First, I was born in the United States of America. I have two parents of Ukrainian descent, but I have never set foot in Ukraine, although it is certainly high on my list of places to visit.
Second, I stopped fluently speaking Ukrainian at age five when the nuns of my very own parish school told me to only speak English. It was the 1970s - speaking a foreign language in public was certainly NOT the thing an American child should do if assimilation was the goal.
Third, I only attended Ukrainian folk dancing camp, not the “hard core” Ukrainian scout camps that some of my cousins endured summer after summer. (Although, I will tell you that dancing under the tutelage of a prima ballerina for two weeks is probably more physically demanding than most scout camp’s requirements!)
I Married an Evangelical Protestant guy from Iowa (who now sings in the choir).
And, I work for the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown.
Sometimes I really do feel like I have an identity crisis. Sometimes my work colleagues perceive me as “too Ukrainian.” But at many times in my adulthood, especially in these times, I occasionally am dismissed as “not Ukrainian enough.”
So, How is someone like me supposed to talk about our Ukrainian heritage over the past 125 years?
For many of us in the room my story may not be so different than yours. We all speak English - and primarily English. Most of us in this room were born and educated in the United States. We didn’t have the opportunities to join the CYM or Plast scouting groups that our big city cousins participated in. By the time my generation came into our parochial school, Ukrainian language classes were a faded memory. And maybe you, too, married someone who isn’t of Ukrainian descent - my husband didn’t know what a pierogi was when I met him!
So the question is, 125 years after our ancestors laid a cornerstone for the first Ukrainian Catholic Church in the Lehigh Valley – after all the things we’ve experienced in our American history and culture – what brings us to this parish week after week?
The answer, my friends, is that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents, with the help of the Holy Spirit, shared the gift faith with you. The gift of faith as it is expressed in the most beautiful of rites.
And it is a faith and a heritage that is worth treasuring - and passing to the next generation.
The Gift of Faith from Our Ancestors
So, let’s go back in time and let’s set the scene for today.
Does anyone want to guess what the most technologically advanced form of reliable communication was in 1900?
It was the telegraph, which included a network of landline wires across the country and across the Atlantic Ocean. The telegraph was invented in the 1830s -40s, and widely used and developed by 1900. Messages were sent in Morse code and could be sent across the wires in minutes or hours.
The President of the United States was William McKinley, whose term began in March 1897.
Most of our founding ancestors originated from Western Ukraine in the late 1800s. At that time, the land they lived on was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This first wave of migration to the United States was prompted by many factors.
Galicia, in particular, was one of the poorest regions in Europe. The region was heavily rural, with a high population density and limited arable land. Most peasants practiced subsistence farming and faced overpopulation on tiny plots, leading to widespread hunger and poverty.
Under Austro-Hungarian control Ukrainians had little political power. Most ethnic Ukrainians were peasants who faced discrimination, limited educational access, and few opportunities for social mobility.
Although Ukrainians in the region were largely Greek Catholic, they often faced pressures from other organized religions.
And because religious identity was tightly tied to ethnic and national identity, and there was a growing movement of national awakening, Ukrainians were often met with repression or marginalization
As industrialization in the U.S. grew (especially in coal mining, steel, and railroads), American recruiters actively sought cheap labor in Eastern Europe. The expansion of railroads in Europe and the development of steamship travel made migration faster and relatively affordable. People from rural villages could reach port cities (like Hamburg or Bremen) and cross the Atlantic more easily than ever before.
Many of the people who left Western Ukraine settled in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where they worked as coal miners.
The first Greek Catholic Rite church in the United States is St. Michael the Archangel Parish, founded by Ukrainian Catholics in 1884, in Shenandoah, a hard coal mining town. Extremely difficult working conditions led to strikes near the turn of the century, and this prompted some to look elsewhere for work.
The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company Canal was built to transport the coal from Schuylkill County south to Philadelphia. When digging the canal near present-day Northampton, cement rock was discovered.
Some of those from Schuylkill County who sought work outside of the mines came south to work in the cement industry. The Atlas Cement company became, for a time, the largest cement plant in the world. The local workforce of more than 5,000 supplied eight million barrels of cement to the construction of the Panama Canal. Atlas Cement was also used for the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam.
It was some of these hard-working laborers who became the founders of our parish.These founders purchased six lots from Mr. Laubach for $900 total in 1899, and on January 22, 1900 a charter was granted for the church by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to church records, the church was dedicated and blessed on the “Holy day of St. John the Baptist” in July, 1900, and thus, the Forerunner St. John the Baptist is the patron of our parish. The present rectory which you see in this photo was built in
It may be of interest to you that our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters did not establish their first church in Northampton until more than 5 years later. Our Lady of Hungary (now Queenship of Mary) was established in 1906, St. Michael the Archangel parish was originally a Polish mission church established in 1913. And Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish served Slovak immigrants beginning in 1922.
Throughout the next 50 years, as the cement industry boomed, our parish expanded. Our stained glass windows were installed in 1932. The church acquired additional properties and acquired a cemetery. Church organizations grew and a school would be established.
All of this done by recent immigrants, many who did not have much education or English language skills, and who worked hard labor jobs with large families who prioritized their faith.
And, while life was flourishing here in America, our relatives were suffering horribly in Ukraine.
After WWI and the collapse of both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, a power vacuum left Ukraine a battleground of violent political factions. In the early 1920’s much of what we now know as Ukraine came under Russian dominance, with western Ukraine going to Poland. In 1932-1933 between 3 and 7 million Ukrainians were starved to death during the Holodomor - the politically forced famine.
During and after World War II Ukrainians endured extraordinary suffering and upheaval. The country became one of the deadliest battlegrounds of the war, and its people faced brutal occupations, mass killings, forced deportations, and political repression. In 1944-45, The Red Army retook Ukraine. The Soviet regime crushed nationalist resistance, arresting or killing tens of thousands of resistors. Mass deportations occurred, with many Ukrainians and Poles forcibly resettled in population transfers. Some of us in this room can speak personally about these forced resettlements.
For those that did manage to live through the horrors of WWII, they found their Ukrainian language, culture and religion brutally suppressed.
In 1946, just a few years before our parish was to celebrate its Golden Jubilee, the Soviets outlawed the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
The Church’s loyalty to Rome, its role in Ukrainian national identity, and its resistance to communism made it a target for Soviet authorities. In March 1946, under the Soviet secret police supervision, the UGCC became illegal, its property was confiscated, and clergy and faithful were arrested, imprisoned or sent to labor camps.
Our faithful people, however, went underground for decades, treasuring their faith and practicing it in secret for over 50 years. It was only with the fall of the Soviet Union that our Church once again emerged from the catacombs.
The Inherited Duty to Uphold the Eastern Traditions
While many of you know this history, some of us do not. And we all should know that we are truly a church of modern-day martyrs.
What we have today is nothing less than a sacred inheritance. This inheritance has been defended to the death by many. Those who lived kept it alive underground in Ukraine, never abandoning our true faith and its traditions. Those in the diaspora - like our parish – did our best to keep our Eastern Catholic faith and traditions alive when communicating with our families half a world away was simply not possible.
Our Eastern Rite faith is indeed unique and should be upheld. In 1988, Pope St. John Paul II participated in the Jubilee celebrations of the Millenium of the Baptism of Rus’. In his apostolic letter acknowledging the millennial celebrations, Pope St. John Paul II emphasized that the Baptism conferred on St. Vladimir in Kyiv was a key event in the evangelization of the world. (John Paul II, EUNTES IN MUNDUM, Epistula apostolica - Euntes in mundum | Ioannes Paulus II).
In 1995, Pope St. John Paul II gave us two beautiful encyclicals encouraging the practice of the Eastern rites. In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, he famously wrote to all Catholics -- indeed all Christians -- “the Church must breathe with her two lungs!” - meaning that full communion is that of unity in legitimate diversity. John Paul II, UT UNUM SINT, Ut Unum Sint (25 May 1995) | John Paul II)
Again in 1995, in the beautiful encyclical Orientale Lumen, Pope St. John Paul II celebrated that the liturgical prayer in the East involves the human person in his or her totality … “in the shape of the church, in the sounds, in the colors, in the lights, in the scents. The lengthy duration of the celebrations, the repeated invocations, everything expresses gradual identification with the mystery celebrated with one's whole person.” (John Paul II, ORIENTALE LUMEN, Orientale Lumen (May 2, 1995) | John Paul II).
The Second Vatican Council, recognized that the Eastern Churches 'have the right and the duty to govern themselves according to their own particular discipline', given the mission they have of bearing witness to an ancient doctrinal and liturgical and monastic tradition.” (John Paul II, ECCLESIA IN AMERICA , Ecclesia in America (January 22, 1999) | John Paul II, citing Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 5; cf. Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, Canon. 28; Propositio 60.)
The Eastern Catholic Churches are thus called to maintain a fidelity to the traditions which have been handed down to them, so that they may in turn hand them on faithfully.
Just two weeks ago, our new pope, Leo XIV reminded us that:
“The Church needs you. The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense! We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty!” (Pope Leo XIV, Audience with Participants in the Jubilee of the Eastern Churches, May 14, 2025 #iubilaeum2025 – Audience with Participants in the Jubilee of the Eastern Churches.)
The Duty We Now Hold
For by God’s abundant grace and wisdom, you and I were given the gift of true faith, expressed specifically in the beauty, ritual and theology of the Ukrainian Catholic church, faithfully passed along to us by our ancestors, and nurtured by our parish family over time.
It’s now our responsibility to share it with others, especially our families.
First and foremost, bring your children and grandchildren to Divine Liturgy regularly. Let them see the icons, smell the incense, hear the bells and the chants, hear the Word of God -- allow the beauty of it all engage them.
Encourage participation in the sacraments - they are the wellspring of grace.
Bring them to religious education classes so that we can share our love of our church with them and let them grow in their love of it, too.
Teach us your prayers in Ukrainian. Patiently help us learn (or re-learn) to sing the traditional hymns.
Bless your Easter foods.
Show them your pysanky collection and your grandmother’s embroidered pillows. If you were taught these skills, why not pick them up again, and set aside time to show your children and grandchildren your artistic skills.
Teach us your recipes! It’s the TikTok generation - let us record you making bread, varenyky, holuptsi, and all the recipes for Holy Supper. Maybe you can even let us host Holy Supper this year?
And to the youth of our parish, please know we are so proud of you serving at the altar, singing in the choir and volunteering at parish event and service projects. Your responsibility is to ask questions, make us teach you, take pride, and continue to find your place in this living tradition.
My message to you today is to generously share that gift of faith with your families, so that our beloved parish will sustain your descendants for generations to come. And for the next generation - receive this gift for the treasure it is. Appreciate it, nourish it. And, when it’s time, I challenge you to take up the mantle and pass this gift on.
Every day in the East the sun of hope rises again, the light that restores life to the human race. It is from the East, according to a lovely image, that our Savior will come again. (John Paul II, ORIENTALE LUMEN, Orientale Lumen (May 2, 1995) | John Paul II (cf. Mt 24:27)).
Thank you.
