PERSPECTIVES: An answer to our prayers (01/30/05)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

An answer to our prayers

My earliest memories include prayer. In the early 1950s, when I was a little boy and we had just moved to America, my father would take me to mass in a little town in Pennsylvania's Anthracite Coal Region where he worked as a cantor (diak). When they sang about holy mysteries ("taino yavliayetsia"), I thought it was about a neighbor's dog, "Tiny."

After we moved to Cleveland, we went to church every Sunday, every holy day of obligation and for a whole series of requiem masses. Never was church more onerous than October 31, the night in 1918 when Western Ukrainian military forces captured key points in the city of Lviv and proclaimed the Western Ukrainian National Republic. To commemorate that anniversary, my brothers, our parents and I drove from our home to Ss. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church in Tremont for yet another service.

On the way there, we peered out the windows of our '52 Chevy to see kids in costume going house to house yelling, "Trick or Treat!" By the time the lugubrious tones of "Vichnaya Pamiat" had faded, all the porch lights were off and Halloween was over. We must have rebelled, because at some point we stopped going to that particular requiem and went trick or treating instead, but we never stopped going to church. And after every liturgy, the congregation sang "Bozhe Velyky" or some similar song entreating the Almighty's intervention to grant the Ukrainian people unity, sovereignty and freedom.

A lot of people believe sincerely in God's intervention. The Japanese believe God sent a typhoon, a divine wind (kami kaze) to save Japan from a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281. Gen. Patton ordered a military chaplain to compose a prayer for good weather in December 1944. As for me, I've prayed for loved ones entering surgery, for success in final exams, job interviews, athletic contests. I have learned that God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is "no."

Yet, we continue to pray. Many years ago, my good friend, Father Taras Lonchyna at Holy Family Church in Washington, delivered a memorable sermon where he cautioned that prayers don't necessarily change an objective situation. Instead, he said, prayer changes people, giving them strength and wisdom to address challenges for which they seek God's intervention. Then it's up to them.

Which brings me to another memory from childhood: Dr. Seuss. I discovered his wonderful books in the first or second grade. One of them, "Horton Hears a Who," has had an influence on my life ever since I first read it more than 50 years ago. No kidding.

In his wonderful, simple rhyme, Dr. Seuss tells how Horton the elephant discovers a clover with a speck of dust which harbors an infinitesimal world of creatures called "Who's." Only Horton, with his big ears and big heart, knows they exist, because only he can hear them. Other animals, callous and cruel, are determined to destroy the creatures they neither see nor hear. To avert their extinction, Horton exhorts the Whos to make as much noise as they possibly can to prove they exist. Led by their mayor, the tiny creatures yell, scream, bang on pots and pans, but to no avail. The mayor then rushes from door to door to see if he can find just one more Who to join the effort. Sure enough, he discovers a little girl twirling her yo-yo, oblivious to the campaign to save her life and that of the community. The mayor's rebukes provoke the girl into crying, which turns out to be just enough for the outside world to hear the Whos. The animals concede: indeed, the Whos exist and have a right to live in freedom and safety.

I can't remember whether a light bulb went off in my own child's mind the first time or the hundredth time I read "Horton Hears a Who," but I've always identified with the tiny creatures who made enough noise to survive. To me that justified the endless requiem liturgies, the Saturday trek to the Ridna Shkola School, learning verses for a concert or "academia."

Seeing the Orange Revolution - indeed participating in it, albeit from a severe distance - I couldn't help but feel the power of Divine Providence. Everyone who ever attended a mass, a banquet, a vigil, a concert that ended in a hymn beseeching God to intervene on behalf of the Ukrainian people, had to have felt as I did that the Orange Revolution was the answer to several lifetimes of entreaties aimed at God's ear, asking that He redeem the faith of mothers and fathers, mentors and teachers who did the simple things to instill in their children the truth about their legacy, preparing them for the time when the dream that Taras Shevchenko and others defined would be theirs for the taking.

Truly, the millions who came to Independence Square in Kyiv and dozens of similar venues throughout Ukraine and around the world had been individually energized to physically add themselves to the mass of people who gathered in the unshakable conviction that together they would change a situation they were no longer willing to endure. So, like the little girl who stopped twirling her yo-yo and cried out, millions of Ukrainians everywhere dropped what they were doing and joined the common effort to assert their right to exist.

Yet how differently things might have been, were it not for Luck, Providence, Fortuna, Karma, or God Himself intervening at a critical time. Viktor Yushchenko, who promised reform, and with it freedom and Europe, was poisoned in the midst of the campaign with a dose of dioxin, apparently intended to kill him. Instead he survived and then, courageously and decisively, seized the moment, asking the Ukrainian people to rally to his leadership. And millions did, accepting him as the legitimate president of Ukraine who promises to lead his country toward a society that rejects coercion, deception and corruption and is guided instead by democracy, freedom and values. No small thing for Ukraine.

No one will ever know whether God intervened to spare Mr. Yushchenko's life and thereby gave people the opportunity to vote with their feet after their actual votes had been stolen. I do know that the hymn I heard reverberating on election night at Independence Square in Kyiv was the same one I sang as a child, exhorting God to grant Ukraine unity, freedom and peace. I'm convinced that prayer does transform people, giving them energy and strength to transform situations that beg to be changed. That's why I'm praying for President Viktor Yushchenko and the Ukrainian people to succeed in the years to come. God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is "yes."

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: fedynsky@stratos.net.

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