Amid drone strikes and bombings, the Revd Anastasia Riabchuk returned to her native Kyiv for Ukraine’s Day of Knowledge last month.
The Oxford-based curate returns five or six times a year, but this time was different as she described an ‘aggravated’ situation, with daily attacks on the capital city.
Revd Anastasia travelled to mark the traditional celebration with her friend Fr Anthony Murley, Vicar of the Annunciation, Brighton.
The duo took part in the service which celebrates the beginning of the school year.
Children brought their backpacks to be blessed, the Eucharist was celebrated using light, sound and projection, and afterwards the congregation moved into the dome of Kyiv Planetarium for an educational programme and a small disco beneath the stars.
Despite 12 air alerts being sounded on the day of the service, 28 people attended the gathering at the planetarium.
Revd Anastasia, who served her curacy in St Peter's Wolvercote, said: “I want to be there more than ever, because it is my home, it's where my friends are, and it is where we are not afraid to name the evil and to resist it.
“Here in the UK, each time I go home, people ask ‘is it safe there?' and I answer ‘no’, and they are perplexed that I am going.
"But safety is not the only value in our lives – it is also important to have something meaningful, exciting and life-giving, and where we have at least some agency in resisting all that violence and despair."
Revd Anatasia said that the aim of the Day of Knowledge Eucharist is to focus on the 'joy and wonder of learning and exploring the world'.
She added: "It brings comfort and reassurance for kids and parents alike – that there are some anchors like school routine, even in a time of war, even with endless bombings and lessons in underground bomb shelters.”
“Kyiv remains a city at war,” Fr Antony said. “No one should pretend otherwise. But I didn’t come because I had something to bring that Ukraine lacked. Anastasia and I built something together. We each brought our gifts, and what emerged belonged to neither of us alone.”
He described the project as creating something ‘beautiful beneath the stars’, adding: “The stars were still there, just beyond the room in which the congregation gathered. But at the centre were two priests, children preparing for another year of learning, a congregation gathered together despite the sirens – and bread and wine upon an altar.
“The Eucharist was not simply the essential thing that survived. For those gathered there, the Eucharist was everything.”