From His Beatitude Sviatoslav: Lord, grant that we, as wise builders, put You as the cornerstone of our personal and state life
We say today: Lord, come to our vineyard. God, come to us and make us wise so that we can see You in every needy person whom You send to me today: the one who today has no home because it was destroyed; my native, close, and perhaps a migrant, a stranger, to whom I must give the fruits of labor in Your vineyard. The Father and Head of the UGCC, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, said during his sermon on the 13th Sunday after Pentecost and on the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist.
“Whenever Jesus Christ wanted to explain some profound truths about the Kingdom of Heaven, he used the language of parables, taking some circumstances from a person’s life, where characters and human relationships are manifested. With the help of this vital human situation, he explains the divine truth and reveals to us the truth about our God,” the Primate mentioned.
He also noted that today’s parable of the murderous vinedressers could also be called a story of violence, in addition to retelling the story of salvation that the God of Israel did to his people.
According to the preacher, in it, we hear that man acts as a rapist concerning God’s goodness. And this violence has a clear purpose — to appropriate. But moreover, the vinedressers kill to claim the right to speak for God, they kill to assert the right to decide who should live and who to die, and they claim the right to say what is good and what is evil.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav added that today the Church celebrates the beheading of the decent and glorious prophet John the Baptist, the last of the prophets. “We heard that story of the shameful final banquet, how King Herod wipes the prophet’s head to keep his word. John appears as the last of the prophets, after whom the Son himself will come,” he mentioned.
The Head of the Church asserts that this parable applies to each of us, because each, according to his vocation and task, is a vinedresser in God’s vineyard. Each of us has a mission, a service.
“How often we see today in the life of individual states, and even at the level of international relations, that the law of the strong replaces the power of law. Then what does he who thinks himself strong? He kills and destroys the weak because he believes he can appropriate something for himself. But when a person robs something for himself, then he finally loses everything,” the Archbishop admonishes.
This word of God about violence, especially in such a delicate relationship between man and God, resonates uniquely in the ears of Ukraine and Ukrainians. So today, we thank the Lord God for the fact that our army is liberating Ukrainian lands step by step. All of us must have been moved by the footage of those people who came out with tears in their eyes and hugged our soldiers, saying: “We have been praying for six months for this day to come.”
“But it is so vital for us to persevere in the good, not to become like those murderous grape growers. By throwing away the cornerstone, they lose everything. And for us, Christ is the cornerstone; if he becomes the foundation, the basis of the construction, even the protection of our state, then the words will come true: ‘This is from the Lord, and it is lovely in our eyes,’ the primate is convinced.
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