Ukraine’s suffering mirrors that of Easter — we must help this proud nation rise again

Opinion

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This article was published 20/03/2022 (914 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We are witnessing the Passion of Ukraine. It’s still Lent, and Easter is several weeks away, but in this sacrificial journey toward the Christian commemoration of the arrest, torture, and murder of Jesus we see Ukraine in all of its pain and tears.

The word “Passion” comes from the Latin for “suffering” and seldom have we been such armchair witnesses to barbarism and slaughter. Easter, however, can only be properly understood if we also embrace the Resurrection, and I firmly believe that through the screams and the agony there will indeed be a rebirth, a rising again of this great and proud nation.

Such a statement and such an idea would have been surprising, even jarring, to my father’s family. They were Ukrainian Jews. Most, my direct line, left in the 1890s, but others remained, through the truly grotesque years of Stalin and Hitler. Their relationships with their Christian neighbours and rulers were seldom comfortable and sometimes deadly.

Now there’s me, a Christian priest, but one who will never, and could never, forget his Jewish heritage. Even more extraordinary, now there’s Ukraine’s president, a Jewish man who embodies the country’s resistance and courage. That, I promise you, would have amazed my people.

But then Jesus was Jewish of course, as was his mother, and most of his early followers. The blood he and they shed was Jewish blood and that has often been grotesquely forgotten by the church historical in so many ways of shame and horror.

The blood of the modern martyrs is Ukrainian, whatever the background, religion, or belief. The blood of men, women, and children, running in crimson innocence as brutal occupiers — not Roman now but Russian — bully their way into what is not theirs and doesn’t belong to them.

The five wounds of Christ are replicated in the holy wounds of Ukraine. Invasion, murder, lies, abuse, and terror. A country bleeds for us, not as Christ, who some of us regard as the Messiah, but as a living obstacle, a heroic barrier to the ambitions of a malicious and cruel leader, who exploits and oppresses his own people in his lust for power and land. It will not end with Ukraine, as history has repeatedly taught us.

Some in the world wash their hands of all this, preferring to do nothing while the noble victims die in their place. Others genuinely lament what is happening but don’t intervene because they think it would be too dangerous for them. Then there are those who rejoice in it all. Crucify him, crucify him!

These Lenten lands, these Paschal paths, have never been so obvious to the world, and yet we respond with relatively little. No surprise if we think about it, because similar hell has been brought down on Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and so many other places. Perhaps our racism prevented and still prevents us from reacting properly to those repeated obscenities, and that’s an eternal stain. And yes, I’m fully aware of western and especially U.S. hypocrisy in all of this.

So let’s begin the restoration here and now, and start the permanent revolution of grace and equality today. In Lent we Christians are supposed to remember the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. We do so in part by abstaining from something that gives us ease or pleasure.

Can we not abstain from complacency, and thus save Ukraine? In doing so we could change everything! Humanity cries out, as it always has, and perhaps this time we can listen. Perhaps, perhaps, this time. Don’t forsake them, not again.

Lent, Passion, Jesus, and the sanctity of Ukraine. My ancestors may well have been confused and even bewildered by the language, but they would most certainly have grasped the meaning. Because in the end it’s not about nation, race, or religion, but about truth, justice, and peace. In Ukraine and beyond. For ever and ever. Amen.

Rev. Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and contributing columnist to the Star’s Opinion section and iPolitics. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelcoren