A long day’s journey into light

Alta. Ukrainian took long way home to the priesthood

Basil Sych will be ordained to the Ukrainian Catholic priesthood Nov. 1 in St. Paul.

By GLEN ARGAN
WCR Editor
Edmonton

Deacon Basil Sych has always been on the outside looking in.

He was a Ukrainian Catholic from Alberta living in French Quebec. He was a non-native person working in ministry in aboriginal communities.

As a boy growing up on a farm near Hay Lakes, he attended Divine Liturgies that were two to three hours long in Old Slavonic. “I didn’t understand a thing.”

He has a wide array of work experience – from working in a funeral home to doing structural repair on airplanes to researching native treaty claims. Even in those jobs, he was looking for something more.

“Everything I was doing as work was my second choice. Where I always wanted to be was as a priest.”

It’s a yearning that will come to fruition Nov. 1 when Bishop David Motiuk will ordain the 42-year-old Sych a priest in St. Paul.

At that ordination, there will still be a note of dissonance. He will be a Ukrainian Catholic priest ordained in a Latin rite cathedral.

“As a farm boy, I kind of had one foot in the West and one foot in the East for many years,” Sych said in an interview.

So it will continue. The new priest will minister in St. Paul. His French Canadian wife, Denise Laverdure, and their three daughters will be there too.

St. Paul – a town with a strong francophone community, aboriginal people and Ukrainians too.

“St. Paul has been an enormous blessing to us,” Sych says as he prepares to finally settle into his life’s vocation.

It was a long-time coming.

“We had a very close-knit family life that revolved around farming,” he said. “My dad is very hard worker.”

And so the six children of Ignace and Tillie Sych became hard workers too.

Their idea of a family outing was to gather rocks and tree roots from around the farm, make a bonfire out of the roots and roast wieners.

But when Basil was nine, the parish priest suggested to his youngest brother Ben that he might become a priest.

“I remember thinking, ‘Why him? I can be a priest.’ That was the beginning of the sense of the call.”

His teenage years were a struggle. “I could not be happy. I was restless. I had a restlessness and no peace.”

Ordination or marriage?

After working in a variety of jobs, Basil headed to Holy Spirit Ukrainian Catholic Seminary in Ottawa. In and out of the seminary, he completed his course work in 1994. But instead of being ordained, he got married.

He and Denise were married by Father Andriy Chirovsky, a noted Ukrainian Catholic priest, in a trilingual Mass in Val David, Quebec. A Byzantine rite wedding ceremony was part of the Roman Catholic Mass.

“For a small French Catholic community, it was quite an eye opener to see the Byzantine ceremony in a Latin rite Mass.”

A short time later, the newlyweds were doing pastoral work with Oblate Father Jean Paul Vantroys in Little Buffalo and Cadotte Lake, Alta. In their first four weeks in the two settlements, they helped organize six funerals, including those for two people killed in a murder-suicide and another in a car crash.

“I was a farm boy who had just come out of university and was still pretty green.”

But he grew to love the aboriginal communities, taking part in their traditional ceremonies and developing strong bonds with the people.

“I loved it up there. I loved the First Nations culture and their way of life.”

But the time was difficult for Denise. Her father died during that period and the couple lost a baby to an ectopic pregnancy. They moved to Quebec.

Basil worked as a pastoral animator, helping Catholic students in Protestant schools. One teacher friend had a foster child.

“The idea came that maybe we were called to be foster parents,” he recalled. They took in several foster children over a few years.

One was Marie-Pierre. Abandoned in the hospital at 11 days of age, she was severely dehydrated and the medical staff didn’t think she would live. When she was 15 months, in early 1999, Basil and Denise took her in as a foster child.

Six months later, the hospital phoned again. This time, there was another girl, Laura, who was five days old. Within three hours, the couple had a car seat and had brought her home.

In another 10 months, they took in a three-week-old girl, Nikita.

God’s invitation

“That’s how God invited us to have our family.”

As long as the girls remained foster children, Basil and Denise could not leave Quebec. In 2004, the couple adopted all three.

Soon, they were again doing pastoral work in a native community – this time, Pickle Lake, 550 km north of Thunder Bay.

“It was way the heck in the sticks,” Basil said. “It’s a boom and bust mining town. Right now, it’s been a long bust.”

It was a good three years there. But for the sake of their children, they needed to leave.

And then there was Basil’s old friend from the seminary, a fellow named Bishop David Motiuk. Motiuk was the auxiliary bishop of Winnipeg and was ready to accept Basil as a candidate for the priesthood.

But the family was not keen on moving to Manitoba, yet another place that was not home.

Still, Basil’s yearnings continued. The thought of being a priest would not go away. “But I wondered, ‘Is this just my imagination?’”

In early 2007, Motiuk was named bishop of the Edmonton Eparchy. “Denise said, ‘We’ve got to go and get things lined up with Bishop David.’”

Call from Edmonton

In July, they got the call to come to Edmonton so Basil could be a candidate for the priesthood. In October last year, he began his internship at St. Josaphat’s Cathedral. In May, Basil was ordained a deacon.

“When I was accepted as a candidate for the priesthood, it was like a ‘yes’” to all those longings and that questioning.

His great aunt, Sister Bonaventure Kalawsky, is some pleased. The 90-year-old Sister Servant of Mary Immaculate has been praying for a religious vocation in the family since she entered her order 75 years ago. She is coming from New York for Basil’s ordination.

As for Basil, “I experienced my ordination to the diaconate as a marriage.”

He is clear in his mind that celibacy is a gift to the Church and that there are limitations to the married priesthood. “As a celibate, there are greater things you can do as service to the Church.”

But the married priest has something to contribute too. As a husband and father, “there have been amazing ways to grow in faith.

“Today, there’s a need for bearing witness to Christ’s love in the sacrament of Matrimony.

“There’s a huge testimony that we as married people have to bear witness to. But it has to be connected very clearly to Jesus.”

Now Basil’s restlessness has been stilled. He has found his calling. “When you come to your vocation, there is a peace. You know, ‘This is where God is calling me.’”

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