On Wednesday, March 12, 2025, I participated in the International Seminar and Discussion “Elaborating a Theology of Grief: Ecumenical Commitment” organized by the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at Ukrainian Catholic University with support from Kerk in Actie.
I presented alongside distinguished speakers from various Christian denominations, including Rev. Rodger Murchison (Baptist minister and author from Princeton Theological Seminary), Yulia Vintoniv (UCU scholar researching Godforsakedness), Fr. Oleh Kindiy (UCU Associate Professor heading the Center of Ecotheology), and Fr. Serhiy Dmytriev (Orthodox military chaplain and Eleos-Ukraine chairman). Fr. Roman Fihas, IES Director, moderated our discussion.
The seminar focused on developing theological responses to the profound suffering caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion, exploring how Christian theology engages with ethical and spiritual challenges posed by mass violence. We addressed key questions about theological reflection after atrocities like Bucha, recognizing God’s presence amid suffering, and developing pastoral approaches that address trauma while offering hope. You can watch the entire seminar here (my presentation is very condensed).
I contributed my personal testimony of grief following my brother’s death in the Russian war, using it to illustrate how Ukrainian communities are developing narrative-contextual theologies that make space for both lament and resurrection hope.
As Ukrainians, we now dwell in the space of Holy Saturday… that tense, suspended time between crucifixion and resurrection. We have buried our loved ones, yet we stubbornly await the dawn that seems impossibly distant. This letter to my brother Andriy emerges from this theological borderland where faith meets raw grief.
What follows is not academic theology but theology incarnate… written in tears, spoken through ritual, embodied in procession… On July 21, 2024, at 6:30 in the morning, the heart of Senior Lieutenant of Medical Service Andriy Dyatlik ceased beating. My younger brother – a talented military doctor, devoted son, and beloved friend – had been severely wounded by the Russians on July 6, his 33rd birthday, in the Kherson region. The symbolism of his age, matching Christ’s earthly years, is not lost on our grieving family…
I processed Andriy’s body on July 24, from Independence Square in Rivne to his final resting place at the Alley of Heroes in the “Nove” cemetery. This burial marked our family’s third devastating loss to Russian aggression – one sibling and two extended family members. Even as we grieved Andriy, four more of our family members serve in the frontline trenches, transforming our mourning into a state of perpetual vigilance…
Through this edited letter-presentation (see my original letter to Andriy on August 17, 2024), I attempt to articulate a theology of grief, born not from abstract principles of systematic theology but from the raw reality of flag-draped coffins and communities kneeling in the streets. I witness how faith creates space where protest against evil and hope in resurrection can coexist without contradiction, how our national trauma finds expression through shared symbols and rituals, and how authentic theological reflection emerges from within full-scale war suffering rather than…
Churches and seminaries cannot offer pat answers to the question of evil, but they can walk alongside the grieving, honoring the full depth of our pain while still gesturing toward resurrection hope… This letter to my brother witnesses that tension… the impossible challenge of speaking of God’s goodness from within the Valley of Death’s shadow.
Esteemed colleagues and theologians, I offer this intimate testimony as a contribution toward developing pastoral approaches that neither diminish trauma’s reality nor surrender to despair’s finality… approaches grounded in the truth that we live in Holy Saturday’s tension, where absence is palpable, yet hope remains defiantly alive…
My dear brother Andriy, in this sacred space between heaven and earth, I write to you as both a brother and a theologian, though today the brother’s voice cries louder. The psalmist wrote of waters that overwhelm the soul… I now understand this not as a metaphor but as a lived reality. My theology has become embodied in tears…
When news came of your death, I experienced what the ancient Hebrews called “shevirat ha-lev” – the breaking of the heart. We were six brothers, now five remain, and in this numerical reduction lies a cosmic diminishment. The God who counts the stars and calls them by name indeed felt the universe contract when your name moved from present to past tense… Like David lamenting Absalom (although you are NOT Absalom at all), I cry out: “My brother, my brother! Would I have died instead of you!”
In that “van” on the way to the Alley of Heroes, I sat beside your flag-draped coffin as both “homo dolens” and “homo theologicus” – the suffering man and the theological man united in one broken frame. Your coffin’s dark lacquer reflected my questions about divine presence in the valley of death’s shadow. I trust you are with Christ, yet my finite understanding cannot bridge the chasm between here and there. This is the “mysterium tremendum” of death – terrible in its certainty, mysterious in its transition…
The white mourning ribbons around your coffin speak a visual theology of both purity and loss. Like the torn garments of the mourners from biblical history, they externalize our internal rupture. These ribbons bind together not just your coffin but our family’s collective wound: parents who should never outlive their child, sisters, who lost their protector, and your five brothers now diminished to an incomplete circle. In our tradition, we speak of Christ’s seamless garment; in death, it is torn, yet we trust it will be rewoven in resurrection…
The wooden cross before me, wrapped in an embroidered ritual cloth, stands as the central paradox of our faith – the instrument of execution transformed into the symbol of transcendence… Your name engraved upon it joins the Great Community of Saints who have passed through death’s portal before us. I remember discussing Bonhoeffer’s “cost of discipleship” – never imagining the cost would be so literal, so final. Yet even as I grieve, I hear the echo of Easter: “The cross is empty, Christ is risen.” This is our “theologia crucis” made personal – not abstract theology but lived reality…
The evergreen cypress wreath in the corner preaches its silent sermon of immortality. While your body was destroyed by Russian violence – a manifestation of the fallen world’s capacity for evil that still so many try to justify for the sake of so-called traditional Christian values – the cypress reminds me that your essence continues. Augustine wrote that evil is privation, the absence of good; your death represents such an absence, a hole torn in the fabric of creation… Yet our faith proclaims that what appears as the absence is merely a transition… The white symbolizing purity upon the branches reminds me of the Revelation promise: those washed in the blood of the Lamb standing before the throne in white robes. I imagine you there now, Andriy, clothed in resurrection dignity…
As I gaze through the window at those gathered on the Maidan, I witness the “communio sanctorum” – the Community of Saints made visible… These grieving citizens form an earthly echo of the Heavenly Assembly. The Book of Hebrews describes a “great cloud of witnesses” surrounding us; today, they materialize in flesh and tears… Their presence forms a liturgical community, participating in what the early church called a “Holy Remembrance.” In their faces, I see the imago Dei reflected even through grief: each person bearing God’s image as they honor yours…
The procession along Rivne’s streets manifests a public theology of lament. When drivers and passengers stop and kneel before our passing, I witness a sacramental moment: the ordinary transformed into a sacred witness… You knelt so often in prayer, Andriy; now others kneel for you… This is kenosis: self-emptying before mystery… Their genuflection asks the question my heart cannot stop asking: Will this sacrifice, alongside so many others, finally bring redemption to our suffering nation? Like Abraham journeying to Mount Moriah, we process toward the Alley of Heroes, carrying our beloved sacrifice, confronting faith’s most difficult demand…
Our private grief enters communion with national lamentation at the Alley of Heroes… Like the ancient Israelites who created communal rituals for mourning, we participate in the collective processing of trauma. Your thirty-three years – mirroring Christ’s earthly span – now join the theological narrative of sacrificial love. “Greater love has no one than this,” the Gospel proclaims, “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…” Your medical calling to heal has been transfigured into a different kind of healing… one purchased at a terrible cost…
I do not want to release you, Andriy. My being resists this final acknowledgment as Jacob wrestled the angel, demanding blessing before release… Yet I must practice what the mystics called “holy indifference”… the painful surrender to divine will… Not forgetting you… but entrusting you to the God who promises resurrection… Your body remains here until the First Resurrection, but your spirit dwells already in that place where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.”
Until we meet again in the fullness of the Kingdom, I remain your brother in both flesh and spirit… Like the disciples after Christ’s ascension, I gaze between two worlds… honoring your absence here while trusting your presence there… This is our family’s Holy Saturday: suspended between crucifixion’s grief and resurrection’s promise… We will carry your memory and hope as we continue our journey on this Silent Planet…
In Christ’s name, who transforms even death into the doorway,
Your older brother,
Taras
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