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.
I completely agree and I would go even further than you. I'm not at all sure that the rights and wrongs of the situation are as straightforward as they have been portrayed in the Western media. In Ireland the wife of our President was castigated for calling for peace! Presumably John Lennon's "anthem Give Peace a Chance" should now be suppressed for the duration of the war! I pray for everybody involved and everybody suffering, Ukrainian and Russian.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm certainly not an expert and am only really able to go on what I hear from our media. Even so, I am convinced that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the background to the war, there is no justification for the invasion itself, let alone for the methods the Russian army has been using. So the only just outcome would be for the aggressor, Russia, to withdraw, or to be defeated. Until then the Ukrainians have every right to carry on defending themselves, even though that of course means war, not peace. I don't know exactly what the Irish President's wife has said or in what context, but the problem with calling for peace in a general sense — even though it is what most of us want, one way or another — is that it might be misinterpreted as a call to Ukraine and her Western allies simply to allow Russia to have her way. Unfortunately nobody in the Kremlin seems to listen to John Lennon...
DeleteThe point of my piece, though, is that we should not tar all Russians with the same brush — most ordinary Russians have surely had very little hand in all this, but they are certainly paying the price.
Thank you, as ever, for reading and commenting!