Kiev

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Pascha 2022: Messages of pain, anger and hope from Orthodox leaders in Ukraine

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Pascha 2022: Messages of pain, anger and hope from Orthodox leaders in Ukraine

With the barrage of horrors from Ukraine, it wasn't hard to distinguish between the messages released by the Eastern Orthodox leaders of Russia and Ukraine to mark Holy Pascha, the feast known as Easter in the West.

The epistle from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill offered hope for this life and the next. But his text contained only one possible reference to the fighting in Ukraine, which the United Nations says has claimed the lives of 3,000 civilians, at the very least.

"In the light of Pascha everything is different," wrote the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. "We are not afraid of any mundane sorrows, afflictions and worldly troubles, and even difficult circumstances of these troubled times do not seem so important in the perspective of eternity granted unto us."

But the first lines of the message released by Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine placed this Pascha in a radically different context -- a clash between good and evil, right now. It was released on April 25th, the day after Orthodox Christians celebrated Pascha according to the ancient Julian calendar.

This letter was especially symbolic since Metropolitan Onuphry leads Ukraine's oldest Orthodox body, one with strong ties to the giant Russian Orthodox Church.

"The Lord has visited us with a special trial and sorrow this year. The forces of evil have gathered over us," he wrote. "But we neither murmur nor despair" because Pascha is "a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, truth over falsehood, light over darkness. The Resurrection of Christ is the eternal Pascha, in which Christ our Savior and Lord translated us from death to life, from hell to Paradise."

The contrast between these messages underlined a complex reality in Orthodox life after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a land cruelly oppressed by the Soviet Union, but with strong Russian roots through the "Baptism of Rus" in 988. That was when, following the conversion of Prince Vladimir, there was a mass baptism of the people of Kiev -- celebrated for a millennium as the birth of Slavic Christianity.

Metropolitan Onuphry and other Orthodox hierarchs with historic ties to Moscow have openly opposed the Russian invasion, while trying to avoid attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church. The bottom line: Leaders of ancient Orthodox churches will ultimately, at the global level, need to address these conflicts.

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Will Russia's ruler listen to Orthodox Christian voices praying for ceasefire?

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Will Russia's ruler listen to Orthodox Christian voices praying for ceasefire?

During Sunday rites, worshippers in the Orthodox Church in America are led through a tour of the faith's music, with hymns from Russia, Romania, Georgia, Bulgaria and beyond.

The faithful know many by heart, including the ancient Trisagion hymn -- "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us" -- in a haunting setting that for centuries has simply been called "Kievan Chant."

With Great Lent approaching, Archbishop Alexander Golitzin of the Diocese of Dallas and the South instructed parishes (including my own in East Tennessee) to add prayers for Ukraine in every Divine Liturgy: "Again, we ask Thy great mercy on our brothers and sisters who are presently involved in conflict. Remove from their midst all hostility, confusion and hatred. Lead everyone along the path of reconciliation and peace."

The OCA's Metropolitan Tikhon, leader of a church that began with Russian missionary work in 1794, has urged that "hostilities be ceased immediately and that President Putin put an end to the military operations. As Orthodox Christians, we condemn violence and aggression."

In Slavic Orthodox history, all roads lead to Kiev, now called Kyiv in the West.

Orthodox leaders with ties to the European Union and highly European Western Ukraine have issued fierce statements after the Russian invasion. Metropolitan Epiphanius I of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, launched in 2018 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul, has said the "spirit of the Antichrist operates in the leader of Russia."

However, it's significant that leaders of many Orthodox churches with roots in Russian Orthodoxy have also condemned the invasion and urged a ceasefire. The leader of Ukraine's oldest Orthodox body -- one with centuries of ecclesiastical ties to Moscow -- condemned the invasion in a statement addressed directly to Vladimir Putin.

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A thousand years of Orthodoxy history loom over today's Moscow-Istanbul clash

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A thousand years of Orthodoxy history loom over today's Moscow-Istanbul clash

The great prince Vladimir had a problem in the year 986, while striving to build unity in the Kievan Rus, his network of Eastern Slavic and Finnic tribes.

The old pagan gods and goddesses were not enough. So the prince dispatched ambassadors to investigate Islam, Judaism, Catholicism and the Orthodox faith of the Christian East.

When they returned to Kiev, their report included this passage about Byzantium: "We went into the Greek lands, and we were led into a place where they serve their God, and we did not know where we were, in heaven or on earth. … All we know is that God lives there with people and their service is better than in any other country. … We cannot remain any more in paganism."

So Vladimir surrendered his concubines and was baptized in 988, while commanding his people to convert. Orthodoxy came to the lands of the Rus.

This early chronicle was, according to church tradition, written by St. Nestor of the great Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, founded in 1051. Pilgrims continue to flock to the Monastery of the Kiev Caves to see its beautiful churches, soaring bell tower, the labyrinthine underground tunnels and the incorrupt bodies of many saints.

Note the importance of the word "Kiev" in that spiritual and national narrative.

"Just as the original Church in Jerusalem is the mother of all Orthodox Churches around the world, including the Patriarchate of Constantinople some 300 years later, so the venerable see of Kiev in Kievan Rus in the tenth century is the mother of the Churches in all the East Slavic Orthodox lands -- including the current nation-states of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and Byelorussia," explained the Very Rev. Alexander Webster, dean of Holy Trinity Seminary in upstate New York. This seminary is part of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

"Kiev is the Russian Orthodox Church," he said, "and the Russian Orthodox Church is Kiev."

Nevertheless, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has taken the first step to establish an independent, or "autocephalous," Orthodox church in Ukraine. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church responded by breaking "Eucharistic communion" with Istanbul.

Speaking as an Orthodox convert (I joined the ancient Antiochian Orthodox Church and now attend a Bible Belt parish with Russian roots), I think it's important for anyone following this byzantine drama to know that:

* The historic ties between Kiev and Russian Orthodoxy are more than talking points in arguments involving the United States, the European Union, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.