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Dear Sisters, Dear Brothers,

The phones are the first to go off. Almost every Ukrainian has an app installed on his smartphone informing us about the alarms in progress. A few seconds later, the sirens start shrieking. On Saturday this happened three different times, the last one during the evening Mass that I celebrated in the chapel of the Kyiv priory. We’ve gotten used to it, so there’s no panic, no nervousness, like there was at the beginning of the war. I doubt, however, whether anyone is capable of accepting the recurring alarms with complete calm. Especially at night, when the Russian drones and rockets fly over most often. I have to admit that for over a year and a half, almost every morning I have been starting off with checking the news, even when I’m not in Ukraine and don’t have sirens waking me up in the middle of the night.

Dear sisters, dear brothers,

May nights in Kyiv are unusually restless this year. Especially the one between Monday and Tuesday. The noise made by the defenders of the Ukrainian sky as they shot at Russian rockets and drones was accompanied by car alarms. While the earth was shaking and the sky was pulsating with repeated explosions, they were going on and off maddeningly. It would be hard to find anyone in Kyiv who wasn’t up around 3am that morning. Mrs. Katia who cooks in our priory joined her neighbors in the staircase, searching for a safe place. In the building where she lives, the people were scared because during the first months of the war rockets had fallen there multiple times, and their windows had lost their glass panes. Now every shelling of the city causes them even more worry.

Dear Sisters, Dear Brothers,

There is a painted icon of Our Lady Orans of Kyiv on the wall of a street bomb shelter in Kherson. These small, safe shelters made out of cement, located at bus stops, are called “hideouts” in Ukrainian. The original of the icon is found in a mosaic on the dome of the Sophia Sobor, one of the oldest and most important churches in Kyiv. Mary, raising both hands to heaven in a gesture signifying constant prayer, complete surrender to God, and subjection to his will, has become for us in these days a “hideout.” The image remind the inhabitants of the capital, as well as the inhabitants of the relentlessly shelled city of Kherson, of the words that begin the prayer of the Akathist, which is very popular in the Eastern tradition: “O Valiant Queen of the Heavenly Hosts, who has invincible power, save us from all miseries!”