Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of John (17: 20-26) in which Jesus prays for all believers saying, ‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world’. Afterwards, Fr Paul shares a little about St Josaphat whose feast we celebrate today.

St Josaphat was born in the Ukraine of Orthodox parents. In 1595 the Union of Brest brought the Ruthenian Church into communion with Catholic Rome while still preserving its own liturgy.

That brought about a schism within the church itself, with one group wanting to remain Orthodox and in the linked to Moscow and Constantinople, while the other group accepted the Union of the churches.

St Josaphat joined the first monastery of the order of St Basil to be united to the Catholic Church: he was the first person to do so. He was ordained priest and, eventually and reluctantly, appointed bishop of Polotsk in 1617.

Although King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, supported the union of the churches, the local aristocracy were against it because it threatened their control of the church’s property and money. So, plotting with the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, who visited the Ukraine in 1621, they stirred up trouble and as a result Josaphat was murdered by a mob in 1623 while on a pastoral visit to Vitebsk.

Mindful of the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine and the need for peace it is especially timely to ask, ‘St Josaphat, pray for us!’