Ignatian attentiveness healing wounds of war
By Olena Tkachuk | Province of Southern Poland
[From “Jesuits 2025 - The Society of Jesus in the world”]
An unexpected fruit of the Spiritual Exercises, the Spiritual Attentiveness as way to speechless amazement in the life of Olena during war time.
Olena Tkachuk is Ukrainian. Her strong experience of the Spiritual Exercises at the Jesuit spiritual centre in her home town of Khmelnytskyi influenced her decision to serve her compatriots from the east of the country who were fleeing the bombs. She supported the spiritual centre’s mission during this period. Polish Jesuits were running the centre; they recognised in Olena a valuable person in communications who could share her talents with the Jesuit Provinces of Poland. So they offered her the responsibility of running the Jesuit website. It was a dream opportunity. It led her to Krakow, from where she continues to support refugees in her country. Here is her testimony.
For me, the war in Ukraine was not the reason to escape. It was the reason to stay.
In the first several months after the full-scale war broke out in Ukraine on 24th February 2022, I experienced more mental states than in the previous 34 years of my life. The psyche turned on defence mechanisms one by one, one of which was that my senses got extremely sharpened. Suddenly, it turned out to be an unexpected blessing.
Attentiveness was, on the one hand, my innate trait. On the other hand, it was one of the most precious things I learned during my Spiritual Exercises. Combined with the heightened senses, my innate attentiveness empowered by the Ignatian experience made me browse around like a newborn, as if I was seeing the world for the first time.
Within the first year of the war, I experienced the most beautiful spring, summer, autumn and winter of my life. Everything aroused astonishment inside me. Ordinary things, such as apple blossom, a bee buzzing over a flower, a pigeon jumping down the stairs absorbed me in a speechless amazement for long minutes. It was then that I discovered the healing power of attentiveness, which comes from noticing the beauty and goodness of the world even through the horrors of war. Despite fear and uncertainty about the future, despite large-scale destructions and non-stop news of deaths in the feed, the world was still awesome. And this world, created by the almighty and loving God, pulsated with life and beauty, strengthening the belief that life is stronger than death, good triumphs over evil, and beauty surpasses ugliness.
From the very first day when Russian troops brutally invaded Ukraine, I was involved as a volunteer in helping the internally displaced persons as well as in humanitarian aid delivery from abroad. My hometown Khmelnytskyi was situated in a so called relatively safe region of the country, which meant that, though the air raid alerts occurred every day, direct missile attacks were not frequent and civilian casualties were quite rare. At that time, Khmelnytskyi turned into a huge humanitarian aid hub and a refugee collection point. During the first month of the war, my city, which had 270,000 inhabitants, accepted nearly 150,000 internally displaced persons, who were fleeing to the West from the military action zones. Some of them stayed for a very short time, maybe the length of the train stop. Some stayed for a few days or weeks. Nearly 30,000 people chose Khmelnytskyi as their new home.
Eager to share the hope I discovered, and the joy which stemmed from it, I soon noticed how important it was “to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and cry with those who are crying” (Romans 12:15-18). It was Ignatian attentiveness which taught me how fragile a human being is, how careful one should be approaching those who suffer, how much sensibility one ought to possess to choose the proper means of communication.
Born to an unbelieving Orthodox family, I had not had much chance to get to know God. Being converted to Catholicism as an adult, the Spiritual Exercises became my way to discover God working in my life. In May 2023, I became the editor of the main Jesuit website in Poland jezuici.pl. Now, I proceed to discover the meaning of attentiveness in media work, listening to the world with one ear and to the Holy Spirit with the other, striving to be tuned to the Truth and see everything in its light.
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