The Sacrament of Liberation: His Beatitude Sviatoslav reminded of the importance of the pre-Christmas Confession
Where does the Lord God call us during the pre-Christmas fast? When will His hand rest on me, personally, in my particular life situation? During the pre-Christmas fast, the Lord God calls us to the Sacrament of Confession. After all, this is the Sacrament of liberation and restoration of our spiritual and emotional strength. It is the moment when God’s healing, inspiring, and empowering right-hand rests on me. His Beatitude Sviatoslav, the Father and Head of the UGCC, said this in a sermon at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv on the 27th Sunday after the Descent of the Holy Spirit, December 10.
In his sermon, the Patriarch emphasized that today’s Word of God (Luke 13:10–17) invites us to delve into the mystery of God’s gaze. In his opinion, sometimes we are fearful of the human look. We feel that it is judgmental and reproachful. But today, God’s word tells us how the Lord looks at us entirely differently.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav noted that when God looks at a person, the first thing He sees is not their sinfulness, weakness, or the distance they have moved away from Him. “Looking at a person, the Lord sees his child! First of all, God recognizes the dignity of a person, the ultimate dignity of God’s image that He laid down in his creation,” said the Head of the Church and added: “God’s gaze heals, liberates, invites, fills with life, enables us to find our own dignity in the depths of our hearts, to feel that we are not rejected, neither slaves, but sons and daughters of God.”
“Interestingly, as if to complement this revealed mystery of God’s view of humanity, we hear today the message of the Apostle Paul. He tells us that it is the enemy of the human race, the devil, is interested in our defeat. Every time we hear the insinuation that ‘everything is lost, no one remembers you anymore, everyone has forgotten you, you can do nothing more,’ let us remember that these are the words of our enemy, the enemy of the human race, and reject them as a slavish temptation of the devil! Therefore, today, the Apostle Paul calls us Christians to fight ‘not against flesh and blood, but against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places,’” the Primate noted.
The Head of the UGCC noted that the Ukrainian nation sometimes feels forgotten and abandoned today. “The devil, together with our enemy, whispers to us: ‘Everyone has forgotten about you. The world is tired of you. Your struggle has no chance of winning.” But God’s word, the power of God’s touch upon us today, gives us renewed strength, a positive outlook on the future, and instills in us the confidence that we can and must overcome the spirits of evil that want to fill our hearts and souls, our Ukrainian land, not by our human strength, but by God’s strength, our souls, our Ukrainian land,” said His Beatitude Sviatoslav and, encouraging us to go to Confession before Christmas, called to pray to the Creator and Savior so that He would look at His vineyard, His people of God on the Ukrainian land.
