Strength coming from faithfulness to Christ is a pillar no one can break, — His Beatitude Sviatoslav
“Today I want to address the Ukrainian youth and invite them to take an oath of loyalty to Christ and answer the question: “Do you believe that Christ can do for you what you ask Him?” The Father and Head of the UGCC said during a homily in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ on the seventh Sunday after Pentecost. During the Divine Liturgy, the faithful renewed their baptismal vows, and the youth, at the call of His Beatitude Sviatoslav, took an oath of loyalty to Christ.
“The powerful word of God, which has just sounded and which the Lord spoke to us within this Divine Liturgy, reveals to us Jesus Christ, the God who comes to his people. Moreover, the one who is the long-awaited Messiah, who fulfills the expectations and aspirations of the thousand-year Old Testament history of the people of Israel,” mentioned the Primate at the beginning of the homily.
According to the Head of the Church, the question “Do you believe that I can do this to you?” is the ability to communicate and see the living and present God, which is revealed to us as the sense of faith.
“The one who believes sees much deeper than the eyes of the body can see. Whoever believes can plunge his heart and mind into the depths of the reality that surrounds man. The one who believes — feels, and sees God even in places where other observers do not notice Him,” The Head of the UGCC is convinced.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav drew attention to the fact that modern man is wounded in his ability to communicate and enter into a deep, real human relationship with other people, as well as the Lord. That is why it is so important, he believes, that Christ in today’s Gospel heals a person’s ability to communicate.
“Today, let us ask that He will speak life-giving words to us: Let it be done for you according to your faith. We ask that we experience the healing of our life-giving ability to communicate with God, and then in the light of our relationship with Him we will see the truth revolving around us. Then, the dumb spirit will be driven out of our hearts, and we will no longer be afraid to hear the truth and testify to it,” the Head of the Church emphasized.
The preacher noted that today a dumb spirit is taking over a person in a specific way. At most, words often lose their meaning and sense, and people are afraid to hear or see what they do not want to see or hear.
How painful it sometimes gets to hear the discussions occurring in Western Europe about the extent to which one should be tolerant of the criminal enemy attacking Ukraine. We are killed every day, and out there they debate on how many times a day it is possible to take a shower and whether it is possible for the temperature in their homes to be two degrees lower due to economic sanctions.
“But Christ is among us! He is our strength and victory. Because we believe that everything we dream about today, fight for, and die for, we owe to our faith in God, that we will be able to achieve it. We believe that owing to our faith, Christ will do for us what each of us today, particularly in this Divine Liturgy, wants to ask Him for.”
During the Liturgy, the faithful renewed their baptismal vows, and the youth took an oath of loyalty to Christ. His Beatitude Sviatoslav recalled that they performed a similar one in the spring of 1933 at the request of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. “The strength that came from that loyalty to Christ was a pillar that no one could break, neither the Stalinist regime nor his concentration camps; not either the disaster of the Second World War or all the burdensome post-war calamities that our people and our Church experienced”, the Primate said.
“May the merciful Lord hear our prayers! Let him open our eyes, loosen our tongues and give us the strength to tell the whole world what Ukraine is going through and what it is witnessing today is worth even giving one’s life,” summarized the Head of the UGCC.
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