Head of the UGCC: “Our pain becomes a source of invincibility when we know what we are suffering for”
Forming an attitude toward what hurts us is a search for meaning and why we do it. When suffering has meaning, it is evident that it was not in vain. The Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, said in an interview with the online publication “Ukrainian Pravda.”
According to the Primate, in the Gospel, we hear the following words: “but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
The Head of the Church notes that it is difficult to fully understand God’s plan when we speak about the sense of pain that people experience, particularly during the war.
“We learn something through pain. It transforms us and makes us different. There is no excuse for inflicting pain, but we must learn to experience it adequately. There is no such person who goes through life without ever experiencing pain,” says the spiritual leader.
However, he emphasizes woe to a person who lives by running away from pain and hardships.
“The ability to experience pain makes us invincible. Sometimes we cannot change circumstances and avoid pain, but we can shape our attitude to both pain and the circumstances in which we live,” His Beatitude Sviatoslav assures.
According to him, since the beginning of the war, when the pain was increasing, people turned to the Church for help to find the sense of this pain. And when a person — be it a soldier, a civilian, or even a statesman — saw a higher value for which it was worth suffering. That pain became a source of invincibility.
He recalled visiting the mayor of Kyiv during the siege of the capital, Vitaliy Klitschko: “I wanted to ask how many people remained in Kyiv and what their most urgent needs were. We talked about different things, and then he told me: ‘You know, more than bread and clothes, we need a word of hope.’ And apart from the Church and God’s word, no one can give it. But, in Christ’s Gospel, we see life-giving higher values for which it is worth living.”
The Head of the UGCC believes that it is not worth trying to explain everything, to rationalize everything since war is nonsense that does not lend itself to an apparent, rational explanation.
“But we can change our attitude to the circumstances we are in and overcome them,” says His Beatitude Sviatoslav.
The UGCC Department for Information
