Patriarch Kirill’s address to the faithful in Svyatogorsk Lavra
“I believe that the Lord will be merciful to Ukraine, instruct the authorities and those staying in schism”, says Patriarch Kirill in his address to the faithful in Svyatogorsk Lavra
In his sermon at the stele of the Mother of God the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church reminded to all those present of the significance of the Communion: receiving communion from the One Bread and One Cup, we get united one to another by the invisible but active divine power, and become the Church of God from a simple group.
Then he referred to the vital issue for the Ukrainians – of the Church schism: “If we become the one in the One Bread and Cup – what can divide us? By what human arguments and dreams, what human values the Body of Christ can be divided? There is no such a dream, no such values! Still less there can be no such social, national and political ideals for the sake of which one could allowably divide what the Lord Himself united.”
Speaking about schism, His Holiness the Patriarch was categorical: “No arguments, no human wisdom, no human ideals may justify schism, since the schism is violation of the God’s word about the unity of His inheritance”.
Also His Holiness states that god punishes for hypocrisy both those who stay in schism and the people who do not understand truth and betrays the commandment of God of the unity of the sacrament of Eucharist for the sake of human ideals.
Turning to the history, the first hierarch noted: “The history shows that throughout two thousand years of existence of Christianity no human dream, no political or national idea could have been realized through division of the Body of Christ. Where there is a division, there the blood sheds, the energy wastes, the unity is lost and the partition emerges in the place of wholeness; there the ability to reach one’s objectives the people face is lost, because the people divided in the most essential and sacred cannot be able to rally around the political slogans and the political programs”.
The Patriarch bowed unto those who preserved the unity of the Church in the Ukrainian land and noted: “I believe that God will send His mercy onto Ukraine, instruct the authorities, instruct all those who stay in schism out of ignorance, oblivion and petrifies senselessness. And as a patriarch, of Ukraine too, I will do my best that the people united and the national controversies disappeared, that the One Church of Christ, the Church-martyr an confessor, who was faithful to Christ to the death and shared the destiny of its people, had the power and possibility to embrace with mother’s embracement all of her faithful children”.
In conclusion of the sermon His Holiness the Patriarch said: “We will pray for you even if you do not want this prayers, we will bend the knees to the Lord that he sent down His mercy to Ukraine, so that he reunited the Church and the nation”, and called Metropolitan Vladimir the courageous Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, man of prayer and spiritual pastor, who preserves unity by his humility and love, in spite of the threats of division.”
