For Ukraine and for the peace of the world: our Chicago mission’s prayer services last week

Over the last week, our Chicago mission has been praying through the events in Ukraine for peace and social justice in the world. Our Patriarch asked us to pray each day of the past week for that situation, and recently, our bishop wrote us a pastoral letter calling us as a church to devote ourselves to prayer. In obedience to our hierarchs, we have prayed a different service each night. Unlike the private prayers for which we enter into our closet so that only our Father in heaven sees us, we offered readers’ services and by way of invitation to all people of good will, we broadcast them on Facebook Live. We see these acts as reflecting the wisdom of our Synod of Bishops, which reiterated yesterday that it is important not to give way to the anxiousness that leads to a violent response to aggression, but to pray for the consolidation of civil society.

These are the videos we made this week: