Easter is supposed to be a day of joy but for Ukrainian Orthodox Christians in the United States, the war with Russia is putting a damper on it.
The rituals leading up to Easter are the same. The solemn Good Friday processions. The Holy Saturday blessings of foods that were avoided during Lent. The liturgies accompanied by processions, bells and chants. But while Easter is the holiest 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. Many are in regular contact with relatives or friends suffering amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has laid waste to cities and claimed thousands of civilian lives, according to the Ukrainian government. “This is a very strange Easter for us,” said the Rev. Richard Jendras, priest at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Allentown, Pa. “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.” Many believers “are walking around like zombies,” he said. “We are going through the motions of Easter right now because it’s what we have to hang on to.” Orysia Germak, a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Volodymyr in New York City, said news from the war summons bad memories: She was born in a camp for displaced persons camp after her mother fled Ukraine post-World War II, she said. “Easter is such a joyous occasion, but this underlines everything,” she said. “It’s surreal.” Both cathedrals are part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, whose parishes include many people with recent or ancestral ties to the old country.
