Sr. Lynn McKenzie OSB
Moderator, Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum

On this feast of Saint Benedict, it seems an appropriate time for us to examine how we are living our monastic profession, asking ourselves whether we are living it the way we meant to on the day we first professed our commitment to this monastic way of life. For me, as I consider how I am living my monastic profession, I can’t help but be impacted and inspired by the way others live their commitment. Especially is this true as I recall many visits to monasteries around the world. Today I take the opportunity to measure my own fidelity against the remarkable witness of the sisters in Ukraine whom I visited last year.

Before last August I had never traveled to a country actively in war. August 2025 found me traveling, together with Abbot Marion Nguyen (Saint Martin’s Abbey, Washington, USA), to the cities of Lviv and Zhytomyr in Ukraine via a flight to Krakow, Poland. During the war, it is not possible to fly directly into Ukraine. That means crossing the border and passport control from Poland to Ukraine, and back again at the end of the trip. This is no simple matter nor is it brief.

The experience of being with the Benedictine nuns of Immaculate Conception Abbey in Zhytomyr and their dependent house of St Joseph in Lviv was a powerful, life-changing experience for me. Seeing how the nuns faithfully continue their monastic round of prayer despite the sights, sounds and smell of war all around them is inspiring. Many of the Psalms and other Scripture have taken on deeper meaning for them during this ongoing and seemingly interminable war. The war, even in this fifth year, is escalating. While I imagine that it is very difficult to face each day as the war rages on, still the sisters remain faithful to their monastic profession.

What follows is a poetic expression of what Psalm 136 (137) means in their life, so beautifully and poignantly expressed by Sr. Maria Kukharyk:

Psalm 136 (137)

The war began on a Thursday —
not a date, not a number,
precisely Thursday, the second week of the psalter,
as if God had not yet finished creating the day,
but people had already begun to die.
The sky turned to metal.
Voices faltered.
Who could catch the right tone after this?
We opened books,
the way one opens windows during a suffocating heat —
with hands that were already trembling.
"By the rivers..." — and then memory refuses to sing,
because every psalm now
is about someone specific.
About captivity.
About those who didn't make it.
About those who are being awaited.
About those who stopped replying.
and our harps are no longer harps,
they are a caught breath,
they are a woman in the subway whispering a prayer as if
she were holding up the ceiling with her hands.
How to sing the Lord’s song
when the siren's wail cuts through space and enters the prayer?
When even the silence
sounds like the anticipation of a strike?
And we stood in the midst of the psalm.
in the midst of the Word.
in the midst of the breath.
"How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?" —
we are still here, we are still standing on our own...
we hung up our harps:
on the doorframes by the entrance,
on the air raid alerts,
on the rocket notifications,
on the nails in the monastery walls.
and we no longer know —
is it us holding onto the prayer
or is the prayer
holding onto us.
Since then, every psalm
tastes of ashes.
and yet, someone still steps out into the choir loft.
Someone turns on the light.
Someone opens the book.
as if stubbornness
were one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And while the siren wails over the city
we are learning anew.
We weave our voice into its howl,
To sing in tune.

Sr. Maria Kukharyk OSB
Immaculate Conception Abbey
Zhytomyr, Ukraine

Sr. Maria is the author of a new book published in Ukrainian about St Scholastica, entitled, in English, Saint Scholastica: The Woman Whose Love Was Stronger.