Bishop Teemu Laajasalo’s speech at the ecumenical service on 24 February 2026, the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine
Beloved sisters and brothers in Christ,
Our parliament’s Speaker, Jussi Halla-aho, says in an interview that he’s been thinking about the war in Ukraine, the suffering, and how we’ve grown used to watching it. The Speaker was brought up short by the realisation that such familiarity is both understandable and wrong. It’s understandable because human beings cannot endure constant exposure to shocking things. And it’s wrong because we gradually begin to tolerate the killing of our fellow human beings.
This is an important spiritual observation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been going on for a long time. In the war’s early days many of us relentlessly followed the news. It was as if time had stopped. Our hearts were weighed down. Our prayer was powerful. Fear and compassion were constant companions.
But time didn’t stop. It went by. The flow of news continued. Cities were destroyed. People died. Children fled. And gradually the war receded from the foreground into the background of our lives. It became part of the world’s flow of news – one headline among all the others. It’s only human. God has created us so that we cannot live in a constant state of alert. Our minds intervene to protect us. If we lacked the ability to get used to things and adapt, we wouldn’t survive. Our emotional flexibility and resilience is a gift. It’s part of the wisdom of creation.
People are beginning to get used to the unbearable, and even to tolerate it. People in Ukraine can’t just give in every day. They have to get up, look for food, protect their children, rebuild. Although people are dying, the survivors have to go on living. Those of us who are following the war from afar have started to live our own lives after the initial stream of news, get on with things, and only wake up when something out of the ordinary happens. And the threshold for what’s out of the ordinary gets ever higher, for watching the killing becomes ordinary. Getting used to things is therefore a sign of human resilience. But there’s also another side to things.
Those of us in the pews should ask ourselves if there are things we can’t get used to. What should we think of ourselves if we get used to the suffering of an innocent child? What should we think of ourselves when the bombing no longer brings us up short, or when the death toll becomes a number, or when the war is just a noise in the background?
Getting used to such things entails a hardening of the heart. The mind can be strong, but the heart must not grow hard. The faith of the church does not acknowledge indifference as a virtue. The double commandment of love calls us to love both God and our neighbour. Indifference is not a manifestation of love. It is its opposite. So numbness isn’t just a psychological phenomenon. It’s a spiritual question.
Christ doesn’t get used to violence. He says to us: “This is the world as it is now.” Jesus doesn’t pass by when there is suffering. He stops. He weeps at the tomb of Lazarus. He is angered by the injustice he finds in the temple. He allows his heart to crack. God’s righteousness isn’t a cold-hearted< balancing act. It is a living love that reacts to the presence of evil.
So this is what we can say today about the suffering of our neighbour: we get used to it. But God doesn’t get used to it. All who die in war are called by God. The voice of every mother who weeps for her child is heard by God, and it will not be drowned out by the clamour of history. Every ruined home is more than a deliberate target or collateral damage to God.
God does not look at suffering from a distance on the cross. God enters into it. God in Christ does not tolerate evil. He bears it. He doesn’t say: “It’s inevitable.” He says: “I am with you.”
We may think that we cannot live in a state of constant shock. We cannot bear all the world’s pain. We really cannot. But today we can pray that our need to protect ourselves will not harden our hearts. We can pray that our daily lives don’t become marked by indifference. We can pray that our hearts will remain alive.
On this sad anniversary, in this church and in churches throughout the world, we pray for peace in Ukraine. We pray for a just, lasting and genuine peace. We pray for the end of the war. But we also pray for something else. We pray that God will save us from cynicism. We pray that God will protect us from thinking, “This is just how the world is these days.” We pray that God will protect us from getting used to things, from moral numbness.
The Christian church lives in a world marked by war and violence. But the church will never get used to them. The church’s life is based on a hope that is stronger than history. A hope that is born not of human perseverance but of the faithfulness of God. A hope that is Christ himself.
Let us be confident today that God will never get used to these things. God’s mercy is never exhausted. God’s justice never forgets.
Amen.