justice do not, however, bear out this presentation of a national Christian spirituality. So here is what a senior bishop, working in eastern Europe, has said of Putin and his deadly régime:

 

It is not that these people are intelligent. It is not that they believe in anything that they tell you. It is that they are very well trained, such that they know how, without conscience, to tell the truth as if it were a lie, and to tell a lie as if it were the truth. Nothing gets in the way of the purposes of raw power. And you realise that, looking into the face of such men, you're looking into the face of pure evil.

This is why His Royal Highness the Prince Charles yesterday, just as he left the door with all the children there who had sung songs and all the people working on the relief that is going to Ukraine as we speak (in just four days that community has raised two million pounds, a poor community, from their own pocket!), he turned back and said, “I almost forgot - Slava Ukraini!”, Glory to Ukraine, to which they responded with pride, “Heroiam slava”, Glory to the heroes who have given their lives in the cause of freedom, peace and justice. It echoes the salutation that we give so very often, and that I gave at the beginning: “Glory to Jesus Christ: Glory forever!” And it is in his life and spirit that we extend it, just to and for all, especially for this devout nation, where there are so many good believers in Christ, denied their happiness by cruel invaders sowing division not of their making.

Nothing I say today is against the Russian Orthodox Church, or its faithful, in whose name none of this is taking place, and who also seek their own independence, security, goodness, truth and prosperity in their own country land. It's for their deliverance that we pray, too. On the radio on Sunday, our Bishop Kenneth, prayed for Victory and the interviewer said, “Victory? Are you sure a Christian priest should be praying for Victory in a war?” He said, “Yes. If we do not pray for Victory, if we do not pray for the victory of the Christian people, evil will be victorious, and then the Dark will truly have descended on the world.”

So for that reason, dear friends, thank you for your patience in listening to me. Thank you for your understanding, and sharing with your prayers in the plight of the Ukrainian people. Thank you for your faithfulness to Catholic unity. Thank you for your devotion to the Most Blessed Eucharist, and the way in which the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, the Mass, opens up to us Heaven on Earth, as we receive Jesus Christ in His Body and Blood. Thank you for your faithfulness and your persevering in goodness. Thank you for your hopes, and thank you for your loving adoration of Jesus Christ for the sake of the world that He gave His life for. To Him be “Glory for ever”.

The Prayer for Ukraine

Visiting Lviv to give a lecture at the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2016, I was very moved to hear this sung in the midst of a concert of spiritual and cultural music of many Ukrainian traditions. The whole audience silently stood up as soon as it began; and I was told that it was immensely significant to Ukrainian people of all faiths, for the sake of the "Heavenly Hundred", those innocent people killed at the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2014, when the Ukrainian people brought about the removal of a corrupt regime and insisted on their liberty to pursue their own free, democratic European future. Since then, I have continued to be moved when I have served at the Divine Liturgy on Sundays at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. It is not the national anthem, but it is the national hymn and prayer. Originally, it was written for a chorus of children, and perhaps that is why the generations have continued to take it to their hearts. Perhaps it is like "Jerusalem" for someone from England, except that in the past, and hopefully not in the future, singing it was forbidden and could come with imprisonment and torture for supposed treason.

The Prayer for Ukraine on YouTube

It is not my own nation's song, but I sing it in solidarity with my friends and the people whom I have come to love very dearly, and whom I love to serve and worship with. I can only imagine what they are feeling and going through; and I have shed many tears for them and with them. For those who wish to sing it with Ukrainians in the same spirit, but in English, I provide a verse translation below. God protect Ukraine with His shield and His love.

The Prayer for Ukraine

Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900) to music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912)

Боже великий, єдиний,
Нам Україну храни,
Волі і світу промінням
Ти її осіни.

Світлом науки і знання
Нас, дітей, просвіти,
В чистій любові до краю,
Ти нас, Боже, зрости.

Молимось, Боже єдиний,
Нам Україну храни,
Всі свої ласки й щедроти
Ти на люд наш зверни.

Дай йому волю, дай йому долю,
Дай доброго світу, щастя,
Дай, Боже, народу
І многая, многая літа.

Transliteration:

Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Voli i svitu prominnyam,
Ty yii osiny.

Svitlom na-uky i znannya
Nas, ditey, prosvity,
V chystii liubovi kraiu,
Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.

Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,
Ty na liud nash zverny.

Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,
Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,
Dai, Bozhe, narodu
I mnohaia, mnohaia lita.

Translation:

Lord, God alone, the Almighty,

Hold our Ukraine in your hand;

Shine with the rays of your glory

Liberty on our land.

 

Lighten our learning and wisdom,

Keep your children in your heart;

Love that is pure for our homeland,

Lord our God, now impart. 

 

Merciful God, the Almighty,

Guard our Ukraine in your care.

Turn to our people and country,

Send your grace at our prayer.

 

Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,

Guide all our endeavour;

Bless us, God, our land and people,

And grant [us] many, man[y] years, for ever.

Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959- ). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.

To You, O Lord: the Direction of the Liturgy in Christ - Homily at the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, London Eucharistic Octave, Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Covent Garden, 16 September 2021

It is claimed that the word Liturgy means the work (ergon) of the laos, the people of God. But its true sense is that of a public service. And the name of the Divine Liturgy makes it clear that here is our public service to God.  Whereas in the thinking of the West, liturgy can refer to the faithful execution and study of all the rites in general, par excellence in the Eastern Churches using the Byzantine rite, the Liturgy is immediately recognised as the term for the Holy Eucharist. Perhaps it is ironic that a word for the Liturgy of Greek origin, Eucharist, referring to the sacrifice of thanksgiving, is relatively less usual in the East, while the term Liturgy in the West does not have such a potent connotation with the Mass. Yet Mass also has a meaning of a loving duty discharged. We can see what we both mean in what St Paul says:  

I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. Romans 12.1

 

By reasonable worship, St Paul means an entire self-offering within the Reason of God: in other words, the Logos, the Word of God, Who was breathed into the world by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Mother of God at Nazareth. There is a related expression in the Roman Mass, when the priest holds his hands over the holy gifts and prays that the offering will be blessed, acknowledged, and approved: he says, “make it spiritual and acceptable”. Here the word spiritual translates rationabilis, reasonable, as in St Paul’s word logike about our worship of complete self-oblation within the life of Christ the Word, and by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.

In the Divine Liturgy which you are about to see unfold, therefore, you will not so much see our action, as that of the Trinity taking its effect on us. The structure of the rite is about moving and journey, not only through this world but in and out of the world that is to come, and that is the Kingdom that is already upon us and within us (Luke 17.21). Did not St Paul also conclude, “It is not I who live, but Christ Who lives within me”? (Galatians 2.20) So we are drawn into His life within the Trinity. You have already heard the first of the many blessings on us of the Trinity; and every prayer ends with a doxology to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You will have heard the commands to stand aright and be attentive – standing because that is the attitude of our resurrection, which to us is not something of the future for it is the life that already inhabits us now. Christ is risen, we all are risen. And in a few moments, our resurrection will lead to our ascension, as we recognise and genuinely see ourselves as those who in the world mystically represent the Cherubim, laying aside the cares of this life, so that we may receive the King of all coming to us on the Altar, escorted by the Angels.

 

And then, when we have reached the threshold where we are about to tread into the courts of heaven itself, even though we are here in this world, the priest will tell us not just to stand, but to stand well, and offer what St Paul said: our reasonable, spiritual worship, of our entire self-offering. But not on our own in isolation, since we are in Christ the Word, Christ our God, Who is the oblation of oblations, filling the universe; that, being all in all, we are assumed into His offering of Himself and everything He fills in this forthcoming Holy Oblation.

 

In a sense we must never leave the heaven to which we have ascended in the Divine Liturgy. Our faith must hold this in its eyes, to overcome and overrule whatever sin or shortcoming comes next, because nothing can ever take away the reality that in this moment we were in the Kingdom of Heaven - no less than we believe, just as we pray according to the Lord’s instruction, that the same Kingdom of Heaven comes on earth in this Daily Bread.

 

One of the beautiful prayers that a priest or deacon sometimes says as he is about to receive the Holy Communion begins, “Behold I approach our immortal King and God”. It always moves me to think of the shepherds at Bethlehem, or the arrival of the Magi to present their gifts. Yet here I have nothing to offer, since, even though the priest has asked to be allowed to offer the Oblation, it is Christ our God who offers and is offered; Christ who receives and is given. So we remain caught up in the two directions of Christ’s own movement: always offering and offered, giving and received between earth and heaven, devoted to being in both. Here we have no abiding City, it is said (Hebrews 13.14), but we do not feel restless as we journey on in this world, as if we were aimless and uncertain of our Promised Land. For it has already come to us, and admitted us as its citizens. Our way of living is not to reject the world for which Christ came and died to give it life, but for each member of the Church to place it in its true setting – the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus “the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ.” (Revelation 11.15)

 

When you receive Holy Communion, you will receive it standing -standing, because we are in the resurrection and this is our ascension in union with the Lord into the Trinity. You will receive in both kinds from a mixed chalice, by means of a spoon. Everyone will have their own spoon, so there is no reason to fear. The bread is leavened bread, just the same as when the Lord spoke of himself as the living Bread, His flesh given for the life of the world.

 

Having received, as we say, “the divine, holy, immortal,  heavenly and lifegiving, awesome Mysteries of Christ”, you will see why it is that we have no hesitation in speaking confidently in the terms of religion and faith about Christ as our God, because the priest will ask you at this exalted moment of Communion once more to commend yourself, in union with that sacrifice acceptable to God, your endless, reasonable, spiritual worship of your whole being, saying, “Let us commend ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.” And a final time, this time in complete union with Him, you will reply, “To You, O Lord.” For this is what the Divine Liturgy comes to: Him.  You will sing with us, “We have seen the true light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true faith. And we worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.”

 

On this footing, at one with Christ, standing in His resurrection and ascension,  representing the cherubim, and treading the court of God’s presence with the Mother of God and all the saints, we shall receive the blessing of God from His Cross and see that truly “He is good, and He loves mankind”.

Reflection on St John Chrysostom on the Anniversary of his Death, for the Eastern Christians Prayer Group, Fellowship & Aid to the Christians of the East

READING - Ephesians 4.1-7, 11-13

I, Paul, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in all.

But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The gifts He gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

REFLECTION - by Father Mark Woodruff, Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom

At first sight, St Paul’s address to the new Christians of Ephesus on the western coast of what is now Turkey is about our faith in the Persons of the Holy Trinity and the gifts with which our baptism has equipped us to serve the building up of all humanity into the body of Christ. So indeed it is. But look again, and St Paul is saying that this first comes out of a lived experience of adversity (his imprisonment), sacrifice of self (humility), endurance (patience, and bearing with others) and redemption that take what is amiss and converts it permanently into good (love marked by forgiveness, and God’s calling that makes good on hope), because the body into which we are baptised is that of the Father’s Son nailed to the Cross, which He endured to bring our salvation into effect.

St John is a second St Paul. His eloquence and spiritual imagination flow through abundant writings. 1687 letters and sermons reveal a lively mind, beautifully communicating from his direct encounter with Christ, and faith distilled through adversity for His sake. His preaching gained him the title ‘Chrysostomos’, the Golden Mouth, not only because what he said warmed people’s hearts and convinced their belief and discipleship, but because it rang true coming from John. What Paul said of himself, is true of Chrysostom too: “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” How did this life take shape?

He was born in the third city of the eastern Roman empire, Antioch, in around 345. An outstanding literary, philosophy and rhetoric scholar with a successful public career ahead of him, in 374 he chose instead to live for God in the severely ascetical life of monk. It was not until 386 that he was ordained priest, when his exceptional oratorical skills were revealed in the straightforward practicality, vivid imagery and convincing moral appeal of his sermons, as well as the rich insight of his commentaries on the Scriptures. Having brought about the reconciliation of the sees of Antioch and Alexandria with old Rome after a loss of communion for seven decades, in 397 he was the outstanding candidate to be the new Archbishop of new Rome, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire, Constantinople. The people of Antioch did not wish to lose him, so to evade opposition to his election, he left in secret to be consecrated away from the public eye.

Immediately, the consequence of faithful preaching “in season and out of season” in Constantinople began. While his inspiring illustrations of the Scriptures and his clear preaching, applying Christ and faith to real life, endeared him to the people, he inevitably showed up the lax lifestyles and the moral injustices of the rich and powerful. The empress Eudoxia flattered herself that these barbs were aimed above all at her. A synod was trumped up to depose him for supposed unorthodox teaching. Her husband the emperor Arcadius then exiled him in 403 to Pontus on the Black Sea coast. The people of Constantinople were in uproar. An earthquake frightened Eudoxia to thinking it too was all about her. Promising amendment, she begged the emperor for St John’s recall to appease God. Yet within months she would erect a silver statue of herself outside the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. The Golden-Mouthed John, whose triumphant return made his words more potent than ever, kept speaking vividly about the contrast between the life in Christ shown in the Scriptures and the moral shortcomings of those in power in a supposedly Christian empire, this time singling out Eudoxia. The following June he was banished inland, to the remote edge of the province of Cilicia. There were riots in Constantinople, and the first Hagia Sophia was burned down. St John continued to teach his people by letters. He was also able to correspond with Pope Innocent I in old Rome, who sent a delegation to the emperor to convene a Council to reinstate the patriarch of new Rome. Chrysostom’s powerful enemies, however, convinced Arcadius that the archbishop had insulted the emperor by contacting the pope, and now posed a threat. So in 407 St John was banished to even more remote exile in Pityus, a port on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. 310 guards ensured no one prevented his removal once and for all. The journey was harsh because of the terrain and the elements, some of the soldiers were cruel, and Chrysostom, now about 60, was weak, not having enjoyed strong health since the extreme ascesticism of his time as a hermit. He did not make it beyond Cumana in Pontus, not far from where he had been exiled four years earlier, and he died on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, saying, “Glory be to God in all things”.

Thus, like St Paul, a “prisoner in the Lord,” by the public humiliation and the physical afflictions he endured, he was indeed in his flesh “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”. Eudoxia and Arcadius failed to silence him or put the Church in its place. Instead, his faithful confession of Christ despite persecution, was “Christ’s gift” of an apostle and a teacher, who “built … up the body of Christ” towards our even deeper “knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

In the Orthodox Church St John Chrysostom is revered as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, along with St Basil the Great of Caesarea and St Gregory the Theologian of Nazianzus. In the Latin Church they are venerated as three of the Greek Doctors of the Universal Church, on account of their decisive and compelling teaching on Christ and the Trinity, that remains formative of the faith and worship of the Church in East and West to this day. Indeed the form of the Eucharist most often celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox and the Greek Catholic Churches is the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, believed to have been abbreviated under his influence for the practical purpose of the greater engagement and spiritual enrichment of the people.

His feast in the West is kept on the day before his death on the 13th September, and in the East it is transferred two months later to 13th November. He is the patron of the city of Constantinople where its Christians are today reduced to several thousands, pressed on all sides by an almost entirely Turkish Muslim population and government, yet determined, “with patience” like St Paul’s, to preserve the living roots of Byzantine Christianity for 260 million Orthodox worldwide. (Byzantium is the older name for the city of Constantinople). He is also the patron of Christian educators, lecturers and preachers that “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

PRAYER

Troparion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite

Grace shone forth from your mouth like a fiery beacon and enlightened the universe, bestowing on the world not the treasures of greed, but rather showing us the heights of humility. As you teach us by your words, O John the Golden-Mouthed, our father, intercede with the Word, Christ our God, for the salvation of our souls.

Kontakion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite

From heaven you received divine grace; your lips have taught us all to worship the Triune God, O blessed John Chrysostom. It is fitting that we praise you, for you are a teacher, clarifying all things Divine.

Collect for September 13 from the Roman Missal

O God, strength of those who hope in You, Who willed that the Bishop Saint John Chrysostom should be illustrious by his wonderful eloquence and his experience of suffering: grant us, we pray, that, instructed by his teachings, we may be strengthened by his invincible patience. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.