A Prayer with the Ukrainian People

Lord make us instruments of Your peace.
Voices crying out: War is evil and has no place in your love or our common life.

Where there is hatred let us sow love.
Plant radical solidarity with the Ukrainian people—unflinching support for their right to exist and self-govern, free from fear and violence.

Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Ignite fierce commitment to welcome refugees, knowing their humanity is bound with ours.

Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness joy.
Help us understand there is no “us” and “them.” We are interwoven with every neighbor who suffers. Ukraine does not only lie across an ocean. Our neighborhood, church and congregants know it as home. May we pray, dine, sing, and dance together for peace.

O God grant that we may
Not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand.
Give us humility to know: we are not foreign policy experts. And the certainty to know: you do not need to be an expert to cry out against the horror of this war.

To be loved. as to love
For it’s in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born…
To eternal life.
May this crisis birth new solidarity, new friendships, new alliances, new hope. May we work together in the name of a God who calls us to turn swords into plowshares, until the day when war is no more.

Amen.

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As a measure of our solidarity, we invite you to join the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s nightly virtual prayers for peace, held every evening at 9 p.m. ET. The leadership of Middle Church is in conversation with a coalition of faith leaders and New York City’s Ukrainian community, to help us know how to best advocate for peace.