Head of the UGCC on Good Friday: “Jesus, who conquered death, conquer the war in Ukraine”
On April 18, 2025, Good Friday, the Father and Head of the UGCC, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, presided over Vespers with the placement of the Shroud in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv. He was concelebrated by Bishops Stepan Sus and Andriy Khimyak.
At the end of the service, His Beatitude Sviatoslav delivered a sermon at the Shroud. He noted that “on this Holy, Great Friday, one wondrous, heartwarming news bursts forth to the whole world—God has died for humanity. The God who loved human beings so much that He desired to become one of them—the Son of God voluntarily took on human nature, freely chose to suffer as one of the mortals, willingly gave Himself into the hands of criminals, accepted a cruel death on the cross, and today, in His human body, voluntarily lays Himself in the grave.”
The Primate added, “Christ died on behalf of me and on behalf of each of you… The Lord laid upon Him all the crimes, sins, all the evil that every person in the world has committed. He died in our place.” The Patriarch noted that this is something Ukrainian soldiers understand well—when a comrade, in order to save another’s life, gives his own.
“For us, the crucified Savior is a mirror that says: ‘People, look at what you have done to yourselves, what your evil, hatred, and sin are doing to you, what your own crimes are doing to you. To fall into the hands of a criminal is terrifying,’” the preacher said.
According to him, our brothers and sisters who have suffered in Russian torture chambers, in the hands of executioners who believe they wield total power over others, know this all too well. “It is terrifying to be in the hands of someone who will stop at nothing—neither truth nor justice—to unleash all his hatred and rage on another person. That is exactly what we see today in our Savior, who was scourged, despised, and crucified,” said the Head of the UGCC.
“Not only did He die instead of us—He died for us,” the Primate emphasized, and quoting St. Augustine, added: “At the moment of Christ’s death, an exchange took place between man and God. Our death became His death, and His life became our life.”
“Christ dies for us on the cross in order to give us eternal life. At the moment of His death, He takes away our sins so that we may become partakers of divine joy. He takes away our sorrow to give us the hope of gladness. Even today we may say that by dying on the cross, He takes away war from humanity—for man knows how to start wars, but does not know how to end them. At the moment of Christ’s death, He becomes our peace. In place of the demon of war, He restores to us peace—the fullness of life. And so today, in this moment of His Passion, as we commemorate the death of Christ, we find hope for life and resurrection,” His Beatitude Sviatoslav said.
At the same time, he recalled Palm Sunday in Sumy, when a little girl who did not wear jewelry asked her mother to hang a cross around her neck. Her mother accepted it “as a sign, a symbol of hope that they would be saved and that death would pass them by.”
“How wondrous it is,” the Head of the UGCC continued, “that the life-giving Cross of the Lord, at the moment of Christ’s death, is transformed from an instrument of torment and death into the tree of paradise and life. And the Body of Christ, which we take down from it today, becomes the fruit of eternal life for all who receive it.”
“We pray today: Jesus, You who died for us—at this moment of great pain for our people and our homeland—be our life. You who conquered death, conquer the war in Ukraine. You who lie in the grave to keep us from perishing, lead us out of the slavery into which the new Russian Pharaoh seeks once again to thrust us,” His Beatitude Sviatoslav prayed.
The UGCC Department for Information
