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"How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity! It is like the ointment on the head that runs down to the beard, Aaron's beard."
(Psalm 132:1–2)
And it was these words that became a living icon of these days — when brothers in Christ gathered together to experience the blessings of unity.
Recently, priests of the UGCC from various dioceses of the United States gathered in Chicago to experience together days of spiritual communion, brotherhood, and prayer.
Divine services and meetings took place in the Cathedral of St. Nicholas and the Church of St. Joseph the Betrothed, where over a hundred fathers stood side by side — as brothers, as co-ministers, as those who bear the same cross of Christ's service.
At one time, each of them had a desire to become a priest.
But what does it really mean to be a priest of the Ukrainian people?
Each of us has our own vision.
For some, a priest is a voice coming from the altar.
For some, it's a figure in a black robe, quietly walking down the street.
For some, it's someone who baptizes a child, mourns a loved one, or blesses them for a new journey.
For some, it's a person to whom they can pour out all their pain, a kind of free psychologist.
For some, he is a spiritual mentor, a role model.
And for someone, he is a person of an "incomprehensible profession."
Everyone sees in their own way — according to their own experience, education, faith, pain, joy.
But for the priest himself, it is something much deeper. It is a calling that permeates all of life, becomes breath, blood, heart.
Do we think about how priests live next to faithful people like us?
To be a priest is to live between heaven and earth, to stand on the edge of human pain and God's mercy, and to utter every day the one word that enlivens the world: "Amen."
This is not a career.
This is a path where you no longer belong to yourself.
Because your hands are no longer yours, they are the hands of Christ,
For your word is no longer yours, it is the word of the Lord.
Because your life is no longer yours,
and God, be faithful to the people whom the Lord has entrusted to you.
Someone once said:
"A priest is someone who takes someone else's pain in his hands and raises it to heaven,
"May God make her a blessing."
Maybe this is the deepest secret of vocation?
Because a priest, along with serving God, empathizes with Him.
He stands next to Christ when everyone has scattered.
He cries with those who have lost.
He prays with those who do not have the strength to pray.
He keeps the doors of the Church open to those who are ashamed to enter.
To be a priest of the Ukrainian people —
it is to carry within oneself the pain and beauty of one's people,
to be the voice of the diaspora, a comfort to the exiles, a support for the elderly,
a light for children born far from their homeland,
and the memory of the roots that lives in every Liturgy, in every song, in every “Our Father”.
"A priest is a martyr of love. His calling is to stand on Golgotha every day, even when people have already come down from there."
— Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky
Amidst the gilded censer, under the gaze of icons of saints, silently testifying to fidelity even to the point of blood, stood the fathers—each with their own story, but with one calling: to be Christ's hands, voice, and heart in a world that wants to listen to God less and less.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky wrote:
"A priest is a man who stands between God and people. He must be transparent so that people, looking at him, see not him, but God."
And then he added:
"If you don't live in such a way that people can feel God's presence through you, then repent, because you are standing on holy ground and are not aware of it."
The world today does not need brilliant speakers, but witnesses who stand at the cross.
Sheptytsky reminded his priests:
"Don't be afraid to be small, don't be afraid to be despised. Be afraid to be indifferent."
Each of them has their own story, their own parish, their own joys and their own wounds.
But one thing unites all of them: the calling to be Christ's hands in the midst of human pain.
The priest today is a voice in the desert of secularism.
The pastor standing between the Gospel and the smartphone,
between the altar and solitude,
between Christ and those who no longer believe.
And it is there, in this silence, that he hears the Savior's voice:
"Do you love Me?" —
“Yes, Lord… You know that I love You.” (John 21:17)
In Chicago this fall, that "yes" was heard with a hundred voices and hearts beating in unison.
Amidst the prayer and song, the grace of brotherhood was felt, as the Psalm speaks of:
"How beautiful it is when brothers live together..."
Because when priests pray together, even the wounded Church breathes with the fullness of life.
During the Divine Liturgy, the solemn moment of Holy Communion arrived.
The bishops distributed the Body of Christ, and the priests, standing in reverence, partook of the Blood of Christ from the chalices on the altar.
This is a sacrament of unity and glory, when each minister participates in the very sacrifice of Christ—standing, as the resurrected one, in the presence of the Risen One.
It was a moment of profound Eucharistic fraternity, when the Church—in the person of her pastors—stood as one body before the Lord, in a silence that speaks louder than words.
This is the unity that our nation, our Church, our people in dispersion need today.
Unity that is not in words, but in the heart.
And everyone who stood at the altar or among the people could feel Christ calling His apostles again:
“Go…I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20).
It is here, among the brothers, that the priest feels that he is not alone.
Amidst shared prayer and song, a quiet confidence is born:
God does not abandon his servants.
In brotherhood, a power is revealed that no science or experience can give—the power of God's presence in the other.
This is the living Church—when one holds another, and all together hold the cross of love.
Prayer
Lord, bless your priests,
who stand between Your altar and the hearts of men.
Give them strength when they are exhausted,
of hope when the world laughs at their faith,
and love when the heart grows cold from loneliness.
Let Your voice be heard in every word they say,
in every wound is a reflection of Your Cross,
and in every tear is the light of resurrection.
Because "how good it is when brothers live together..."
and they carry your name to the ends of the earth.
