• Pentecost Sunday •

Glory to Jesus Christ!
Dear Parishioners and Friends of our Parish,

I wish you blessed Pentecost Sunday. May the power of the Holy Spirit descend upon you and may He empowers you as a child of God!
Please, find enclosed a bulletin with all the important information from the life of our parish. In this issue of the bulletin, we have a new Mission Statement, formed by the Advisory Board, for our Holy Resurrection Parish. You can find also the continuation of the article about suppression of the Greek Cathoilic Church in Czechoslovakia.

FROM THE DESK OF ADMINISTRATOR FR. BRUCE RIEBE

The Parish Advisory Board, utilizing input from the Parish Survey, developed the following Mission Statement: Holy Resurrection is a parish family that proclaims the Word of God through our unique Byzantine Catholic worship, spirituality, and tradition. We foster a deep and committed relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Mysteries, education, prayer, and Christian fellowship. Through evangelization, we strive to bring Christ into our families and communities.

SUPPRESSION OF THE GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH III.

In 2009, a few students from our theological faculty in Presov wanted to organize a play about the life of Bishop Gojdich. They arranged everything by themselves and one student with writing talents wrote the script for the play herself. The only struggle they faced was to find enough actors for the play since many of the students had little faith in such a project. With very little interest (my friends made me), I made it to their two and a half practices. I ended up playing 5 side roles and in total, I said 3 fully developed sentences (exclamations are not counted), 2 of which I was able to read from the script. Despite all the adversities, the play was a great success, it had several reruns and I have never been recast since (as there was no need for actors anymore, of course).
My most important role that day was the judge who sentenced the bishop to jail. After the play we went to the lobby to greet in person the countless publicum. As I was still in the judge character's clothes, one older man approached me and he told me: "Oh, you think you're smart because you're young. But I was small when those articles about Gojdich hiding guns in his residence were published. And we believed it, for Christ's sake, it was written in the newspapers."
I remember that it struck me how convincing the Communists' propaganda was during those times. It was only after that I realized we need to walk in the shoes of our contemporaries (...which brings me to a question: How many of you have thoroughly double-checked the facts when you read something controversial about our Pope Francis before you publish juicy comments from some agency newspaper article posted on your Facebook wall? Next time try to think of Bishop Gojdich's example and ask yourself if someone is not trying to sell you a bill of goods. In recent years, reading the Facebook commentaries of good Catholics has become quite a penitential practice.) Anyway, the topic of today's discussion is the secret strategy of Bishop Gojdich to prevent the complete destruction of our Church.
Greek-Catholics in Soviet Countries. Continuous liquidation of the Greek Catholics evolved in the countries of Soviet influence. On March 10, 1946, "sobor" in Lviv abolished Brest-Litovsk Union. It was a rather easy step for the Communists as many Greek-Catholics were connected with Banderas. Another fact that didn't help was that the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky initially welcomed and publicly greeted the Nazi troops into Ukraine. Later, Metropolitan Sheptytsky not only completely changed his position on the Nazis, but he even helped to save hundreds of Jews and he released a pastoral letter "Do not murder" against the persecution of Jews. The heroism of his personal actions is to this day marred by the historical stain of having greeted the invading Germans as liberators in his official capacity as head of the Ukrainian Greek Church. Sheptytsky’s name has been submitted to the Yad Vashem’s selection committee at least a dozen times, but their steadfast refusal to recognize him as Righteous Among the Nations has been their most controversial decision for decades. Moreover, recognition of his sainthood by the Vatican is on hold for the very same reason - public resistance from the Jews. This is very unfortunate since Andrey Sheptytsky was certainly one of the greatest figures among Greek-Catholics in Europe; a nobleman by birth, he was able to uphold and elevate Greek-Catholics and the consequences of his great actions are certainly felt even today by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest unit of Eastern Catholics around the world. Moreover, his bodily remains have been completely preserved from deterioration, which is popularly considered a sign of holiness.
The abolition of the other Greek-Catholics followed: the abolition of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church took place on December 1, 1948, in Bucharest and the Union of Uzhgorod  (Eparchy of Mukachevo - Trans-Carpathian Ukraine) was abolished on August 28, 1949.
Greek-Catholics in Czechoslovakia. In the last article, we explained why other countries preceded Czechoslovakia. Affinity toward Communism was not that firm there, and Communists were not able to win the elections and therefore they required the 1948 coup d'etat. This gave Bishop Gojdich time to prepare our Church to go underground. His several step strategy partially prepared clergy to proceed in case of open persecution. Bishop Gojdich wanted to secure the presence of our priests among Greek-Catholics. I use the word 'partially' because the bishop was betrayed by the Director of the Eparchial Chancery and the whole plan was whistle-blown to the Communists.
1. His first step was the appointment of an Auxiliary Bishop for the Eparchy so that In the case of his imprisonment, illness, or death, continuity would be preserved. In his request to Rome he only expressed his concern for the faithful. The Holy See granted his request and appointed Vasil Hopko, former pastor and founder of the parish in Prague and then Spiritual Director at the Seminary, as an Auxiliary Bishop. Hopko was consecrated a bishop on May 11, 1947 in Presov.
2. After the events of February 1948, anticlerical policies showed an upward trend. A Permanent State Deputy to the bishop was appointed - a person who took care essentially of all agendas of the Chancery and watched over the Bishop and all his public speeches, of those that were allowed. From then on, Bishop Gojdich was locked up in his residence most of the time. Sometime in 1949, Bishop Gojdich designated his five representatives/survivors in the following order: Vasil Hopko, Nicholas Rusnak, John Kokincak, Michal Sabados and Miron Podhajecky. It was John Kokincak, Director of the Eparchial Chancery, who betrayed the bishop and blew the whistle on the whole plan to an agent of the State Secret Police under the cover name "Ihla" (trans. needle). All the designated survivors, with the exception of the traitor, were imprisoned alongside Bishop Gojdich.
3. In the case of the impossibility of a central government over the Eparchy, Bishop Gojdich released orders, effective immediately, to divide the Eparchy into 12 districts and he appointed 12 priests with a delegation of episcopal governing powers. He also released directives on how they should appoint designated survivors for themselves as well. The names of all 12 priests, however, were revealed to the secret police as well. It is uncertain how long this level of protection had been functioning. 
4. It is uncertain if this was really the next step of the bishop's plan and if he had foreseen the effectiveness of this step, yet it had proven most viable and therefore we need to mention it here. Just before the persecution, the bishop surrounded himself with young celibate priests. Every seminarian from the 4th year onward, if he was certain that he wanted to stay celibate, was able to request priestly ordination. In this (or similar) fashion were ordained Ivan Ljavinec, Jan Hirka, and Eugen Kocis (Kocis only obtained a letter from Bishop Gojdich allowing his secret priestly ordination by the hands of a Roman Catholic Bishop). All of these men later became bishops. These young priests surrounded Bishop Gojdich as there weren't many parishes that could provide a livelihood for another priest. For example, Jan Hirka, ordained to the priesthood on July 31, 1949, was appointed parochial vicar to Lutina, but due to many circumstances he was never able to fully work on that position, thus his appointment was changed and he started working in the eparchial archives. In 1968, during the partial recovery of our Church, Jan Hirka became Apostolic Administrator. This was quite a career jump for someone who wasn't even really a parochial vicar, but these priests had had enough experience with Chancery tasks and still enough powers to take over. The older priests were mostly too broken in spirit and were never able to provide enough energy needed for the 1968 recovery.
Conclusion. In these discussions, I want to cover most of the events preceding the fake council of Sobor. We have already covered the Communist Party and how they came to power, and the preparations of Bishop Gojdich for persecution. What remains is the part on the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia - how was it possible that they collaborated with the Communists as Communism is incompatible with any religion. Or is it?

PENTECOST SUNDAY RECORDING. Advisory Board advised keeping online liturgies available. Yet, as we don't have proper equipment for live streaming, we will be recording liturgy on Saturday evening, as these liturgies will now take place. WATCH HERE.

 

BISHOP'S MESSAGE - Pentecost Sunday. GLORY TO JESUS CHRIST! GLORY TO HIM FOREVER! On this Sunday of Pentecost, Bishop Milan Lach, SJ reminds us of the importance of the Holy Spirit and how He is present in our lives. Please click below to watch the full message from Bishop Milan. WATCH HERE.

 

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