Keep focused on God with Blessed Emilian Kovch

The Ukrainian Patriarch Sviatoslav mentioned in his video message for May 1st the life of Blessed priest-martyr Emilian Kovch. Who is this man referenced?

Blessed Emilian Kovch (1884-1944) was the son of a priest, a married Eastern Catholic priest, and father of six who was persecuted by the Nazi ideologues.

Father Emilian served as a military chaplain (1919-1921). At the time he said, “I know that the soldier on the front line feels better when he sees the doctor and the priest also there . . . You know, lads, that I am consecrated, and a bullet doesn’t take a consecrated man easily.”

As Sviatoslav quotes Blessed Emilian, let these words become our own: “Here I see God, Who is one and the same for all.”

Emilian was centered: he focused himself on the Lord of Life, the God who saves, gives mercy, redeems us from death. The patriarch notes that “He [Blessed Emilian] was able to keep a pure heart, even in the depths of the hell of a Nazi concentration camp. May purity of heart be our strength in these military circumstances so that it might be our guarantee of victory over evil.”

Beatified on 27 June 2001 by St Pope John Paul II at Ukraine. The feast day for Blessed Emilian Kovch is March 25.

Read more of Blessed Emilian here.

Let’s take up Patriarch Sviatoslav’s exhortation to keep centered on God. Focus yourself on the purity of heart. Our strength is being of singular in our attention, our purity of heart.

Pray for Blessed Emilian’s intercession.

Blessed Emilian, pray for us.

#StandWithUrkaine

Enter the Lord’s joy

Traditionally this homily of the great bishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom is read at the Easter Vigil. In fact, the Church asks that the priest make this homily his own in the sense that the theology St. John speaks is the authentic, orthodox teaching of the Church. The experience of the saint of the resurrection becomes the received experience of the faithful. It is offered here now, two weeks following Holy Pascha, for us to reflect upon and to verify for ourselves the truth found in the homily. Christ is risen!

LET ALL PIOUS MEN and all lovers of God rejoice in the splendor of this feast; let the wise servants blissfully enter into the joy of their Lord; let those who have borne the burden of Lent now receive their pay, and those who have toiled since the first hour, let them now receive their due reward; let any who came after the third hour be grateful to join in the feast, and those who may have come after the sixth, let them not be afraid of being too late, for the Lord is gracious and He receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes on the eleventh hour as well as to him who has toiled since the first: yes, He has pity on the last and He serves the first; He rewards the one and is generous to the other; he repays the deed and praises the effort.

Come you all: enter into the joy of your Lord. You the first and you the last, receive alike your reward; you rich and you poor, dance together; you sober and you weaklings, celebrate the day; you who have kept the fast and you who have not, rejoice today. The table is richly loaded: enjoy its royal banquet. The calf is a fatted one: let no one go away hungry. All of you enjoy the banquet of faith; all of you receive the riches of his goodness. Let no one grieve over his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed; let no one weep over his sins, for pardon has shone from the grave; let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free: He has destroyed it by enduring it, He has despoiled Hades by going down into its kingdom, He has angered it by allowing it to taste of his flesh.

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Prophet Jeremiah

On the Byzantine liturgical calendar today is the feast of the Holy Prophet Jeremiah; as a point of comparison, the Armenian liturgical calendar commemorates Jeremiah on August 27.

Knowledge of sacred Scripture will remind us that the Prophet Jeremiah is one of the major prophets of the Bible. Jeremiah lived in-between the 7th and 6th centuries before Christ—thus making him a contemporary of Solon (the Athenian lawgiver).

We speak of prophets receiving his call from God. In Jeremiah’s case, the prophetic calling happened in a time of promise: the reign of the godly king Josiah, during which a lost book of Moses, known as Deuteronomy, was re-discovered, springing a movement of spiritual renewal awakened among the Hebrew people. But with the king’s death came the people’s despair.

Historians tell us that Jeremiah’s generation experienced radical change in the life of the Chosen Nation: the holy city of Jerusalem is conquered and the people wander in exile. It is Jeremiah who relates to us in the book that bearers his name and fittingly described with the word “Lamentations” and the Jeremiah becomes the “weeping prophet.”

One of the things I found out from Christopher H. Zakian was that Jeremiah’s experience among the Hebrew people had direct correlation in faith and life for the Armenian Christians as St. Gregory of Narek, who borrowed the title “Lamentations” for his own masterpiece of mystical poetry. As Zakian said, “The similarities between the travails of Jeremiah’s time and the experiences of our own people hardly need to be enumerated.

The more important similarity, of course, is the spirit of hope, grounded in a loving, fatherly God, which allows people to endure, overcome, and live on—whether in the 6th century B.C., the 20th century A.D., or today.”

As the witness of Jeremiah gave hope to the Jewish nation he gives a witness of hope for Christians today. Our era of faith is riddled with ecclesial and secular problems not last is war, but we know the truth and we have hope the promises Jesus made are not too good to be true.

Stand With Ukraine-Calendar of Events

Please wear your Ukrainian embroidered shirts and blouses to show support for Ukraine.

Saturday, April 30, 7pm-Yunist Benefit Concert-Stamford Palace Theater, 61 Atlantic St, Stamford CT

Sunday, May 1, after 10:30am Liturgy-St Michael Ukrainian Catholic Church Easter Dinner 569 George St New Haven CT (No tickets at the door, call the rectory for tickets: $25 per person.)

Sunday, May 1, 1pm to 7pm-Ukrainian Relief Fundraiser Orange Ale House & Grille, 517 Boston Post Rd, Orange CT

Sunday, May 1, 2pm-4pm-Ukrainian National Home of Hartford Annual Meeting, 961 Wethersfield Avenue, Hartford CT

Saturday, May 7, 3pm to 7pm-Jump for Ukraine a Fundraising Event for Medical Aid-Flight Adventure Park, 145 Spencer St, Manchester CT

Friday, May 13, 7pm-Concert for Ukraine-Round Hill Community Church, 395 Round Hill Rd, Greenwich CT