From the Head of the UGCC: “Listening to the story of Herod, the murderer, we see the story of millions of Ukrainian women who have to flee their homes”
Celebrating the holiday of the Holy Family, today we cannot help but look into the face of the Ukrainian family, which is the most wounded and divided. The Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, said during his sermon to the faithful on the second day of the Christmas holidays, when the Church celebrates the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos.
According to the Primate, listening to the sacred story about the Holy Family, receiving the light of God’s word to comprehend its profound meaning, we look into the history of the salvation of our people.
We feel today, says the preacher, how Jesus Christ, in his Nativity, also repeats the story of salvation, which God does with the Ukrainian people. Listening to the king who kills children, hearing the story of how the Holy Family had to leave their home and live the life of a refugee, an emigrant, we see that today Jesus Christ is personally partaking in the story of the salvation of the long-suffering people of Ukraine.
“He is born in the body of our people to give it some deeper inner content so that we feel that God is with us, ‘God is with us’ not only in time of joy, but in the moment when Ukraine is weeping the same Rachel was weeping for her children. God seems to identify with the sons and daughters of Ukraine, who gave their lives for our Motherland. He becomes one of us,” the Head of the UGCC believes.
What will Ukraine be like after victory? What does the light of Christ’s Nativity tell us about this topic today? “We often pray correctly during the war and support our army. Some volunteers say that Ukraine today is either at the front or for the front. Although we believe in one God, we sometimes say that we believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine because we understand that our lives now depend on them, just as the life of the Child relied on Joseph,” the spiritual leader says.
“Listening to the story about Herod, the murderer, about the getaway of the Holy Family to Egypt, today we see the story of millions of Ukrainian women and men who have to leave their homes, scattered in different parts of Europe and around the globe,” the Primate assumes.
“We, as the Church — the preacher convinces — must support the Ukrainian family to heal their wounds so that our young girls and boys are not afraid of married life. On the contrary, we ought to inspire them to trust the idea of a new Ukraine and dare to give birth to children in Ukraine, to raise them here, to provide them with faith in God, and to build the future of their people and their Church.”
The UGCC Department for Information
