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.