“Your Life Is Your Prayer”: The Faith Journey of Iryna Galadza

December 13, 2025

Iryna Galadza is a teacher, priest’s wife, and mother of six.

Through her professional work, family life, and parish ministry,

she lives her faith with courage and resilience,

inspiring those around her with her dedication and spiritual depth.

Early Roots of Faith

When Iryna Galadza reflects on her lifelong journey in the Church, she begins with the small mission community in Auburn, New York, where her family settled after immigrating to the United States following World War II. Sponsored by a mission parish of the Stamford Eparchy, her parents purchased a house right next door to the church — a simple decision that quietly shaped the rest of her life.

Her father became the unofficial caretaker of the mission church, ensuring it was open and ready whenever the priest arrived — usually only once a week for Sunday liturgy. Priests often spent Sundays in the Galadza home, sitting around the kitchen table with Iryna’s mother, who, as a priest’s daughter from Ukraine, knew many clergy families.

“I grew up near that church,” Iryna recalls. “Even though we didn’t have a resident priest, the domestic church at home was very strong.” Feast days were observed faithfully, prayers were said each morning and evening, and even without regular services, the domestic church shaped her childhood.

As a young girl, she hid playfully when priests visited. They affectionately called her “our little imost’” or “our little dobrodiyka.” She had no idea how prophetic those words would one day become.

How did it all begin?

— When I think about your life, I see in it a very deep witness of faith — in service, in family, and in community. How would you describe your own journey in the Church? How did it all begin?

Every Saturday and Sunday, Soyuzuka needed helpers, so we girls would come to assist. We also always looked forward to Blazhenishyi Liubomyr Huzar’s arrival on Friday evenings. At that time, he was a priest at the seminary in Stamford and would come to minister to the small parish that was developing there. We would prepare bread, butter, onions, and tea for him, and then sit at the kitchen table downstairs to ask him questions. He was absolutely wonderful — patient and attentive, answering all our questions. We often had these fascinating theological discussions.

But even more impactful were the liturgies on Sundays — held in a simple room with just the altar and what Blazhenishyi needed. His homilies were extraordinary, and it was through them that my faith awakened in a new way. My spiritual life truly came alive. Those weekends were formative: I began to understand my faith more deeply and to experience it more profoundly.

Meeting Roman: Love, Vocation, and a Leap of Faith

Summers on Staten Island working at a boarding school brought her into contact with seminarians. Among them was a young man named Roman — discerning whether he was called to celibacy or to another vocation. They grew close as they worked, prayed, and sang together.

Their dilemma soon became clear: they had fallen in love, and Roman still felt called to the priesthood. “I said, why can’t we both continue? This is our tradition.” At the time, the ordination of married men outside Ukraine was effectively restricted in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. But Bishop Isidore Borecky of Canada was quietly exploring exceptions.

“We took a risk,” Iryna says. They married, moved to Toronto, and hoped. Within a year, Roman was ordained a deacon and then a priest. Their first child was born just months before his priestly ordination. Soon after, they were assigned to a parish in Welland, Ontario — “where our real work in the Church began.”

Early Challenges and the Strength of Prayer

Their first parish brought misunderstandings and difficulties. As a young priest, Roman served the liturgy with deep tradition and care — something not all parishioners welcomed. Eventually, they realized they would need to move on.

At home, with three small children and little time for structured prayer, Iryna struggled. Confessing that she could not pray morning and evening consistently, she received a message she would carry for life: “Your life is your prayer.” The sleepless nights, service to others, raising children, and supporting the parish — all of it was prayer when offered to God.

Founding a Parish in Brampton

The next chapter unfolded in Brampton, north of Toronto, where the eparchy asked Rev. Roman to establish a new parish in a rapidly growing city. They arrived with twelve families — half of whom left within months, uneasy with the traditional liturgical life the Galadzas were building. The remaining families, younger and eager to learn, became the heart of the future parish. Their children grew up with the Galadza children; friendships formed that anchored parish life. For nearly two decades, the community worshipped in a school gym and then a small brick chapel on prison grounds. Teaching came through liturgy itself: homilies were catechetical, drawing people into deeper understanding.

Their long-awaited wooden church was finally consecrated in 1995. Iconographer Bohdan Turovsky painted its icons; the iconostasis and murals took years to complete. A parish house followed in 2011.

Life seemed settled — until one winter morning changed everything.

— When St. Elias took your church to heaven, how did you manage to get through this shock? How did you organize parish life after the fire, and what helped you endure it?

In 2014, on an Easter Saturday, very early in the morning, the alarm bells went off, and the fire trucks came, and the church burnt down completely. They say it burnt down, but St. Elias took it up. That was a huge shock, and again, never something we envisioned we'd have to live through. We actually didn’t even have time to cry, to be honest. That came way later, because there was no time, you just kept moving.

People began arriving at the parish house, filling it wall to wall. The church was still burning. The water line that should have supplied the firefighters was frozen — it had been an extremely cold winter. Even if it hadn’t been frozen, I’m not sure the church could have been saved. A wooden structure burns fast once the rafters catch fire. What could not be rebuilt was the iconography, and that was a tremendous loss.

My husband is very positive by nature, and he said right away, “What shall we do? Let’s have a moleben of thanksgiving to thank God for what we had and what we still have.” And he kept repeating, “The temple, the church, is not the building — it’s the people.”

We had a moleben of thanksgiving, and, you know, there was no time to think. There’s no time to fall into depression, because there’s work to be done. The next day, we were serving in the school gym. This big open space — people were coming in, and we had to set up an altar. Here we were, sort of thrown back to the beginnings, where we had to set up in the gymnasium every Sunday. Our son Ilya made a very makeshift iconostas.

People’s prayers help a lot, because sometimes when something like this happens, you can’t even pray. You just don’t know what to say. But in those moments, even when you can’t pray, you can still feel the presence of Christ in the situation more clearly.

We received so many emails, texts, and letters of encouragement and support from people we didn’t even know. Someone from Japan even sent us $500 to help rebuild the new church. I still don’t know who it was. Every single church and denomination in Brampton — and there are many — came forward with condolences and prayers.

Shortly afterward, His Beatitude Sviatoslav came, even before we had begun the rebuilding process. Everything was fenced off — the charred columns were still standing, and the ashes and debris were all around. He served a Paschal Moleben, which was very touching and emotional for him and for all of us. It was beautiful to have the support of the leader of our Church, someone who cried with us and stood with us during that difficult time.

There is a reason for everything that happens, and when I look back at what happened, when it happened, and how it happened, I can see God’s plan in all of it. None of this would have happened without God allowing it to some degree, and without His continued support. God guided us to that point, and He continued to guide us afterward.

Bishop Benedict likes to say: “Thank God for everything — the good and the bad, the joys and the crosses — because there is benefit in everything.” After the fire, nothing seemed truly disastrous anymore. You kind of think, “Okay, we lived through that. We can live through anything.”

— This example of how you went through this trial shows your great strength in resilience. Who was your teacher, and what taught you resilience?

My mother gave birth to me in a displaced persons camp. Often, when I give pro-life talks, I say that she had every reason to not bring me into the world, but she didn’t. I have learned so much from my mother about resilience and about being with God, letting Him guide my life.

— You are a mother of six children. How did you manage to combine that with life in the community, and did you have the opportunity to develop professionally during those years?

Our children were born very close together, one after another, and in those early days I was a bit isolated because we had no family nearby. There is a great demand on you when the children are very small. As they grow older, things change. Children must always be our number one priority — their physical health, spiritual life, and mental well-being have to come first, alongside our husband. At the same time, you can’t spend every moment with the children, and that’s a good thing, because sometimes we can be overbearing.

My husband was very supportive of my teaching. He knew it brought me joy. It was the perfect career for me because I was out of the house when the children were at school, and I had vacations when they had vacations, so I was able to spend time with them. I really appreciated that part of my life — being able to return to teaching, even though it also required the children to help more. The children had their responsibilities: cleaning on Saturdays, helping in the kitchen, or whatever needed to be done.

Sometimes I would be invited to speak to parents at St. Sophia’s School about raising their children in the faith, or I would go to Ukraine to teach, and during those times my husband took care of the children. We always said that one of the secrets to the success of our marriage was having separate vacations, doing different activities that we each enjoyed, while still spending a lot of time together as a family. He was very supportive, and I think it is crucial for a priest to support his wife — to understand her needs and her struggles.

— What would you like to say to younger women in the Church — those who are just beginning their path?

I would say that the most valuable thing anyone can do is to develop a strong prayer life — both liturgical and personal — and to learn to discern God’s will. God knows what is best for us. He has been with us from the first moments in the womb, and He knows our path better than we do. We need to learn to discern what God wants from us, realizing that we cannot accomplish anything — even our dreams — without His help. And don’t be afraid to do something different from what everyone else is doing. It is also important to reflect on your life — to see how God has been active in it. He placed you with certain parents, in a certain place, in a certain era. All of this is significant in shaping who you are.

— As a mother of six, the wife of a priest in an active parish, and a professional, did you have your own space — a place where you could be with yourself and with God?

I had a small room of my own, where I kept my icons, books, and a chair. I could sit in the chair and simply look at the icons when I was very tired. It was a space where I could go and pray on my own. From my experience, the more solid your prayer life is, the more peaceful you feel internally, and then you are able to handle whatever comes your way very differently.

— Once, His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar said that he truly felt the real presence of God only after thirty years of his ministry. When did you first experience this real presence of God in your life? What does it mean for you to truly feel that God is near?

I think I experienced the presence of God a couple of times, especially in Ukraine. Before I left, my spiritual father said to me, “Irka, make sure you keep your eye on Christ, keep your eye on Christ.”

Once, we stopped at a church on the road. It was crowded and noisy; people were talking. I wondered why I was there. Then I looked through the crowd and saw the icon of Christ — the face of Christ — and I remembered those words: keep your eye on Christ. Later, after being in Donetsk, meeting people there and many others, I realized how hard life was for so many in Ukraine. I felt deeply for them. It felt so unjust that they had to suffer as they did — and yet, at the same time, I witnessed this beautiful joy they carried. Even in their suffering, they still experienced joy.

I felt the presence of Christ anytime I found myself in a situation where I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. But more than at any other time, I felt it when my husband was diagnosed with cancer. We knew — even though it wasn’t said outright — that this was not going to end well. The decision was simply to do what was possible to keep him comfortable, and with us, for as long as he could be comfortable.

When we understood what was ahead of us, there came an incredible interior peace — and that was Jesus walking with us. It was a very strong sense of Christ’s presence. During the illness and through the funeral, all the children were there, the whole family. What a blessing that all the children and grandchildren were present. They were with their grandfather, loving him, being with him, even kissing him after he died. They weren’t afraid, so their experience of death was something very positive.

My husband, always humorous, would say, “Well, we actually thought he would live a little bit longer — it went much faster than we expected — but I have to die when it’s okay for people to park on the lawn, because there are going to be lots of people and there will be no parking.” That was his concern, because in the spring and winter the ground gets soft. And, as always, he got his wish. The humor was there right until the end.

Interview conducted by Halyna Vasylytsia