On July 2, 2009, the Saint Nicholas Church in Kyiv attracted bishops, parish priests, and believers representing Ukraine’s three most influential religions — Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. They came to offer up a joint prayer for Ukraine. The idea was conceived by the Ukrainian Biblical Society (UBT) that aims to translate, publish, and disseminate the New and Old Testaments. Bishop Andrii Sheptytsky once said: “The Holy Scriptures should be read in church, as well as among friends, in the family, and individually.” UBT is one of the few associations that have rallied representatives of various denominations around itself.
“We do not pray enough, whereas each prayer goes all the way through the Universe and reaches our Lord,” said Dmytro Stepovyk, Ph.D. in Theology. In the course of the joint prayer, the Old Testament was quoted: “If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people… If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chr 7:13–14). Also references were made to the New Testament: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (Jhn 15:7).
The large audience recited the Lord’s Prayer and “I Believe.” The famous psalm Bless the Lord, O My Soul by the composer Kyrylo Stetsenko, Maksym Berezovsky’s Sviatyi Bozhe (Our Hallowed Lord), Mykola Lysenko’s Bozhe velykyi yedynyi (Our Only Lord God) were performed by the Kyiv Symphony Choir. The Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Choir (conducted by Roger McMurrin) performed excerpts from Handel’s oratorio Messiah, Giuseppe Verdi’s and Maurice Durufl ’s Requiems.
Metropolitan Demetrius (Rudiuk) of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky (Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate) said: “Prayers were offered up for our land even when Saint Andrew the First Called was amongst the living. The same is true of the first Christian Prince Askold, Saint Prince Volodymyr, and the saints born in our land. We are offering up prayers for all of them.” The metropolitan read a prayer for Ukraine from an Orthodox prayer book.
His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, said: “I am glad to see all of us gathered in order to offer up a common prayer. We come to know the Omnipotent Lord our God by readings the Holy Scriptures. He can feed thousands of starving people and raise the dead… I think that this is an opportunity for us to ask our Lord to help us resolve our problems in a miraculous way. He can do this, but I believe we now have to pray for Ukraine not in an abstract manner but in a very personal one. We have to beg the Almighty Lord, who created us and endowed us with various talents, to help us Ukrainians serve our people, asking Him to give each one of us His grace and to make us willing to work for the sake of our people and love our nation.”
