‘He loved you, and he prayed for you’: I’m not Ukrainian, but my bishops are Ukrainian Catholic
I just moved to Chicago. My first Eastern Catholic series of events came soon afterward, as I attended the funeral services for Bishop Richard (Seminack). There was a parastas (memorial service) in the evening of August 22 (two nights ago) and a Divine Liturgy with a panakhyda (short memorial service) yesterday morning on August 23. Some of my astute readers have criticized me for being elusive about which of the 23 Eastern Catholic churches I belong to, as it is impossible to be all 23, so my attendance at these events should be a definitive indicator that I am Ukrainian Catholic.
But as I participated in these services, I learned there is a difference between belonging to the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC) and being Ukrainian, and I suppose this is an especially relevant point given that today is the the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.
It’s not something I’ve thought about much until moving to Chicago, to be honest. At the service I attend at the Eastern Catholic Church in Richmond, the demographic makeup of our service – which is self-consciously a mission to Asian Canadians – is mostly young and young-at-heart people, a smattering of ethnicities from Anglo-Canadian to French Canadian to Jamaican to Filipino to Chinese. There’s maybe one Ukrainian who shows up, but that’s more unusual than the Chinese exchange students and political dissidents who wander in. We do have some Ukrainians who go to an earlier morning service, which our Chinese Canadian priest also conducts, but I learned Eastern Catholicism at our Asian Canadian mission.
It never struck me as odd that I was becoming Ukrainian Catholic. For one, my priest always says, Why is it strange for a Chinese person to become Ukrainian Catholic? Most Chinese Catholics are Latins, but they’re not Italian! For another, Bishop Ken (Nowakowski) – the first Ukrainian Catholic I ever had as a bishop – tells me that in Saskatchewan, there were so many Chinese restaurants that also served Ukrainian food that he grew up thinking that Chinese were just another kind of Ukrainian. I can personally vouch for Bishop Ken on this number: his taste for all kinds of Chinese food, from north to south, is truly catholic, which means that ordering for him is a pleasure. For thirds, Fr Andriy Chirovsky has said both publicly and personally to me that one does not have to be ethnic Ukrainian to join the UGCC, as the Kyivan Church is from Ukraine but for the world. There were a lot of examples of non-Ukrainian UGCCers I met along the way that are public figures in our church – the Hieromonk Richard Soo SJ, Professor Brian Butcher, Dr Andrew Bennett (the erstwhile Canadian Ambassador for Religious Freedom), Fr Deacon Randolph Brown – that I became convinced that this was a thing.
But I am realizing slowly as I’ve come to Chicago – and this might be a word of humor to the catechumens at the Eastern Catholic Church in Richmond who are following after me (I was the first; they called me the proto-catechumen, which really just means that I was our temple’s guinea pig) – that this is certainly not the understanding in some other parts of our church. There was a priest who said at one of the services that the UGCC Synod had called us to evangelize, which (as he then said) meant reaching out to all the Ukrainian Americans who don’t come to church anymore – a very different philosophy from the temple I’m from, for the record. At the funeral services, I was probably the only Chinese guy, and perhaps I am self-conscious, but I feel like I got some weird stares. I hope nobody thought I was a Chinese spy; that’s not only against my Hong Kong Umbrella Movement politics, but more importantly, I think (for the record) it’s a great thing to be Ukrainian because some of the first images that I saw of Ukrainian Catholicism in action were of the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv, which occurred during the lead-up to the events in Hong Kong. Strictly as an issue of social and political justice, we have always prayed for Ukraine and the welfare of its people during this hybrid Russian invasion of its sovereign territory, and our service even organized an Akathist to Jesus, Light to those in Darkness for all victims of state violence, whether in Ukraine, Hong Kong, or black lives and indigenous people in the United states and Canada.
Therefore, on this twenty-fifth anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, I think it is therefore a great thing to be Ukrainian. As public intellectuals like Bishop Borys Gudziak show us (Google Translate is not perfect, but I got the gist), Ukraine itself is a gift to the world for reflecting on what it means to truly have solidarity in a civil society, especially when those bonds are attacked by an aggressor.
However, great as it is to be Ukrainian, it would be dishonest and inappropriate for me to claim that I as a person am somehow Ukrainian. If anything, I get to be ‘Asian American’ and ‘Chinese Canadian,’ but even those terms (as I’ll probably blog through another day) have serious liabilities. And even though I will be working on my Cyrillic so that I can do hukd on foniks in Ukrainian, to be able to sound out the words is really not going to make me Ukrainian.
What’s a guy like me to do in the UGCC? Do I have to learn more Ukrainian than hospody pomylui and vichnaya pamyat? What does it mean to be Ukrainian Catholic when I have no intention of becoming Ukrainian, much as I pray for Ukraine in my daily prayers and enjoy hanging out with Ukrainians?
It occurred to me while Metropolitan Stefan (Soroka) of Philadelphia was preaching one of the services that – blessed be G-d! – this is not some random public figure; even though I have never met him personally (although our eyes locked as he waved the blessing cross over me this morning at the Divine Liturgy), it hit me like a ton of bricks that this is one of my pastors now. In every Divine Liturgy, All-Night Vigil, and even daily prayers at home (at least the ones that I use in the Jordanville Prayer Book), we commemorate our hierarchy: Francis, Pope of the God-saved city of the First-Rome; Sviatoslav, Patriarch of Kyiv and Halych and all Rus’ and Exarch of Great Ukraine; our reverend metropolitan (I’m used to Lawrence because I’m from Canada); our God-loving bishop (I’m used to Kenneth because I was chrismated in the Eparchy of New Westminster). But here in the United States, the metropolitan we’ve been commemorating both publicly and privately is Stefan because that’s what we do liturgically in this Archeparchy.
And this eparchy’s bishop was Richard (Seminack), until August 16, when he reposed.
As I said in an earlier post, I really did not know very much about Bishop Richard. At the parastas and the Divine Liturgy, I learned a little more from the homilies. It was publicly emphasized that while he had been a very happy priest in Philadelphia, his thirteen-year tenure in Chicago – in an eparchy that goes from Indiana to Louisiana to Hawai’i – had been full of challenges. ‘He was a man of shortcomings,’ one of the homilists said (there were two homilies, one at the parastas, one at the Divine Liturgy, and Metropolitan Stefan only gave the one at the parastas), ‘and sometimes people went out of their way to remind him of them.’ Part of it was that he had never been in good health since he became bishop; as one of the homilists said, if it wasn’t this part of his body hurting, it was another part, and eventually, he got cancer, ‘and [this last part is a direct quote] it was the chemo that did him in.’ In fact, both homilists were quite open about the complaints about Bishop Richard; one said that he once was at a dinner where he witnessed ‘words that he did not know could be said in front of a bishop about him.’
And yet, as both homilists reiterated, Bishop Richard never complained. Instead, he offered it as prayer to G-d, along with his other bodily sufferings. We were told that toward the end, one of his close friends came from Philadelphia to hold his hand through the night. We learned that Bishop Richard even then had a sense of humor; when she told him that she wanted to take his place in the sufferings, he thought about it for a little bit and then said, ‘Well, why don’t you jump in the bed already?’ We were reminded that Bishop Richard’s motto was Taken-Blessed-Broken-Given. Not only was he the bishop around whom every temple in the eparchy gathered around for the Eucharist since his appointment in 2003; more importantly, his very body – this frail, sickly body that was then subjected to all kinds of complaints – was what he gave us as bishop. His body, lying in state, was poured out for his eparchy as a eucharistic sacrifice.
The truth is, I missed being under Bishop Richard’s jurisdiction by one day; he reposed the day before I got on the plane for Chicago. But for some reason, the most poignant parts of the service for me were when Metropolitan Stefan said (and he said this more than once) that among Bishop Richard’s final words were: I love them, and I pray for them. He said this of his brother priests and of the deacons. He said this of his people, even those who complained about him. He loved you, and he prayed for you, Metropolitan Stefan said over and over – and now he will pray for us in all eternity.
I am Ukrainian Catholic because, even though Bishop Richard was never my bishop, I am among the people for whom Bishop Richard now prays as he sees G-d face to face. I am Ukrainian Catholic because the commemorations of my church go from Pope Francis to Patriarch Sviatoslav, and when I was in Richmond, went to Metropolitan Lawrence and Bishop Kenneth. I am Ukrainian Catholic because now that I am in Chicago, I hear the commemorations as going to Metropolitan Stefan and then to whoever will be appointed to fill Bishop Richard’s shoes. These are my pastors, and I am in this church, and I even vowed during my chrismation to uphold this church’s holy canons. As Sister Vassa points out, the canons are to be interpreted as the measure by which G-d’s house is built up. It means that I promised to build this house, whether I am ethnically Ukrainian or not.
So what do I do if I am not Ukrainian but have been chrismated into the UGCC? Metropolitan Stefan said that the offering of Bishop Richard of his broken body and poured-out life shows us what – and I quote, as this evangelical language may be hard for some to believe he said, and he did say it – our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will do for us as we offer ourselves: Jesus takes us into his presence so that we behold his face eternally. In this way, the hierarchs of the UGCC gently shepherd me as part of the people in their care into that encounter with the Lord. These pastors guide us to know our Lord and Saviour. All I do as a person in this church is to be part of the gathering around them in the Eucharist, for at every Divine Liturgy that is served, there I am gathering at table with my bishop, who presides as the Spirit is called down upon us and on the gifts, changing them by your Holy Spirit! Amen! Amen! Amen!
It was thus that I had a moment of immense grace after all the services were done. As I waited outside to see if there was anyone that I actually knew at these services, a presbyter walked by and said with a smile, ‘Hi.’ As he passed, I called out to him, Glory to Jesus Christ! He turned around in surprise – this is, after all, an everyday Ukrainian greeting (Slava Isusu Khristou) translated into English – and with an even bigger smile, he shouted, Now and ever! (Slava na v’iki!)
What makes me part of the UGCC is not my ethnicity. It is that I am a canonically part of a Church from Ukraine for the world, and as a church, we manifest as a people the glory of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, both now and ever and for ages of ages, amen.
In this way, the ministry of Bishop Richard has just begun. Our G-d-loving hierarch Richard, you who poured out your life and gave your body as a sacrifice for your people, you who now stand beholding the face of Christ in paradise, pray to G-d for us! Вічная пам’ять!
Justin Tse
