This Christmas, St. Josaphat’s helps keep Ukrainian traditions alive

30.11.2016, 12:41

St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Church—a church filled with light and bright color—sits on a three-acre property on the Hamilton-Trenton border. Such a large facility provides ample space for the holiday picnics that bring together this community of four waves of Ukrainian immigrants.

On Dec. 9 and 10 the church’s sisterhood is sponsoring a Christmas Bazaar and Bake Sale, featuring traditional dishes like pierogies, stuffed cabbage, cookies, rolls filled with poppy seeds, apricots, apples, raspberry, cheese, nuts, and a thick jam or fruit butter called “lekvar.”

The Ukrainian Catholic Church split with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the 1596 Union of Brest, but St. Josaphat’s shares many traditions with the two area Ukrainian Orthodox churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity in Trenton and St. George Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Yardville.

For both Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox, the Christmas season began this year on Nov. 15 with the 40-day St. Philip’s fast, where people abstain from meat and sweets (except on Sundays, because the “liturgy”—what would be called “mass” in a Roman Catholic church—is a reminder of Christ’s resurrection) and do spiritual readings, the Rev. Taras Lonchyna says, “to prepare the soul for receiving Christ at Christmas.”

During a period that begins on Christmas and continues through the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, on Feb. 2, Ukrainians sing selections from more than 3,000 Ukrainian carols. They also have a special greeting: the first person (which may be the priests) opens with “Christ is born” and the response is “Glorify him.”

On Christmas Eve dinner, different families get together to eat a sacred, meatless meal, which includes 12 dishes that symbolize the 12 apostles. Kutya, meaning “treasures of the earth,” is made from wheat, poppy seeds, honey, milk, walnuts and raisins or dates. Other foods include borsch (beet soup), kapusta (cabbage soup), varenyky (pierogis), holubtsi (stuffed cabbage with a mushroom gravy), fish (usually stuffed or in an aspic), herring, compote, and pampushky (Ukrainian donuts, filled with a sweet fruit jelly).

Families go to church for the midnight liturgy and again on Christmas day, when the meal includes meat.

Families often go out together and cut down Christmas trees, or they might choose one earlier in the year from a nursery that they will eventually plant in the backyard. Tree decorations might be little pillows embroidered on both sides, along with apples, walnuts and almonds. Parishioner Roman Kuzyk remembers that when he was a little boy they clipped candles on the tree and lit them.

Parishioner Roman Horodyskyj speaks of four Ukrainian immigrations to the United States: in 1911, in flight from Czarist Russia; after World War II; in the late 1960s; and after Ukraine declared its independence in 1991. Ukrainians have spread far and wide—Brazil, Australia, Canada, the United States, Argentina, and Western Europe.

“We have our own diaspora,” says Horodyskyj, who was born in Germany. “What our people suffered after World War II is like the Syrians escaping now.”

He and three other parishioners of St. Josaphat, which serves a little over 150 families, as well as the priest, shared their own immigration histories.

Horodyskyj’s parents caught the last train from Bratislava as the Reds advanced and the Germans were retreating in 1944; they made their way to a displaced persons camp whose population was mostly from Eastern Europe and then to America.

The church’s “historian,” Kuzyk, was born in Ukraine in 1941. When he was four days old, the Germans attacked the Russians, and his house was on the front, with shooting right overhead. He says his family “leaned everything toward getting away to the West,” and they eventually made their way to a displaced persons camp, where he remembers playing with fellow Ukrainians.

His family was able to get into the United States with the help of another family member who already lived here. They came on a ship paid for by the National Catholic Welfare Council.

They reached the shores of America in New York Harbor on Dec. 21, 1948, he said.
Daria Laszyn was born in Poland, near the Baltic Sea. Her parents were moved there during the Wisla deportation in 1947-48. Because the Communist government did not want Ukrainians living near the Ukrainian border, they were moved to western or northwestern Poland. She came to the United States in 1966.

Lesya Kindiy, president of St. Josaphat’s Sisterhood, was born in Ukraine and came to Lawrenceville with her husband and two daughters in 2000, because her younger daughter was very sick.

“The people from St. Josaphat’s were very helpful, because in a new life in a new country, it’s hard to be alone,” she said. “St. Josaphat is like family, because all of my relatives are still far away in Ukraine.”

Her older daughter is at American University’s Washington College of Law, and her younger daughter is studying biochemistry at Rider University.

Lonchyna was born in 1951 in Steubenville, Ohio. One grandfather was a priest in the oldest church in Lviv in the western Ukraine. When the Communists were forcing people to join the Russian Orthodox Church, those who refused were either arrested and sent to prison or sent to Siberia. Lonchyna’s grandfather refused to sign his church over, and he was arrested and sent to the Donbas area in eastern Ukraine where he worked in a coal mine.

“He was beaten so badly during interrogation that he died from his wounds in 1946,” Lonchyna says.

His other grandfather, a lawyer, had been imprisoned in Lviv. When the Germans were about to invade, he says, the Communists murdered all those in prisons or shot them in courtyards.

His father had been a community activist in Ukraine who helped many students get university scholarships. In June 1941, he says, the Communists were escaping from the Germans and murdering the intelligentsia. His parents, who married in March 1946, escaped a few months later and made their way to Steubenville, a big Catholic center west of Pittsburgh. His father was a professor of Romance languages, first at the College of Steubenville and later at the University of Detroit.

Lonchyna started his education at the University of Detroit, then completed it at a seminary in Rome. His brother lives in London and is a bishop of Ukrainian Catholics in England and Ireland.

In the Ukrainian Catholic Church, priests can marry. Lonchyna’s wife sings in the church choir, and the couple has three children and three grandchildren. One daughter is a nun in Ohio, another daughter is in Virginia working on her doctorate in English literature, and his son lives in Washington, DC, and works in administration at Catholic University.

The Ukrainian Catholics started their new parish in 1949. Kuzyk has a photo of himself at the 1949 opening of a new Ukrainian Catholic parish. He is standing with his brother, grandfather, and 30 or 40 other people, in front of the former Sts. Peter and Paul church, whose facilities St. Josaphat’s used early on. In 1951, the church bought the three acres on Hamilton’s border with South Trenton, where it now has, in addition to the church, a rectory, whose first floor was the original chapel, with the priest living upstairs; and a parish hall (built by Kuzyk’s father).

Laszyn says the community also has “a school on Saturday where kids go to learn Ukrainian, and the history, geography, literature, and culture of Ukraine so they know where our parents came from and know our roots.”

The entire Ukranian community gets together for events at Bow Hill Mansion, on Jeremiah Avenue in Hamilton. It’s now called “the Ukrainian National Home.”

Buried to the left of the church entrance are two brothers, Theodosiuj and Joseph Atamaniuk, both priests, settled in Trenton in 1949 and founded the church.

At the front of the church is an icon screen, which displays colorful painted icons of the main events in Jesus Christ’s life, recalled in the 12 major feasts of the liturgical year. It also includes larger icons. One is of St. Peter’s brother, St. Andrew, who came to the shores of the Black Sea, where Ukraine eventually developed. Another is St. Josaphat, who was 16 in 1596, and in the battle between the Catholics and the Orthodox he “fought for the Catholic side to convince people about the unity of the church is what God wants and expects,” Lonchyna says. After preaching in favor of unity, he was killed with an axe in front of his church.

“The main role of icon screen is to present a picture of salvation,” Lonchyna said. “The icons are windows to heaven; they help people to focus on the person or theme represented.” Horodyskyj adds that when many people could not read, the icons “taught the people the religion.”

The stained glass windows illustrate the history of the church, including Theodosius, the founder of the monastery in Kyiv, and his brother Anthony. Volodymyr was instrumental in making Christianity the faith in the old Kyiv Kingdom in 988, and his grandmother, Olha, was the first Christian ruler in Kyiv. When Volocymyr died, Borys and Hlib voluntarily gave up their lives rather than fight their older brother for the throne. The last two windows are of St. George and the Archangel Michael, both of whom fought against Satan.

A number of customs distinguish the Western and Eastern Catholic churches. Roman Catholics use unleavened bread for communion, whereas Eastern Catholics use leavened bread because, Lonchyna says, “yeast is a sign of life, and Jesus is the bread of life.” In Roman Catholic churches, the priest faces the people from behind the altar; in eastern churches the priest faces east, because the second coming of Christ will be from the east. Mary is the protectress of Ukraine, and Eastern Catholics often make pilgrimages to places where there are miraculous icons, many of Mary and the Christ child, to ask for intercession or a miracle.

In Roman Catholic churches, the priest faces the people from behind the altar; in eastern churches the priest faces east, because the second coming of Christ will be from the east. Mary is the protectress of Ukraine, and Eastern Catholics often make pilgrimages to places where there are miraculous icons, many of Mary and the Christ child, to ask for intercession or a miracle.

“We preserve the mystery of spirituality,” Lonchyna said. “In the West, they try to present everything logically. Here we are in the spirit of spirituality, through music and incense, we are lifting up our hearts and minds to the Lord.”

St. Josaphat is located at 1195 Deutz Ave. in Trenton. Orders for the baked goods at the Christmas Bazaar were accepted through Nov. 25, and can be picked up Dec. 9, noon to 6 p.m. or Dec. 10, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information about the bazaar, call (609) 585-7863 or (609) 499-1029.

Michele Alperin

29 November 2016 Mercerspace