On Praying for Ukraine

In recent days two notices, each outside different Anglican churches, have happened to catch my eye.  One read, ‘We Pray for Ukraine’; the other, ‘Ukrainians Welcome Here’.  

And so we should, and so they should be.  But ought we not also, albeit in a different way, to be praying for Russia; should Russians of good will not also be made welcome?  The obvious plight of Ukraine makes our prayers as straightforward as they are ardent, but it seems to me to be no less important to pray for Russia, even if the words are necessarily more complex and rather harder to say.  The sparing of the young army conscripts and their families, the consolation of the unjustly bereaved, the success of those working underground or behind the scenes to bring a just end to the whole situation, in general the liberation of Russia’s people from their thousand-year nightmare, and — perhaps most difficult of all — the conversion and ultimately the forgiveness of her leaders and soldiers who have willingly spilled blood and brought disgrace on their nation — all these we can surely pray for without excusing or overlooking in any way the evil that has been done in Russia’s name.

Since a nation is a larger, looser version of a family, the bonds that bind it implicate all its members in its collective reputation, its collective fate.  But although the fate is collective, responsibility for that fate is not.  Thus, while the name of Russia is soiled by this new outrage, only a minority of Russians are actually to blame for it.  It is a horrible situation for them — certainly, more abstract and less raw in its horror than having one’s homeland blasted to ashes, but horrible nonetheless.  To pray for them is an act both of mercy and of justice.

The intentions behind the churches’ signs were good and sincere, I do not doubt, and I am confident that any Russians appearing in the pews would be welcomed there in practice, but we should do our best not to leave these things in any doubt, nor to let it be thought that our prayers are too hasty, or too reflexive, or unduly partial.  So, hard as it may be in this one-sided situation, we should try to pray for consolation wherever there is suffering, for justice wherever there is injustice, for mercy wherever there is contrition.

Six years since World Youth Day in Kraków

Six years ago today I was sitting at my laptop in my student flat, watching the opening Mass of World Youth Day in Kraków, and wishing more with every minute that I were there.  I was struck particularly by the music, which was supplied by a full choir and orchestra and consisted of fine, uplifting hymns and a beautiful Mass setting — full of a kind of joyful stateliness for the occasion, and all with rich, even cinematic orchestration.  

My endeavours to try and find out more, or indeed anything, about it all — what the hymns were called and how to spell them, let alone who had composed them! — sparked an effort to learn Polish pronunciation (which turned out not to be as hard as it looks) and a tentative but continuing attempt to learn the language itself.  And it drew me into the discovery and deepening love of Polish church music and the life that surrounds it — everything from their travelling liturgical music workshops, which draw hundreds of people to make music together, to the enormous outdoor hymn-concerts held every year in the city of Rzeszów.  The discovery of the Dominican Liturgical Centre in Kraków has been a revelation, and last October it was a joy and a privilege to take part in a workshop given by the composer Paweł Bębenek at St. Dominic’s Priory in London, and then to sing music composed by him and his fellow composers in an unforgettable candle-lit vigil.

Today is also, of course, the sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of père Jacques Hamel of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen.  The mingling of the two events as they reached me from afar — of the joy of World Youth Day and the sharp sorrow of that news — is something else which has fixed that day in my memory.

The Agnus Dei of Henryk Jan Botor’s Missa Ioannis Paoli Secundi, written specially for World Youth Day and sung at its opening Mass at Błonia Park, Kraków, on the 26th July 2016.  This setting has proved popular with our parish Youth Choir in South London.