Video-message of the Head of the UGCC on the 145th Week of Full-Scale War, November 24, 2024

November 24, 2024, 20:40 2

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!

The 145^th week of the devastating war is passing. This week we remembered the thousandth day since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of peaceful Ukraine by Russian criminals. We talk about these days, these weeks, however, we realize that the war has been going on for more than 10 years. Some of our men have been imprisoned in Russian captivity for almost 10 years.

This week, according to various experts, a new level of escalation has been reached in this horrific war. This week, on the Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God, Russia launched a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile at the city of Dnipro. The enemy is not just destroying our cities and villages, it is blackmailing the whole world with its allegedly newest weapon. The only way the enemy can defend its arguments is by spreading fear.

Today Ukraine declares to everyone: Do not be afraid! I was also there on that day when those missiles struck Dnipro. And I say to you: “Do not be afraid!”

This week Ukraine celebrated two holidays. One of them is a national holiday, and the other is the International Day of Remembrance. On November 21, we celebrated the Day of Dignity and Freedom. Needless to say, we remembered the heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, the Orange Revolution heroes, and the students of the Revolution on Granite. These were all stages of Ukraine’s liberation from the Moscow yoke and the ideology of communist colonization. Today, dignity and freedom are the values without which modern Ukrainian youth cannot fathom their lives. “These are eternal, God-given values, without which human life is not worth living,” is what Ukrainian youth say today.

This Saturday we also commemorated the victims of the Holodomor genocide of 1932–1933.

On these two holidays combined, we are reminded that surrendering dignity and freedom in exchange for a well-fed life, can lead to tragedy as in the Holodomor. By depriving Ukrainians of their freedom and secure statehood, the Stalinist regime starved millions of our brothers and sisters to death, yielding one of the best harvests on Ukraine’s black soil. On this day of remembrance of the innocent victims, I urge us all to remember the global Ukrainian slogan: “We remember, the world recognizes”. We remember so that genocidal ideologies, like those attacking us today will never spread again. And the world must recognize this tragedy in order to prevent it from spreading to your countries. To prevent this murderous breath of red Moscow from ever taking lives anywhere else.

Today, in the backdrop of these very dramatic events of this week, we speak to the whole world: Ukraine stands! Ukraine fights! Ukraine prays!

This week a historic event took place in the life of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. A new hierarch, a new ruling bishop, was installed on the throne of the exarchs of the Donetsk Exarchate in near-frontline Zaporizhzhia. He is our young bishop Maksym Ryabukha. The Donetsk Exarchate is at the very heart of the war, a terrain, through which a fiery tornado of destruction, murder and depopulation is raging. Today this Exarchate is divided by the front line. But the faithful of our Church remained steadfast on both sides of this perilous, invisible border.

We rejoice in the new bishop for this wounded people of God, because it is on the territory of this Exarchate that millions of Ukrainians have fled their cities and villages and today need the Church to comfort them, to bring them a renewed meaning to their lives. They need the Church to help them, these exiled people— deprived of freedom and dignity by the aggressor—to realize that they are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

When Bishop Maksym was consecrated to the episcopal chair, we were deeply aware that his cathedral remains under occupation. We look forward to the day when this young bishop can be introduced to his rightful cathedral, his home in Donetsk—a day we firmly believe will come.

When I entrusted the bishop with the care of this people of God, I especially urged him to support our clergy of this exarchate. Today, we bear witness to the priests who minister there, who have the courage to stay in those towns and villages under relentless shelling together with their people as modern-day confessors of the faith. Some of those fathers know harsh reality of occupation. Our redemptorists, Father Ivan and Father Bohdan, come from the clergy of this exarchate, since the city of Berdiansk belongs to this territory. And this is the clergy who are proclaiming the Word of God there today. They are the ones who live by the power of the Resurrection where the enemy sows the kingdom of death.

This event lifted everyone’s spirits. We saw the faces of once-sorrowful people light up with hope. Even Zaporizhzhia, where the installation took place, seemed to breathe a renewed sense of life.

We pray: God, bless Ukraine! Bless our men and women at the front! God, You alone know how to end the war, for people know how to start wars, but they do not know how to finish them, and true peace comes only from You, our God! May You therefore bless our long-suffering Ukrainian land with Your just heavenly peace.

The blessing of the Lord be upon you, through His grace and love for mankind, always, now and forever, and for the ages of ages. Amen.