HOPE IN LENT

In 2019, before the pandemic, before the invasion of Ukraine and the Gaza conflict, before the crises in our own country, when the world looked a bit rosier, the Holy Father in a homily had these words:

Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give in to resignation and failure? Easter is the feast of tombstones taken away, rocks rolled aside. God takes away even the hardest stones against which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness.

The theme of Jubilee 2025, a special year of remission of sins, debts and universal pardon which began on Christmas Eve 2024 and ends on Jan. 6, 2026, is “Pilgrims in Hope,” This Lent we are encouraged to put down deep roots of HOPE by connecting with God who is with us at all times. As we deepen our hope in God, we can better be part of what God is doing to bring hope in the world.

 May our Lenten journey reflect the peace that Pope Francis prayed for as he introduced this Jubilee Year:

 May 2025 be a year in which peace flourishes! A true and lasting peace that goes beyond quibbling over the details of agreements and human compromises. May we seek the true peace that is granted by God to hearts disarmed: hearts not set on calculating what is mine and what is yours; hearts that turn selfishness into readiness to reach out to others; hearts that see themselves as indebted to God and thus prepared to forgive the debts that oppress others; hearts that replace anxiety about the future with the hope that every individual can be a resource for the building of a better world.

 Disarming hearts is a job for everyone, great and small, rich and poor alike. At times, something quite simple will do, such as “a smile, a small gesture of friendship, a kind look, a ready ear, a good deed”.  With such gestures, we progress towards the goal of peace. We will arrive all the more quickly if, in the course of journeying alongside our brothers and sisters, we discover that we have changed from the time we first set out. Peace does not only come with the end of wars but with the dawn of a new world, a world in which we realize that we are different, closer and more fraternal than we ever thought possible."

PEACE FOR LENT

 

Noting that “every past occupation of Ukraine has resulted in various degrees of repression of the Catholic Church” there, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a message of solidarity with Ukraine.

 

“As we begin the holy Season of Lent, a time of prayer, penance, and charity, we join our Holy Father, Pope Francis, in his solidarity with the ‘martyred people of Ukraine,’“ said Archbishop Timothy Broglio. “We pray and hope that the United States, in concert with the wider international community, works with perseverance for a just peace and an end to aggression.”

Citing a 2024 statement by Pope Francis, Archbishop Broglio said that “courageous negotiations require ‘boldness’ to ‘open the door’ for dialogue.”

 Without criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by name, Archbishop Broglio took issue with the persecution ofthe Cathoic Church in Russian-occupied territories, as well as the Ukrainian government’s suppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate):

 As Catholics, we are acutely aware that every past occupation of Ukraine has resulted in various degrees of repression of the Catholic Church in the country; we must not tolerate the forcing of our brothers and sisters underground again. I echo Pope Francis’ plea for respecting the religious freedom of all Ukrainians, ‘Please, let no Christian church be abolished directly or indirectly. Churches are not to be touched!’

Recalling that the annual Ash Wednesday collection benefits the Church in formerly Communist nations, including Ukraine, Archbishop Broglio invited “America’s Catholics, in union with all men and women of good will, to pray for the peace of Ukraine, and to contribute generously to assisting that suffering and courageous nation.”

A statement issued on March 4 by the Presidency of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union stresses that Ukraine’s struggle for peace “will also be decisive for the fate of Europe and the world.”

The message reaffirms the European Union Bishops’ continued support of Ukraine and its people, “who have been suffering from Russia’s unjustifiable full-scale invasion for more than three years.”

As Christians prepare for Lent to begin on March 5, the bishops entrust Ukraine and Europe to Jesus through the intercession of Mary, the Queen of Peace.

Art:   Stop War Everywhere: Berlin-based Colombian street artist Arte Vilu works on a mural featuring a Ukrainian woman in traditional dress in Berlin, Germany, Feb. 28, 2022. | Hannibal Hanschke / AP

A SAINT FROM KANSAS

 

FATHER EMIL KAPAUN a heroic U.S. military chaplain from Kansas, was declared venerable by Pope Francis on Feb. 25 – putting him one step closer to canonization. He could be the first saint to be a Medal of Honor recipient. The Holy Father recognized Father Kapaun’s “offering of life,” a new cause for beatification distinct from martyrdom that recognizes Christians who have freely offered their lives for others until death.

Father Kapaun served as a U.S. Army chaplain during World War II and the Korean War. He was captured by the North Korean military and died ministering to fellow prisoners in 1951. Widely recognized for his bravery and holiness, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 and in 1993 Pope St John Paul II declared Father Kapaun a Servant of God. 

After serving in the Chinese-Burma-India theater in World War II, long after many had returned to the United States, Father Kapaun earned a master’s in education from The Catholic University of America before voluntarily returning to service as a military chaplain in Japan and then Korea. 

He logged thousands of miles by jeep to visit troops on the front lines. He was promoted to captain in 1946. Four years later, he found himself among the first troops responding to communist North Korea's invasion of democratic South Korea. He shared the hardships of combat while offering Mass, often using the hood of his jeep as an altar. Father Kapaun also administered the sacraments to the dying at the risk of his life, while retrieving wounded soldiers. In 1950, one such rescue, conducted under intense enemy fire near Kumchon, South Korea, earned him a Bronze Star Medal for bravery in action.

The priest also wrote to the families of troops, assuring them that their fallen soldiers had received last rites from him.

Father Kapaun and his fellow troops were surrounded in November 1950 after Chinese forces entered the war. He initially escaped capture, but then chose to remain and tend the wounded with an Army medic. As a result, he was taken prisoner but still managed to intervene to prevent the execution of a wounded soldier.

He encouraged his fellow captives along the arduous march to the Pyoktong prison camp. Once there, he continued to sustain them through his ministry, which was forbidden by the communist guards, for whom he prayed, leading the prisoners to do the same.

Father Kapaun also refuted the guards' attempts at communist indoctrination, responding to one taunt with, "God is as real as the air you breathe but cannot see; as the sounds you hear but cannot see; as the thoughts and ideas you have but cannot see or feel."

In 1951, Father Kapaun fell ill, and was forcibly moved to the camp's hospital, where patients were left to die. He stilled the protests of his fellow POWs, saying, "Don't worry about me. I'm going where I always wanted to go, and when I get there, I'll say a prayer for all of you."

At the age of 35, Father Kapaun died on May 23, 1951. His body was buried by a fellow prisoner near the Pyoktong prison camp infirmary, and repatriated to the U.S., along with the remains of some 560 Americans from the camp, in 1954 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

For years he lay under an "Unknown" marker with about 70 soldiers and was not identified until a fellow prisoner saw a picture of Father Kapaun in a Knights of Columbus magazine at a Veteran Affairs clinic in Florida in 2003. In 2021, DNA testing confirmed that the remains were those of Father Kapaun, and in September 2021, he was reinterred in Wichita's cathedral.

Painting top: The Class of 2012 of the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, MO, commissioned this painting of Father Emil Kapaun from artist Cynthia Hitschler. The painting was presented to the seminary as a gift upon their graduation.

PRAYER FOR OUR WORLD

                              Icon: Protection of the Mother of God - Iryna Solonynka

The bravery of the Ukrainian people and its president has inspired freedom-loving people around the world, these past three years. The President and Vice president of our own country have tried to tarnish that world view.  As we continue prayers for Ukraine, we also add prayers for our own country which seems to be heading for its own war!  May the Mother of God intercede for all!

 

CONTEMPLATIVE ARTIST

 

A fascinating artist of many of my favorite saints is KREG YINGST. 
Kreg is obviously a very contemplative man, as he uses his art for prayer.
He is both a painter and a self-taught printmaker. Through a series, or “body of work,” he has a personal vision of his subject.

One example is  his reaction to the school shooting at Sandy Hook in 2012. He had two young daughters at the time and was deeply moved by the loss those parents were enduring. He decided to carve one prayer a week for the entire year. Those images became “Light from Darkness: Portraits and Prayers” ($29.95). All proceeds  he donated to orphanages. 

He started out as a printmaker. His initial printmaking influences were the book illustrators and WPA artists of the 1930’s. All of his original works are created from carved blocks of wood, linoleum, or other materials, and printed onto paper, board, or wood using an antique Showcard proof press. 

A native of Illinois, Kreg studied art at Trinity University in San Antonio where he received his BA after attending the University of Texas (1978-’80).  In 1996 he received an MA in painting from Eastern Illinois University. After graduation, he taught art for thirteen years and has been a full time artist since 2003.

Trained as a painter, Kreg developed a passion for relief block prints, after discovering the black and white wordless woodcut novels of Belgian Illustrator Frans Masereel and his American counterpart, Lyd Ward. He was inpired by works of the German Expressionists and Mexican Social Realists.  Like these movements, he makes “message art,” informed by issues of social justice. 

His larger works are hand-burnished using the back of a spoon. Some of the images are printed multiple times with different blocks to create colored layers, or in some cases, are individually hand-painted using watercolor. He says of his work: “I like the fact that someone can receive something made directly from my hand.”

During the pandemic, Kreg found a large audience for his body of work on sacred themes, ranging from portraits of the Virgin Mary and Celtic saints to illustrations of the Psalms and the life of Saint Francis of Assisi with special suites of prints on the Passion of Christ.

 Creating block prints by hand is a way for Kreg to engage with the world and with God. He set up Starving Artist Books in 2005 to publish his own titles, including illustrated editions of the Psalms, a history of blues music, and the writings of Brother Lawrence, using the proceeds to support international charities. 

His church-sponsored volunteer work with marginalized people in Pensecola, Florida, where he now lives, inspired "Glory among the Ruins: The Homeless Project", a portfolio of 15-linocut portraits of homeless men, accompanied by meditations on their life stories.

 Kreg believes his slow and tedious artistic method nurtures his contemplative side, “keeping him centered and introspective”. Before he begins work each morning, in a bedroom in his home converted into a studio, he pauses for a prayer, a connection with God that continues into his art-making.

His book, Everything Could be a Prayer: 100 Portraits of Saints and Mystics, with portrait prints of saints and mystics who developed disciplines for living in isolation relevant to our own time in and out of lockdown, can be found at Amazon. He says: “I’m studying people who have wrestled with their passions and triumphed with God.”  The title of the book comes from a quote by St. Martin de Porres.  The book features a a mixed bag of people from various spiritual walks, from hermits to Harriet Tubman, but all have in common some point of contact with Christ.

 His art is found in numerous international private and corporate collections, including Purdue University and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC.

It seems Kreg puts Christ at the center of not only his work but his life. “I feel like I’m the one to bridge the gap, to educate myself, and to find people who are wrestling in their own faith, and have found this connection in their own right, and to share that. I look at it as the tree.

 Jesus is the roots, and the stump began to grow when the Church was birthed. You have the schism with the East and the West and another split with the Protestants, and now you’re looking at a tree with a hundred tiny branches. But I like to think they can all trace back down to the root.” (Quote “Our Sunday Visitor” July 20, 2023 -  Simcha Fisher)

 “My whole lineage goes through Jesus. He was my contact point on that day 35 years ago. I called out, and he was that one that answered. He was the one who was my friend, my savior, and everything else. I come from a Christology, a cruciform. I see God through the cruciform Christ. He becomes the center of everything else.”

He has a great love of the Desert Fathers as well as the Celtic saints.  Here is an artist who knows the saints and in his "primative" art, conveys their spirit.

PRAYER FOR UKRAINE- TODAY

 

A Prayer for Ukraine

God of peace and justice,
we pray for the people of Ukraine today.
We pray for peace and the laying down of weapons.
We pray for all those who fear for tomorrow,
that your Spirit of comfort would draw near to them.
We pray for those with power over war or peace,
for wisdom, discernment and compassion to guide their decisions.
Above all, we pray for all your precious children, at risk and in fear,
that you would hold and protect them.
We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
Amen.

Archbishop Justin Welby (UK)
Archbishop Stephen Cottrell (UK)

Mother of God of Tenderness- Iryna Solonynka Ukrainian artist- Master of the Department of Sacred Art-          National Academy of Arts, Lviv 

 

 

INVASION ANNIVERSARY

 

 

 

February 24 marks the third anniversary of Russia's INVASION of UKRAINE in 2022. Though Ukraine has won many battles, the war for Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent, democratic nation rages on at a very steep cost. 

The U.S. has supported Ukraine—but now, the new U.S. administration has ended the support. How can we help support Ukraine, find an end to this death and destruction, and get the Russians to withdraw? At present it looks like prayer is  the only answer, and as European leaders meet to try and determine the next step in this mess, we can only pray for a peaceful solution.

This invasion was a violation of international law, breaking 75 years of peace in Central Europe.  Many felt Kyiv would fall in a week and the army would collapse, while President Volodymyr Zelensky would flee, abandoning his people. But the Russian tyrant miscalculated the strength, tenacity and bravery of the Ukrainian people, holding off the world’s third largest army for 3 years.

Russia has paid the price with sanctions which have led to economic problems, which is nothing compared to the loss of lives. More than 850,000 have been killed and wounded while a million men have fled the country to avoid military service. Russia has now reverted to using convicts, mercenaries, and North Korean troops to continue this war.

President Zelensky said that between 300,000 and 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the war compared to 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed.  Western officials estimate that Moscow is losing an average of 1,500 men, killed and wounded, every day. One has to remember that the Russian soldiers are not defending their own homeland, but rather fight in foreign land, hence not as committed,  as they are forced into a situation most would rather not be in.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has robbed millions of Ukrainians of their previous lives which once seemed stable and predictable. Even when the war ends, how will the Ukrainians rebuild their lives?  More than 2.5 million Ukrainians have lost their homes, 5 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and an additional 6 1/2 million have become refugees abroad. Staggering statistics!

Ukraine’s independence and democratic future is for the security of all the West.  We pray for a rapid cessation of this unjust war  which will allow the rest of Europe to breath more deeply. Right now the future does not look good. We ask our Mother of Peace to intercede!

Paintings Ukrainian artists:

Top- Olenka Zahorodnyk

Right- Mariana Mykytiuk