Many Ukrainian Americans are observing Orthodox Easter this Sunday, but they’re finding it difficult to be joyful when their ancestral homeland has been torn by the Russian invasion
A girl looks at her mother while holding a candle during Good Friday service at St. Mary's Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, Friday, April 22, 2022, in Allentown, Pa.. While Easter is the most joyous of holy days on the church calendar, marking the day Christians believe Jesus triumphed over death, many members of Ukrainian Orthodox churches across the United States are finding it difficult to summon joy at a time of war. The rituals leading up to Easter are the same.
“This is a very strange Easter for us,” said the Rev. Richard Jendras, priest at St. Mary's Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “It should be a joyous holiday, and it’s all about new life, and yet here we are being confronted with the harbingers of murder and killing and genocide and death.”
Most Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter last Sunday, but Eastern Orthodox are celebrating this Sunday. They usually do so later than Western churches because they use a different method of calculating the date for the holy day, which they call Pascha. Their priest, the Rev. Mykola Ivanov, 41, came from Ukraine in 2005. His elderly parents are in the city of Lviv, which has been thronged with refugees from elsewhere in Ukraine; his older brother is fighting with the Ukrainian army on the eastern front.
While Orthodox in America can celebrate freely, “our relatives and friends in Ukraine are under pressure from an invading army and aren't as free to celebrate as they wish," Fessak said."They may not be able to get to churches. They may not be able to walk about town like they wish. They may not be able to have traditional foods they might have on Easter.”“The Ukrainian population has shown they are highly keen on retaining Ukrainian independence,” he said.
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