By Father Borys Gudziak, Ph.D.
HOLINESS IN LIFE
Pope John Paul II’s solemn proclamation of the new martyrs and faithful servants of God of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church as blessed is another divine manifestation to our people. During more than 1,000 years of salvation history on our land, Ukrainian Christians have rejoiced in various signs of God’s presence. The Word has become incarnate among us has been changed into visible sacraments: the healing water of baptism, the oil of the Holy Spirit, the bread and wine of the Lord’s paschal feast. They lead us to the divine life. “God is with us!”
He has built His house here. Great Church councils throughout the ages and quiet little chapels speak to us. The warm and hospitable face of the Lord looks into our souls from childhood. His image is embroidered on our decorative cloths at home. The feasts of the liturgical year sanctify our time, invite us to overcome our lack of faith and our doubts, and to feel that we live in the age of the Kingdom of God.
We receive this mercy of the Lord through the blessing of hierarchs and priests, on whose heads we can still feel the warm hands of the priests and martyrs Hryhorii, Theodore, Josaphat, Nykyta, Hryhorii, Mykola, Semeon, Ivan and Vasyl. We celebrate together with monks and nuns who still today remember the sanctifying righteousness of Sister Josaphata and the “aristocracy of spirit” of priest and martyr Klymentii. They remember these fathers and sisters of their communities – kind, welcoming and, at the same time, brave and constant in the faith. We rejoice with Neonila Lysko, who can still today tell us about the eyes of her good husband, full of troubles: Neonila who for such a short time was comforted by his close presence but his glory will last. Together with Father Emilian Kovch’s children, who are with us, we pass on his testament of love of neighbor and love of enemy.
From now on from our midst, for us and for the world, the universal Church raises them up as examples of holiness, as heavenly friends of the Lord, humble figures of mortal human beings. Yesterday they lived among us or among our parents in our cities and villages, bravely fought with the greatest tyrants of human history, against wrongs and injustices done to their brothers and sisters. They also struggled with their own imperfections and with the simple worries of daily life. Their presence here was and now is, incredibly, still felt.
They walked our streets and rode on our roads, sat on our episcopal thrones and in our confessionals. They gave lectures at solemn conferences and reports from their professorial chairs, and studied in our Theological Academy and seminaries. They probably did not think that the terrible trial of martyrdom and its everlasting crown was waiting for them. They wore priestly vestments and the habits of our religious communities and heard stirring words from their spiritual directors about self-giving and self-dedication, which we often hear but receive as something everyday, as an abstraction, something unreal and far away in time and space.
Now their figures are strangely close, visible. Through them holiness itself is closer. They bring heaven closer to us – sometimes so unattainable – heaven, where they have gloriously found their place at the hand of the Almighty Father and Our Creator. And the land on which they walked only yesterday has itself become holier, receiving their hot blood and tortured bodies. Walking on this same earth we feel the grandeur of this holiness and the depth of this drama which they lived through and to which the Lord can call you and me.
Finally, we were all called long ago-called to love our neighbor, forgive our enemies, feed the hungry, tend to the wounded, comfort the weary, give hope to the hopeless and die to self in order to live for others. Today on our earth and in our Ukraine there is no lack of opportunities to dedicate yourself to God.
Through these blessed and martyrs, whom we are honoring today, the Lord has shown us that for us mere mortals, who are neighbors, fellow workers or students, relatives and family members or just friends, for us such accomplishments are possible. God reveals Himself always and everywhere: in the quiet of a monastic cell and in an inspiring sermon in church, among the Siberian snows and in the burning oven of Majdanek, in the joy of motherhood and in the cries of an orphaned child …
Will we be able here and now, and then tomorrow and elsewhere, to respond to this appearance of our Lord? Are we ready to give witness to Christ in everyday life or, God forbid, in the face of mortal danger? We hope in the Lord that this is so. And our first step in this direction is our joyful celebration of these abundant blessings which have come to us through the solemn glorification of the new martyrs and faithful servants of God. Let us be glad with them and with certainty follow in their footsteps!
Father Borys Gudziak Ph.D. is rector of the Lviv Theological Academy and director of the Institute of Church History.
CHURCH OF THE MARTYRS
Following are biographical materials prepared by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. The information is organized in chronological order.
Sanctifying righteousness
Sister Josaphata (Michaelina) Hordashevska was born in Lviv on November 20, 1869. At the age of 18, influenced by the retreats of the Basilian Fathers, she felt the call to consecrate her life to God. Together with Father Kyryl Seletskyi, pastor in Zhuzhel, and Father Yeremia Lomnytskyi OSBM, she established a new congregation, the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate, called to an active apostolate among the people. Today the Sisters Servants is the biggest female religious community in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.
Sister Josaphata’s holiness showed itself in her total dedication to her calling, in constantly embodying in her life Christ’s command to love God and neighbor and in humbly bearing all her difficulties and sufferings. She died on April 7, 1919, after a long and severe illness, prophesying the day of her death, which she accepted consciously, with prayer on her lips.
“She showed her love for her people through her heart-felt desire to lift them up morally and spiritually: she taught children, youth and women, served the sick, visited the poor and needy, taught liturgical chant and looked after the church’s beauty.”
- From the testimony of Sister Filomena Yuskiv.
Apostle of unity
Priest and martyr Father Leonid Feodorov was born to a Russian Orthodox family on November 4, 1879, in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1902, he left his studies at the Petersburg Spiritual Academy and went abroad. In Rome he converted to Catholicism. He studied in Anagni, Rome and Frieburg. Contact with Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky had a great influence on Father Leonid’s spiritual development. On March 25, 1911, he was ordained a Greek-Catholic priest. In 1913 he became a monk of the Studite order in Bosnia.
After his return to tsarist Russia, in connection with the beginning of World War One he was exiled to Tobolsk, Siberia because he was a Catholic. In 1917 he was released and appointed head of the Russian Greek-Catholic Church, with the title of exarch. His second imprisonment came in 1923, now by the Bolsheviks, for 10 years. From 1926 to 1929 he served his term in Solovky and later in exile in Pinieza, Kotlas and Viatka. He died as a martyr for the faith and Church unity on March 7, 1935.
“We expect that the exarch is on the road to glorification through beatification. Of course, it is much too early to talk about this, but all of us were strongly impressed by his holiness, strengthened by the crown of martyrdom and death; this certainly supports our expectations. On the other hand, as a Russian Catholic, as exarch, as someone who died at the hands of the Bolsheviks, it seems to us that he will be right in the center of attention of the entire Church.”
- From Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky’s letter to Prince P. Volkonski of May 4, 1935.
BLOODY UNIFICATION
Stalin’s attack on the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) began immediately after the first occupation of western Ukraine in September 1939. This occupation was in accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and lasted until June 1941. In this period all UGCC property was confiscated, and schools and hospitals were nationalized. Church publications and religious organizations were forbidden, religious educational institutions and presses were closed, the activities of religious congregations were limited, brutal atheist propaganda and mass terror, and the deportation of a peaceful population began.
“It is absolutely clear that under the Bolsheviks we all felt destined for death; they did not conceal their intention to destroy, to strangle Christianity, to erase its smallest traces.”
- From Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky’s letter to the nuncio, Rotti, of August 30, 1941.
Patron of students
Priest and martyr Father Mykola Konrad was born on May 16, 1876 in the village of Strusiv, Ternopil District. He finished his philosophical and theological studies in Rome, where he defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1899, he was ordained to the priesthood. He taught in a high school in Berezhany and Terebovlia. In 1929 in Lviv he founded Obnova (Renewal), the first Ukrainian association of Catholic students.
In 1930 Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky invited him to teach at the Lviv Theological Academy and later appointed him to be a parish priest in the village of Stradch, near Yaniv. There, as in previous years, he showed his great diligence and responsibility, fulfilling his pastoral duties, in particular, spiritual guidance for youth. Returning from visiting a sick woman, who had requested the sacrament of reconciliation, he died tragically as a martyr for the faith at the hands of the NKVD on June 26, 1941, near Stradch.
“Doctor Konrad, a professor at the academy, my catechist … O, he was a distinguished person. An ideal man. He was very involved with youth; he had a heart for youth – and for his people. He wanted us to be patriots, to be good and aware students. That was Father Konrad…”
- From an interview with Father Mykola Markevych.
Sacrificial cantor
Martyr Volodymyr Pryima was born on July 17, 1906, in the village of Stradch, Yavoriv District. After graduating from a school for cantors he became the cantor and choir director in the local church. He took active part in the life of his parish. Always and in everything he respected human dignity and built his life on the principles of the gospel. On June 26, 1941, agents of the NKVD mercilessly tortured and murdered him along with Father Mykola Konrad.
“Father Konrad went with the holy sacraments to fulfill his sacred obligation, hearing a woman’s confession in the neighboring village. He felt he had to go, though he was stopped. I know that they stopped him and said: ‘Father, don’t go. Look what’s happening: the war has started, anything could happen.’ He said that this was his sacred duty and he had to go. He got dressed and left together with Volodymyr Pryima, the cantor. They didn’t come back. After a week they were found there, murdered. People thought something was wrong. So they went to look for them and they found them there. It was awful. The cantor’s wife had two children. One was three, the other was four. Mama told me how when they were found everyone was overcome by what they saw. The cantor was especially cut up, his chest stabbed with a bayonet many times.”
- From an interview with Yuriy Skavronskyi.
Professor and pastor
Priest and martyr Father Andrii Ischak was born on September 20, 1887, in Mykolaiv, in the Lviv District. He finished his theological studies at the universities in Lviv and Innsbruck (Austria). In 1914 he received his Ph.D. in theology and was ordained. Beginning in 1928 he taught dogmatic theology and canon law at the Lviv Theological Academy.
He was able to combine his professorial duties with his pastoral work in the village of Sykhiv near Lviv, where he met his death. Even under the threat of great danger he did not leave his parishioners without spiritual guidance. He was faithful to the end. On June 26, 1941, he died a martyr for the faith at the hands of soldiers of the retreating Soviet army.
“As the war began, the priest was taken at Persenkivka, the neighboring station. Sometime in the afternoon they took him, detained him until the evening, then they let him go. My dad, because they knew each other well, told him: ‘Father, when they let you go, I would advise you to hide for a few days.’ Because it was already clear that the Germans were coming and the Bolsheviks would be fleeing. ‘Hide yourself and we’ll survive.’ But the priest said: ‘Ivan, the shepherd doesn’t abandon his flock. And I can’t leave my parishioners and conceal myself.’ In two days the military came and took him from his home. It was overgrown there with bushes, some distance from the parish, maybe a half-kilometer. They brought him there and killed him. They shot him in the stomach, and it looked like they also stabbed him with a knife.”
- From the testimony of Ivan Kulchytskyi.
Benevolent prior
Priest and martyr Father Severian Baranyk was born on July 18, 1889, place of birth unknown. On September 24, 1904, he entered the monastery of the Basilian Fathers in Krekhiv. He was ordained to the priesthood on February 14, 1915. In 1932 he became the hegumen (prior) of the monastery in Drohobych. In life he was noted for his special kindnesses to youth and orphans. He inspired all with his joy and was famous for his preaching.
On June 26, 1941, the NKVD arrested him. They brought him to a prison in Drohobych, after which he was never seen alive again. His body, mutilated by tortures, was found among other dead prisoners. He died a martyr for the faith at the end of June 1941.
“Behind the prison I saw a big hole which had been covered up, filled with sand. When the Bolsheviks retreated the Germans came and people rushed to the prison to find their relatives. The Germans allowed people into the area of the prison in small groups to claim their murdered relatives, but most people stood by the gates. I was a little boy and didn’t see anything from the gates, so I went to the side and climbed a tree. There was a terrible stink … I saw how the Germans sent people to uncover the hole which was filled with sand. The hole was new, because the people uncovered it with their hands. They dragged out the murdered bodies. There was a little covering near the hole, and under it I saw the dead body of Father Severian Baranyk, Basilian, with visible marks of his prison tortures; his body had unnaturally swelled, black, his face terrible. Dad later said that on his chest the sign of the cross had been slashed.”
- From the testimony of Yosyf Lastoviak.
Loving monk
Priest and martyr Father Yakym Senkivskyi was born on May 2, 1896, in the village of Hayi Velyki, Ternopil District. After completing his theological studies in Lviv, he was ordained as a priest on December 4, 1921. He received a Ph.D. in theology in Innsbruck (Austria). In 1923 he became a novice in the Basilian order in Krekhiv. After professing his first vows he was assigned to serve in the village of Krasnopuscha, and later in the village of Lavriv, in the area of Starosambir. From 1931 to 1938 at St. Onufry monastery in Lviv he was chaplain of the Marian Society, he ministered to children and youth and organized a Eucharistic Society. In 1939, he was appointed proto-hegumen (abbot) at the monastery in Drohobych.
He was arrested by the Bolsheviks on June 26, 1941. According to the testimony of various prisoners, he was boiled to death in a cauldron in the Drohobych prison on June 29. Because of his righteous life the faithful held him up as a model of service to Church and nation. He died a martyr for the faith.
“From the first days of his time in Drohobych he became the favorite of the whole town. He gained the affection of the population with his remarkable talent, his ability to speak to the scholar and the laborer, young and old, and even to the little child. He was always polite and with a warm smile on his face. In your soul you felt that this person had no malice, and in addition to the impression of humility and dignity, a true servant of Christ was evident.”
- From the memories of Father Orest Kupranets.
Fearless preacher
Priest and martyr Father Zenovii Kovalyk was born on August 18, 1903, in the village of Ivakhiv near Ternopil. He entered the Congregation of the Redemptorists and on August 28, 1926, he made his religious vows. He received his philosophical and theological education in Belgium. He returned to Ukraine and on September 4, 1937, was ordained to the priesthood. He served as a missionary in Volyn.
On December 20, 1940, he was arrested in church while giving a homily. After terrible tortures he was murdered by the Communists in a mock crucifixion against a wall in a prison on Zamarstynivska Street, in Lviv in June 1941. He died a martyr for the faith.
“[His] sermons made an incredible impression on the listeners. But in the prevailing system of denunciations and terror this was very dangerous for a preacher. So I often tried to convince Father Kovalyk … that he needed to be more careful about the content of his sermons, that he shouldn’t provoke the Bolsheviks, because here was a question of his own safety. But it was all in vain. Father Kovalyk only had one answer: ‘If that is God’s will, I will gladly accept death, but as a preacher I will never act against my conscience.’ “
- From the memories of Yaroslav Levytskyi.
A NEW ORDER
The beginning of the Nazi-Soviet war on June 22, 1941, for many western Ukrainians meant, first of all, the liquidation of the hated Bolshevik domination and led to unfulfilled expectations for the revival of religious freedom and the achievement of their national aspirations. However, it was soon apparent that changing one bloody regime for another would not change the essence of totalitarianism.
“… The terror is growing. During the last two months in Lviv more than 40,000 Jews were murdered. The authorities conducted searches in the church, in my residence and in parts of the monastery … Two monks were imprisoned, and perhaps there will be attempts to create some ’show trials.’ The arrests continue. This is a regime of raving madmen.”
- From a letter of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky to Cardinal Tisserand of December 28, 1942.
Rescuer of the doomed
Priest and martyr Father Emilian Kovch was born on August 20, 1884, in Kosmach near Kosiv. After graduating from the College of Ss. Sergius and Bacchus in Rome, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1911. In 1919 he became field chaplain for the Ukrainian Galician Army. After the war and until his imprisonment he conducted his priestly ministry in Przemysl (Peremyshl), at the same time tending to his parishioners’ social and cultural life. He helped the poor and orphans, though he had six children of his own.
During World War II he bravely carried out his priestly duties, preaching love to people of all nationalities and rescuing Jews from destruction. He was arrested by the Gestapo on December 30, 1942. He displayed heroic bravery in the concentration camp, protecting the prisoners sentenced to death from falling into despair. He was burned to death in the ovens of the Majdanek Nazi death camp on March 25, 1944. He was recognized as a “Righteous Ukrainian” by the Jewish Council of Ukraine on September 9, 1999.
“I understand that you are trying to free me. But I am asking you not to do anything. Yesterday they killed 50 persons here. If I were not here, who would help them to endure these sufferings? I thank God for His kindness to me. Except heaven this is the only place I would like to be. Here we are all equal: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Latvians and Estonians. I am the only priest here. I couldn’t even imagine what would happen here without me. Here I see God, Who is the same for everybody, regardless of religious distinctions which exist among us. Maybe our Churches are different, but they are all ruled by the same all-powerful God. When I am celebrating the Holy Mass, everyone prays … Don’t worry and don’t despair about my fate. Instead of this, rejoice with me. Pray for those who created this concentration camp and this system. They are the only ones who need prayers May God have mercy on them…”
- From Father Emilian Kovch’s letters written in the concentration camp to relatives.
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