On Thursday, 19th May 1988, I flew from Dublin to New York and on to Philadelphia as a guest of my friend W Paul Loane and Monsignor Michael Fedorovich of the Ukrainian Cathedral Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Located in the historic Northern Liberties district in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the Church was erected in 1966 through the effort of Ukrainian Catholics in America. This magnificent edifice, designed by Julian K. Jastremsky, replaced the old Cathedral Church which had been purchased in 1907 by Bishop Sotor Stephen Ortynsky, O.S.B.M., the first bishop of Ukrainian Catholics.
The present Cathedral, constructed to reflect authentic Byzantine architecture, is built in the same style as Hagia Sofia(St. Sophia) Cathedral in Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey). It also mirrors the beauty and richness of the religious and cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people. Basic geometric forms were purposely and consistently used to develop the character of the building. Almost no ornamentation is needed, though the completion of the interior embellishments is an ongoing process which will continue over the years.
I was asked, as the Guest of Honour representing Ireland, to speak to the Ukrainian people on the occasion of the celebration of the Millenium of the Christian Church in Ukraine, Russia and Byelorussia..My book, Bangor, Light of the World had reached the Ukrainian people throughout the Americas..Strangely enough, as an Ulster Protestant and British Loyalist, Monsignor Fedorovich said that I was considered more amenable than the American Irish community, who had, through the Molly Maguires, been a source of oppression to the Ukrainian community. Although Roman Catholic, and they had recently honoured the Pope, they followed the Eastern Rite and had married priests, to the distain of the conservative Irish Catholics. Given under the previous Soviet regime, the speech still has resonance today.
The Millenium of Ukraine’s Christianity
An Imitation of Christ
988-1988
by Ian Adamson
One thousand years ago, Grandprince Volodymyr, the ruler of a realm known then as Rus’, the ancestor of present day Ukraine, baptised his people, thus, in effect, forging a Christian nation out of the diverse pagan Slavic tribes which then inhabited Eastern Europe. This one single act, or rather this great historical event, is of tremendous importance to the modern Ukrainians, and no less to us their brothers and sisters in Christ who know and love them throughout the world.
The baptism of the nation of Rus’ in 988 was the culmination of a long-term Christianization which some scholars maintain reached back even unto Apostolic times. Others have proposed that the influence of the Bangor Columban mission to Europe in the seventh century, which emanated from our very diocese of Down and Connor, may have spread as far as Kiev during the great period of re-evangelisation in the former Roman Empire. Volodymyr was to adopt, however, the Christianity of Byzantium and this, with the augmentation of Ukraine emotionally, touched all aspects of Slavic human existence to become accepted as a special gift by the people who cherished it. The old Ukrainian state was dominated by the Rurikide dynasty, which ruled from the second half of the ninth until the end of the sixteenth century, and thus the faith was brought later also to Moscow and more northern lands. So Christian enlightenment became a blessing for all three east Slavic Nations, the Ukrainians, the Russians and the Byelorussians; and Kiev came to be seen as the cradle of civilisation in Eastern Europe.
The Kievan, ie., Ukrainian, brand of Christianity was quite different in its make-up from that of the Russian. Kiev was the source of kenotic spirituality, the principle of which is articulated in the Pauline idea of kenosis, or “self-emptying”. In his essay entitled “Ukrainian Spirituality”, Jaroslav Pelikan provides an explanation of this kenosis, enabling us to see this precious feature of the Ukrainian religious mind.
He writes, “To accept Christian discipline is to become a disciple of Jesus Christ, and the Christian way of life may be summarised in the simple command of our Lotrd, “Follow me.” In the Imitation of Christ of Thomas a Kempis or in the ideals of St Francis of Assisi…we can see the power of this call to deny oneself, take up the cross, and follow Christ. If we take it in this broader sense, we may see “kenosis” as a term for many kinds of Christian spirituality, not only for the Eastern form. But, (and this is important) the concept of “Kenosis” acquired a special significance that was expanded when Byzantine monasticism was transplanted into the Slavic lands, ie., into Ukranian soil.
“The seedbed of kenotic spirituality among the Slavs was the Pechers’ ka Lavra, the Kiev cave monastery. “Together with the Cathedral of St Sophia…this monastery became the focus of religious life for Ukrainian Christianity”…Conformity with Christ was central to the kenoticism of the Pechers’ ka Lavra. The message of the apostle in such statements as that of Romans 8:17, “provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him,” became a paradigm for the monk of how the Christian ought to live. For example, fasting which was one of the points of discipline at issue between East and West – was interpreted not merely as a form of self-mortification, but as a way of knowing in one’s own experience the power of Christ made perfect in our weakness. The Imitation of Christ, which has so easily been given a moralistic content in the West, was thus transposed into the principle that by the Incarnation God has taken on the form of our weakness and self-emptying, may participate in His power and grace.”
Dr Leonid Rudnytsky of La Salle University in Philadelphia, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Ukrainian culture, comments, “Already here, so early in the history of Ukrainian Christianity, lie the seeds of its life-sustaining and life-giving quality, which has enabled the Ukrainian people to overcome centuries of suffering, of persecution, and of attempts to eradicate them as a people from this earth. Suffering, in Ukrainian tradition, is a moral good, and its resigned acceptance, an imitation of Christ. This is reflected throughout Ukrainian history and there are numerous examples in Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian tradition that testify to this precious trait of `Ukrainian spirituality. Ukrainians are unique as a nation in that they celebrate military defeats as national feast days. Not victories are celebrated, although there were a few of them during the course of the Millennium, but defeats, showing as it were, that suffering, sacrifice, and weakness are the salient qualities of Ukrainian spiritual make-up. Perhaps in the long run, it is not a question of whether a nation is weak or strong, whether it wins or loses its battles, but whether it can outlast the historical measure of its suffering – be it spiritual or physical. And we Ukrainians have outlasted our measure of suffering for 1,000 years. Most importantly here, however, is the fact, that the Church in Ukraine, be it the Ukrainian Orthodox or the Ukrainian Catholic Church, always acted as a carrier of Ukrainian tradition and as a custodian and protector of the Ukrainian national identity. For the long centuries, when there was no Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian Church was that ark which carried the Ukrainian people onward to their destiny. And the people, in turn, cherished and loved their Church, sensing as it were, that without it, they would become am amorphous mass with no claim to nationality and sovereignty, that indeed, without the Church they would soon cease to exist as a nation. Thus, the Ukrainian Church is ultimately responsible for the miracle of continuity of Ukrainian being”.
The Russian ecclesiastical structure, on the other hand, which often has appeared to be in the service of the Russian government – prior to the Revolution in the service of the Czarist and latterly in the service of the Soviet Government – has been seen by Ukrainians as too concerned with the expansion of the Russian realm. It seemed no accident therefore, that after the revolution the Bolshevik regime liquidated the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the 1930’s, and following WW11 in 1946, Stalin liquidated the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Despite these ruthless measures, despite the repressions which in 1946 resulted in the deportation to concentration camps of ten Ukrainian Catholic bishops, the incarceration of hundreds of priests, and the forceful “conversion” of several millions of its faithful to the Russian style Orthodoxy, the Ukrainian Catholic Church continues to exist in the catacombs. Today its faithful in Ukraine, although members of an outlawed Church, continue to seek recognition on the part of the Soviet Government, and to ask for permission to exist legally in their own country.
Looking at the current situation of the Church in the Soviet Union and while welcoming genuine attempts at Glasnost, many Ukrainians still feel that the Soviet Union remains the heir of Czarist Russia, that under a different flag Russian bourgeois nationalism, that ideology which Lenin himself termed as “Great Russian Chauvinism” and promised to eradicate, is alive and well and continues to serve the Russian realm which today bears the image of a multinational Marxist state. Thus the Millennium of Christianity which the Ukrainian people are celebrating this year has an altogether different meaning for the Ukrainians and Russians. For the Russians it is a time in history to consolidate their forces and to ensure their hold on the past and the present, and with it the survival of their realm into the future. For the Ukrainians the Millennium of Christianity is a historic moment to give thanks to God for the continuous existence of one of His most faithful people. In this sense the Jubilee is of the utmost importance. Within the collective consciousness of the Ukrainian people lives on that unique event of baptism of the inhabitants of Kiev one thousand years ago. This is, to borrow a term from Freud, the protoexperience of the Ukrainian people, because through their baptism they become a nation, and as such have survived for one thousand years. So the very history of this survival, holds lessons for each and every one of us, and the non-violent approach to state repression, just as the imitation of Christ remains our hope for all mankind.