«Lord, I hate them!» Say truth to God. The priest about the atrocities of the Russians

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The clergyman explains how to prepare for Easter if the heart is full of hate for Russians, how to cultivate hope and continue to believe in God.

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The Russian army is committing real atrocities in Ukrainian cities. Recently, photos of Bucha flooded the first columns of most of the world’s media. Russian soldiers tortured civilians with extreme cruelty and cynicism, murdered the elderly and children, raped children and women. Lviv Now spoke with Father Serhii Honcharov, nicknamed Padre Serzh, Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest and UCU clergyman, about how to prepare for Easter if the heart is full of hate for Russians, how to cultivate hope and continue to believe in God.

Now is the time of Lent. How to prepare and celebrate Easter if your heart overflows with anger and hate for the Russians because of the atrocities they committed in Bucha, Mariupol, and other cities?

This year’s fast is serious, so to speak. We experience not only remembrance, but also certain participation in suffering – this is the way of Christ. All human suffering is combined with the suffering of Jesus. What is happening to us has a serious spiritual meaning.

Today, we are experiencing endless Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion of Christ, which alternates with Holy Saturday, when the Lord lies in the tomb. You can put yourself in the place of the apostles. What we saw in Bucha when we were overwhelmed by silence is something like what Christ’s disciples experienced when they saw His crucifixion and death. They had nothing to say how to act.

What could they do as human beings when the Lord was destroyed before their eyes? The lives, the joys that were with them, that they experienced, the miracles that He performed, the hope that they put in Him – all of this was trampled and crucified. The life we ​​saw a little over a month ago was also trampled and mutilated. Along with hope and joy.

Read also: ​​How did we come to such cruelty, and does the West believe in the values it is preaching? A studio talks with a chief military chaplain about the war

I remember Christmas, which we celebrated not so long ago. This is a beautiful holiday that was full of hope. Now, we have entered the fast and felt the destruction of the human being, the destruction of all joy. We began to be filled with anger.

And this is normal. We live on Good Friday and get to Holy Saturday, then come back. But we are still waiting for Sunday – Resurrection.

When the disciples were scattered and broken on Saturday, the Lord still acted, even from the very hell, although the apostles did not see it. For Christians, it is an opportunity to touch this Action, even though the disciples did not touch it. They did not know that God was still acting, they were not even ready. When Jesus was resurrected, myrrh-bearing women told them about it, but they did not believe them. Their grief was more than a hint of hope. Today, some of us cannot accept the hint of hope, but that does not mean that it does not exist.

How to live with it, how to cultivate this hope?

Each period has its own emotions, its own reactions. Earlier, when I read the Psalms of David, I took it symbolically. He describes surprisingly real things. Now that I read the psalms, I see their practical application. For example, the psalmist writes, «​​Let them be caught in their own traps». It is the anger he expresses before God. This is David’s experience of the reality in which he is and which he comprehends before God. «Judge them, O God,» he says, getting angry and shouting. He says that «They despise and ridicule.» This is interesting because I see how Russians who are losing their humanity are behaving now. This is what David describes in the Psalms.

We reach the Resurrection by the calendar, but it may enter our hearts later. Like the fast that we started earlier than the calendar began [Lent began on March 7. Padre says that for Ukrainians it began on February 24, along with the Russian invasion – ed.].

You should prepare for the holiday, but you should not lie to yourself: if you are angry, be angry, but do it before God. If you weep and say, «My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?» do it before God, as Jesus did. He said this while being crucified. He was in a state of abandonment, darkness.

Therefore, this Easter must be experienced as you will feel it within yourself, but with God. You do not need to wear masks, smile if you do not feel like smiling. We must be in the truth.

Everyone experienced the Resurrection of Jesus Christ differently: some cried, some could not believe it, some were not ready. And this is normal – to meet Him, as well as to meet in anger.

The Lord will control everything in due time. We are still waiting for the final Resurrection, when suffering and death will come to an end.

Father, could you tell us about forgiveness? How to pray now «Our Father»?

Love of enemies is the desire to stop the evil they are doing. If we do it with weapons, that’s how we show our love. Stopping evil is already a manifestation of love. Another thing is the forgiveness that comes after repentance. Here, one can forgive the one who repents. Who does not ask for it, it cannot be given to him.

After all, the words of the prayer «and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us» show the level of God’s mercy, but this does not mean that forgiveness is the acceptance and justification of evil.

For example, there is a man in the family who beats his wife, she constantly forgives him, and he constantly beats her. This is not forgiveness, this is wrong. Forgiveness is not about bowing your head to evil and allowing it to exist. The story of forgiveness, as well as the true composition of humanity. I would not talk about it now. I would give it to God and be before Him in truth.

So say, «Lord, I hate them all.» We need to be honest with God, He knows our hearts, so tell Him that you hate them all and don’t know what to do about it.

Present all these emotions to God that shake you with anger. It is not necessary to lay out on shelves as it should be. It should not be. As it is, so stand before God and say, «I am full of hatred.» Probably, there are no wars where everything is clear. However, we must not forget one important thing: in this war, as in every war, there are two sides. One comes with hatred just to destroy those it hates, the other protects what it loves and those it loves.

And when now, everyone is full of malice and hatred, let’s just not forget those we love. This will be our «anchor» that will ground us. The people we love and the land we love: our neighbours, our family, our parents, our people, our language… Love conquers evil. It is normal to feel anger, but you should not lose love for your loved ones. If we lose this love, we will become «dragons» ourselves.

Is it possible that after this war there will be new martyrs for the faith? How to pray for them?

Here we can pray for the repose of innocent people killed and tortured. If they are glorified, if they have been tormented for their faith, for Christ, then prayer will certainly not hurt, even if we pray for their repose.

Perhaps some people will be canonized. We know about the murders of Orthodox priests. Probably, even among ordinary people there were those who proclaimed the Gospel in the last minute of their lives, were before God in a clear conscience. Many people who are not proclaimed holy martyrs are such in fact.

I do not know what will happen next, history will show. But the reality is already there. If there are holy martyrs, they already are. Whether they will be proclaimed saints or not is a secondary matter. During the celebration of All Saints’ Day, in particular, all those who are not proclaimed are remembered, who stand before God and washed the Ukrainian land with their martyr’s blood. We will also mention them.

Some of my friends ask on Facebook how you can continue to believe in God after these atrocities. What will answer them to this?

As many people have grown up, so our faith has a test of growing up. Many of us used to believe in some abstract god. You need to write some notes, make some intentions, and He would fulfil some good wishes.

This faith disappeared because it was a false faith. Faith is revealed on the cross when we see Christ crucified and begin to say to Him, «Where have You been?» However, we hear these words primarily from His mouth. Christian faith is first and foremost faith in Christ. His Cross is our sign. We hung it everywhere, but we did not accept, did not want and could not. For many of us, it was probably an amulet, a talisman that some people wore on their ears or did tattoos and did not understand the meaning.

When we enter the temple, we look at the icons. Not everyone may understand, but these are people if they are martyrs who died a violent death. We glorify the martyrs of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of the 20th century – they all died in suffering. They did not even see the enlightenment that there would be anything better. Zinovii Kovalyk, for example, was crucified here in Lviv by the Communists. The same people from the east. This was the first half of the XX century. He was simply tortured, murdered, killed.

The same thing happened recently in our beautiful cities by the same people. But the martyrs of the UGCC did not lose the depth of understanding that God is the One who enters into human suffering. Not just those who need something from us. He is the One who sees human need.

When we have all these complaints, let’s raise them to Christ crucified. It is an image of God’s power, God’s mercy. The disciples of Jesus must also overcome the way of the cross in order to receive the resurrection in order to enter the Resurrection with Christ. So now it is right and normal to say: «My God, my God, why did you leave me?»

You can even re-read the book of Job. This is a man from the Old Testament who lost everything – his children, property, became seriously ill and constantly asked why this happened. His friends tried to explain to him that it is payments for his sins. However, Job rejected these explanations and asked God, «Why did this happen?» In the end, the Lord appeared and said that all those who tried to explain what and why were far away, that Job was closer to the truth.

There is nothing to explain evil at all. No need to lay out on the shelves why it happens. Because when we explain it, we justify its existence. There is no justification for either evil or its existence. This is the destruction of life.

The Lord enters into the destruction of the man He created, enters into the crucifixion and death. He enters them and takes it all on himself. God knows, God is also crucified, raped, beaten, destroyed, killed. This is the true God we believe in. But this is not the end – there will be a Resurrection.

Roman Tyshchenko-Lamanskyi, translated by Kateryna Bortniak

Photo from the page of Volodymyr Zelenskyi

Follow us on Facebook. Lviv Now is an English-language website for Lviv, Ukraine’s «tech-friendly cultural hub.» It is produced by Tvoe Misto («Your City») media-hub, which also hosts regular problem-solving public forums to benefit the city and its people.

 



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