CRUCIFIXION AT EASTER

While the Orthodox Church just celebrated the joyous feast of Easter, May 5 (following the Julian calendar), the  Ukraine is still under seige by the Russians.  Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in his Easter greeting that “Ukraine is undergoing its crucifixion on the cross together with Christ.”

“The Savior Himself suffers in the body of the Ukrainian people. This gives meaning to our suffering and serves as a source of our resilience and vitality to win.

Indeed, today Christ even dies in the bodies of our soldiers on the battlefield. He is the one being tortured in Russian captivity, mocked, and once again spat upon by all those who deny the dignity of man in the modern world."

 And in his Angelus this week Pope Francis said: “Please, continue to pray for tormented Ukraine – it suffers a great deal! – and also for Palestine and Israel, that there may be peace, that dialogue may be strengthened and bear good fruit. No to war, yes to dialogue.”   

Painting is by Ukrainian artist, painter, photographer and video-installation artist, as well as a lutenist composer, Roman Turovsky,  who was born in Kyiv in 1961. He studied art under his father, Mikhail Turovsky, also a well-known painter. His family emigrated to New York City in 1979 for creative freedom not granted under the USSR, and many of Mikhais’s paintings reflect the turmoil that his family endured as refugees and immigrants.