WASHINGTON (OSV News) — As Ukraine enters its 11th year of confronting Russian aggression, the cross of Christ is “a tree of life (that) bears its fruit every day” in the besieged nation, said the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
“This oasis … is the life-giving tree from which the living water of the Holy Spirit flows … from the open and pierced side of the crucified Savior,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
The archbishop shared his reflections in a March 3 homily at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family in Washington during a Divine Liturgy ahead of March 3-6 meetings in that city of the five bishops who comprise the Church’s permanent synod.
In addition to Major Archbishop Shevchuk, the permanent synod — which meets periodically throughout the year according to canon law — includes Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia, metropolitan for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the U.S.; Bishop Volodymyr (Wlodzimierz) Juszczak of the Wroclaw-Gdansk Eparchy in Poland; Bishop Bohdan Dzyurakh, apostolic exarch in Germany and Scandinavia for Ukrainian Catholics; and Bishop Yosafat Moshchych of the Chernivtsi Eparchy. Auxiliary Bishop Andriy Khimyak of the Kyiv Archeparchy, synod secretary, is accompanying the group.
The permanent synod members’ visit — which will include stops in Philadelphia and New York — marks the first official travel by a Ukrainian Catholic delegation to the U.S. since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, continuing attacks begun in 2014.
Two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights have determined Russia’s invasion constitutes genocide, with Ukraine reporting more than 126,037 war crimes committed by Russia to date in Ukraine since February 2022.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the unlawful deportation and transfer of at least 19,546 children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Preventing atrocities
Well over 500 children have died in Russian attacks on Ukraine, including five ranging in age from 4 months to 9 years, who were killed along with seven adults in a March 2 Russian drone strike on an Odesa residential building.
The permanent synod members will meet with U.S. government officials to discuss preventing further atrocities, including the urgent need to safeguard religious freedom amid persecution of Christians in territories occupied by Russian forces.
Following the liturgy, Major Archbishop Shevchuk and Archbishop Gudziak presented framed drone shrapnel to Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington and Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who along with Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, retired archbishop of Washington, were among the numerous concelebrants at the liturgy.
Weapons sent ‘to kill us’
Major Archbishop Shevchuk — who thanked Archbishop Broglio for visiting Ukraine in December 2023 — said the fragments were from a barrage of “Russian missiles and Iranian drones” recently shot down just above the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv and his adjacent residence.
The weapons had “been sent to kill us, but they missed,” he said, adding that “the same iron is extracted out of the bodies of our soldiers and civilians.
“This is our pain, but this is our gift (as well) — a gift to God, and a gift to our friends in the U.S. Please receive this gift of hope from Ukraine,” said Major Archbishop Shevchuk.
Archbishop Gudziak also presented the cardinals and Archbishop Broglio with “a sign of life,” Easter eggs decorated in the traditional Ukrainian style known as “pysanky.”
“May we always believe that no metal, no rocket can overcome the life that Christ gives us,” he said.
Death is exchanged for life
The cross is paradoxically the nexus at which death is exchanged for life, said Major Archbishop Shevchuk in his homily, noting that the liturgy celebrated the Byzantine Rite’s Sunday of the Holy Cross on the Third Sunday of the Great Fast (Lent).
During Lent, which is a “spiritual pilgrimage to the Resurrection” through “a desert full of invisible spiritual struggles,” faithful are “called to discover the mystery of the cross of Our Lord from a new and, for some, an entirely unexpected perspective,” he said.
Amid “despair and fatigue, exhaustion and thirst” — which evoke Israel’s 40-year journey in the desert — “the church leads us to the shadow of the life-giving tree,” he said.
“Worshipping the crucified one, we sometimes experience a spiritual shock,” he added. “We suddenly realize that someone took away our pains and sufferings, our torments and disappointments, and transferred them from the truly horizontal human dimension to a vertical dimension.”
He recounted his Feb. 24 consecration of the Cross of Heroes outdoor memorial in Vyshhorod, where Ukrainians had held off the Russian attack on Kyiv two years prior.
Breathing at the cross
The impetus of its construction was (from) the spiritual longings of one of the soldiers who defended Vyshhorod,” Major Archbishop Shevchuk explained. “He often came to our church, stood in prayer for a long time in front of the Lord’s cross. Then one day he told me … ‘When I go to visit the graves of my comrades in arms and see their bodies and children crying, my pain increases. But here, at the foot of the cross, I can breathe … I can live … and return with a new energy to fight.'”
Ukraine Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova said in her post-liturgy remarks that prayer and action are essential to ending Russia’s war and securing a just peace for Ukraine.
“We cannot rest until light and hope prevails,” she said.
“We will win if we are and (remain) together,” said Major Archbishop Shevchuk, who expressed his profound gratitude for the generosity of U.S. Catholics in supporting Ukraine. “Together with God, and together with one another, regardless of where we live, and together with Ukraine.”
