Orthodox Reflections

The over 200 monks at the Kiev Petschersk Lavra, along with the students and faculty of the Kiev Theological Academy, are facing eviction from the center of Orthodoxy in Ukraine on March 29th, 2023. In the face of this impending disaster, lots of people have been asking – how can we help? What can we do? So here are 5 suggested ways you can help right now.

1. Pray

The prayers of the righteous are very efficacious, so testifies the Bible, the lives of Saints, and all other Orthodox sources of wisdom. Please add the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and her Metropolitan Onuphry to your daily prayers. Be sure to ask for the intercession of the Mother of God, who is especially revered at the Lavra. The UOC is asking for help internationally. The canonical Church is appealing to the Ukrainian government, which is their government after all since they are all Ukrainian citizens. The Church is also making urgent videos and other appeals for help.

But above all, being faithful Orthodox Christians, the UOC is gathering in prayer! Which, for the oppressors of the Body of Christ, is the most dangerous thing imaginable.

"On March 22, 2023, during the evening service, Metropolitan Serhiy of Ternopil and Kremenets and Metropolitan Kliment of Nizhyn and Prylutsky, head of the Study Committee at the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, read the Akathist in front of the revered image .… pic.twitter.com/BkWFGiIdqQ

— Live Not by Lies (@Dana35300026) March 22, 2023

Via the Kyiv Theological Academy, which is located at the Lavra Caves:

"Orthodox Ukrainians pray to the Mother of God in the Lavra.
Believers flock to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra to pray all day long.
Prayer on the square in front of the Near Caves. The vicar of the monastery… pic.twitter.com/MUF3zSaozz

— Live Not by Lies (@Dana35300026) March 22, 2023

Please share these videos!

If you and/or your parish are not joining the UOC in prayer, then please do so immediately. With God all things are possible, no matter how bleak this situation looks. In the comments, feel free to share any prayers for the UOC that you have heard or read that would be good for the Orthodox Faithful to pray.

2. Sign the Petition

Orthodox Reflections is sponsoring a petition supporting the UOC. The petition has been signed by over 5,400 people globally. Sign the petition below. To read the petition verbiage, click here. To see the list of signatures, please click here. To view organizations who have received the petition so far, click here. For media links to coverage of the petition effort (that we know of), click here.

Why does this petition matter? For many reasons. It draws attention to the persecution of the Ukrainian Church. It gives us something concise to share with the media, and proof that this is an issue people care about. We know, based on comments that we have gotten, that all sides of this issue are monitoring the progress of the petition as the number of signatures climbs higher and higher. Many of the signers of the petition are Ukrainian members of the UOC. The petition reminds them that they are not forgotten by the rest of the world. People around the world are thinking of them and praying for them. The support of others means a lot to people under such persecution. Also, signing the petition and commenting (often in Ukrainian) makes them feel that they have a voice.

Please sign and share the petition. If you already have, scroll down for more ways to help.

3. Donate to the UOC

The UOC needs material help to weather this persecution. The Fund for Assistance of ROCOR is taking donations to help the UOC in this dark hour.

The quoted text below is copied from ROCOR’s article asking for assistance. There you can find more information and the option to donate via PayPal. As you read the excerpt below, keep in mind that the Ukrainian Government has said it will not use “force” to evict the monks. What is meant by that statement, assuming it is lived up to and not a lie, is that the Zelenskyy regime will not use official soldiers and/or police in the removal. As you can see below, the government is already applying financial pressure to starve the monks out. If that fails to work, then many UOC members have expressed a fear that ultra-nationalist paramilitaries will be used to commit violence. The government can then claim it was not involved.

The financial need is extremely urgent:

But stealing the Church’s property is just the beginning… It looks like the authorities are just warming up.

 

They are determined to wipe out the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and replace it with the OCU, which has as much to do with the canonical Orthodox Church as oil and water.

 

Confiscating the property of the Church is only the first step. The truth is, the travesty of a “church” that the government is supporting doesn’t have nearly enough followers to fill even the monastery grounds inside the Kiev Caves Lavra. And they know it.

 

So how are they planning to deal with this little problem?

 

They are starving the canonical monks out of the Lavra. That’s what I just found out from the abbot of the monastery himself.

 

In the last few days and weeks, many of the canonical bishops, clergy, and monastics have been sanctioned by the Ukrainian government. The Ukrainian government froze the accounts of the monastery, as well as of Metropolitan Pavel – the abbot of the monastery.

 

The monastics have no one left on Earth they can ask for help – except for you. Because every hierarch, cleric, monastic, and layman knows who has helped them survive this past horrible year.

 

“ROCOR helps us more than anyone else in the world,” – says Fr. Sergiy Ekshiyan, the head of the Synodal Social Humanitarian Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

 

In addition to sanctions, the government has stripped several canonical bishops and clergy of their citizenship, and has been giving tacit approval to thugs who seize parish churches in villages throughout Ukraine to turn over to the OCU. Videos have even surfaced of hierarchal vestments being burned and dance parties being thrown inside churches!!

 

But that’s old news and while the world doesn’t care, our brothers are being starved.

 

At this moment of crisis, Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the ancient monastery, applied to ROCOR for help, because…

 

• They have nothing to eat and no way to pay for their modest needs…
• they are in a war-torn country, routinely attacked by their own countrymen…
• their accounts are frozen…
• their property ‒ seized…
• their Faith ‒ mocked…

They are now facing a choice: starve or deny their – and our – Church.

 

Doesn’t it sound eerily familiar?

 

How many times have you read of similar starvation tactics used during the times of Diocletian, Julian the Apostate, and the Soviet Revolution?

 

I’m not writing this to you to scare you and spoil your day.

 

I’m writing to you today because like our starving Ukrainian brothers in the Kiev Caves we, too, have a choice.

 

You’re not being forced to deny your Church yet. Your choice is far simpler – to endure just a little suffering – a small privation – by sharing what you have with these modern martyrs.

 

Will you let our canonical Orthodox brothers and sisters starve?

 

Will you leave them alone? Hungry? Scared?

 

Or will you stand with them, pray for their strength – and send them funds?

 

Because the good news is – we still have a safe way to send them money. So, when you send urgent help to Metropolitan Pavel and the faithful brethren suffering for Jesus Christ and our Church today, you can be sure that the money is going to go into their hands.

4. Help Everyone Meet Two Ukrainians Everyone Should Know

We received this email just this morning from Archimandrite Filaret Voloshyn, Vice Rector of Kiev Theological Academy in Kiev Petschersk Lavra.

Dear brothers and sisters!

 

My name is Archimandrite Filaret Voloshyn. I’m vice rector of Kiev Theological Academy in Kiev Petschersk Lavra.

 

Our rector and all our family are grateful for your support of our Church. As you know, we have a tragically difficult situation in our monastery and our theological schools.

 

I made a video and a text about it. We kindly ask you if it is possible for you to share this information with all the Cristian and people of good will.

 

This information is on our official website of Theological Academy.

 

http://kdais.kiev.ua/event/zvernennia-23032023-2/

 

I’m here for all your possible questions.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

We ask your prayers.

 

Best regards,

 

Archim. Filaret Voloshyn

Филарет Волошин

The page listed above has an English and Ukrainian text of his video appeal. His video is in English, and we have copied it below. His email address is filaret.voloshyn@gmail.com

Please share his video as widely as possible. In addition, if you are a content creator (blogger, Youtuber, etc.) or know someone who is, please help! We need to bring the Archimandrite to everyone’s attention! At Orthodox Reflections we have already been reaching out to Orthodox video channels to ask they contact the Archimandrite for interviews, ask questions, get additional statements, or anything else they can do to spread the word. We need the story of the Theological Academy to be known by the entire world.

The other Ukrainian we need everyone to know about is Oleh Denysov, a lawyer from Ukraine and founder of the NGO Public Advocacy. He reached out to Orthodox Reflections from Geneva where he is speaking to the UN HRC,  the UN Special Rapporteur of freedom of religion, and to other officials regarding UOC cases. Mr. Denysov has previously represented cases of the Jerusalem and Antioch Patriarchates, and dioceses of Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro. He brought to our attention recent statements made during the ongoing UNHRC session accessible via this link. These documents are powerful, concise, factual accounts of the awful, immoral, and illegal persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Please share the documents widely. Mr. Denysov has also expressed a willingness to work with others, so content creators, please reach out to him at this email address: protiktor@gmail.com

5. Share the Truth

More than anything else, the conflict in Ukraine has evolved as an information war. So much of what is published about the UOC is absolute slander. The antidote to that is to share the truth with our friends, neighbors, and fellow Christians. These are some additional resources we highly recommend (in addition to this article, of course).

This article titled Showdown at the Lavra from The American Conservative is a great one to share, especially for the benefit of non-Orthodox Christians. The author does an excellent job of explaining the situation in a clear and understandable way. His explanation of why the non-canonical OCU is absolutely not acceptable for canonical Orthodox Christians is very good:

The Zelensky government says that Orthodox Ukrainians are still free to worship with the smaller, breakaway church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. This rings hollow. The OCU was set up during the Poroshenko years as a nationalist scheme by thoroughly uncanonical means that are still not recognized by many other Orthodox churches (including the Orthodox Church of America, which continues to pray for the UOC). For a practicing Orthodox Christian, the canonicity of the Church and its unity are central to worship. Perhaps the best parallel would be when Maoist China offered Catholics the chance to join the Communist-affiliated Catholic Patriotic Association, which did not accept the primacy of the Roman pontiff. Everyone realized that this was no substitute.

We also recommend our own article 8 Lies Told by Enemies of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. That is a summary of the most common lies and misperceptions we have encountered online when supporting the UOC.

Finally, we highly recommend the video below. Monks are not violent, but they have indicated they will not voluntarily leave the Lavra. As we noted above, they are already being starved (literally) of funds and resources. Ukraine is awash in paramilitary units with a history of violence against the canonical Church. Any resistance to their eviction by such monsters, no matter how passive, is likely to result in blood being spilled. Americans and other Westerners must understand that this tragic situation can easily end in new Christian Martyrs.

—Orthodox Reflections Staff