His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Church of Transfiguration of Our Lord on the Holy Mount Tabor
Ukrainian Orthodox Church
On September 7 His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr celebrated the Divine Liturgy on the Holy Mount Tabor – the place of Transfiguration of Our Lord. Concelebrating to him were the archbishops – His Eminence Luke of Konotop and Hlukhiv, His Eminence Theodore of Mukacheve and Uzhhorod, the Bishops – His Grace Nykodym of Volodymyr-Volynskyy and Kovel, His Grace Hilary of Makariv and His Grace Alexander of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy (Secretary for the Primate).
The Primate prayed for the Ukrainian people, the state authorities and read out the memorial prayer requests sent to e-mail of the official website of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
At the Divine Liturgy His beatitude Volodymyr also prayed for the Ukraine’s children-oncology patients.
The prayer requests contained more than thousand of names of such children from all over Ukraine, pupils of the orphanages and boarding houses (Boyarka, Nova Kakhovka), of the volunteers and doctors of the Center for protection of maternity and childhood and the Institute of Cancer, volunteers of St Jonah’s Fellowship.
Note that the pilgrim’s group, headed by His Beatitude metropolitan Volodymyr arrived to the airport of Ben-Gurion on September 6, and the trip itself will last till September 12.
In the Church of Transfiguration Metropolitan Volodymyr, the clergymen and pilgrims bowed unto such prominent Christian shrines as the wonderworking Icon of the Mother of God “The Unfading Flower”, the stone “footprint”, upon which, accrofding to the Church Tradition, the transfiguration of Our Lord took place.
Then the believers took a dip into the holy waters of the Jordan river and the Lake of Genisareth.
The group also visited the metochion of St Maria Magdalena, the healing spring nearby, the Church of Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes in El-Tabgha, the Church of Twelve Apostles in Kapernaum, Cana of Galilee and the spring near which, according to the Church tradition, the Annunciation of the Mother of God took place.
On the program of pilgrimage there are also Holy Mount of Zion, the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem, the monastery of the Venerable Theodosius the Great, the Laura of the Venerable Sabbas the Sanctified, the Metochion of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Chevron (will see the Oak of Mamre), the metochion in Jericho, the monastery of the Venerable Gerasimus of Jordan, the Tomb of the Holy Righteous Lazarus, the mount of Olives (the place of Ascension of Our Lord), the garden of Gethsemane, the Church of the Holy First Martyr archdeacon Stephan and St Alexander’s metochion in Jerusalem.
The given pilgrimage trip was organized by the Pilgrimage center of the Department for External Church Relations of the UOC. By tradition, the arrangements of the kind, led by His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr are organized several times a year.
