Was it a coincidence that the war in Ukraine started right before Great Lent? In the very days when Orthodox Church calls for humility and repentance, two Slavic Orthodox nations were involved in the most severe ordeal – war. Forgiveness and love of neighbor give way to pain, fear and hatred of perpetrators.

Some of the Ukrainians managed to evacuate to neighbouring countries, while others remained silent and waiting in the dungeons under the cannonade of the heavy guns. Who would have thought that the twenty-first century would bring military conflict to the same parts of Europe that suffered the worst fatalities and survived the horrors of the Second World War? As if history’s lessons were forgotten, and needed to be re-learnt again: lessons of love, faith and humaneness.

These are tough lessons, whose voice is unmistakably loud and clear, Father Vasilij Shagan said in an interview with BNR-Varna. Vasilij Shagan has been working around the clock at the Refugee Centre established in the Palace of Culture and Sports in the port city of Varna.

"We pass through hardships all the time. Jesus Christ warned us that we would have tribulations in our lives. And tribulations bring about forbearance, according to Saint Paul.This is not just gnashing of teeth, but a constructive virtue that in turn generates experience in us. Through forbearance you are reborn and in the experience of having overcome these difficulties you find hope. You begin to understand that nothing is clear-cut. You can come out on the minus side - to despair, to lose yourself, or on the plus side - to gain hope for something substantial...

Paul the Apostle says that hope can come from realizing that it is God who has poured out His love in us. When, in your sorrow, you learn to have trust in God and begin to live in Him - then you are surely on the right path. These are the hard lessons that we unfortunately have to go through. Sometimes a man has to go through them to realize that he has, as Shakespeare says, been squandering his Spirit."

Along with the living testimonies of the many refugees who came, each with his own destiny, Father Vasilij realized that the situation in Ukraine was too complex and ambivalent.

"In this tsunami of information and propaganda, one has to set a more humane tone in order to get one's bearings, to be kind," he notes, adding, "I myself am trying to calm down, to muffle my purely human emotions of fear, insecurity and anger so that I can mobilize myself and remain adequate."

Father Vasilij believes that this situation can enrich and transform us spiritually:

"If there is no change, it means that another lesson or another non-accidental situation that God has given us has been wasted. We will remain as a barren, unfruitful field. But the current situation is plowing and grinding us into the mill in such a definite way that at this point we have a chance to come out of it as part of something more substantial - realizing what and why am I living for and who I really am."

Father Vasilij says that God has endowed man with several spiritual powers, and one of them is the power of wrath, which, in order to remain human, we can transform for good deeds instead of judging and being angry:

If we start responding to evil with evil, then we are playing the devil's game, and he is the one who ignited this fratricidal war. This is the problem of all humanity, we have lost our humanness to a great extent and now God wants to remind us, "Wake up, you are human beings who need to return to your true dignity that I have given you!" How are we going to manage to do that, that's the artistry."

Father Vasilij is a Bessarabian Bulgarian from Taraclia city (Moldova). He serves in the Church of St Nikolay Mirikliiski the Miracle-Worker and he is the head of the Spiritual and Educational Centre at the St. Michael the Archangel Church in Varna.

Compiled by: Darina Grigorova / /based on an interview by Svetlana Valkova, BNR-Varna/

English version: Elizabeth Radkova