“Whoever does not love God and Ukraine is not worthy of them” — His Beatitude Sviatoslav on All Saints’ Sunday
The love of God in us is always very genuine. Today, as strange as it may sound, God’s love for Ukrainians is manifested through love for their homeland. Those who do not love God and Ukraine are not worthy of them! His Beatitude Sviatoslav, the Father and Head of the UGCC, said this in his sermon on All Saints’ Sunday, June 11.
The Head of the Church noted that on All Saints’ Sunday, we are welcome to see the fruits of the Holy Spirit in human life. On this day, we commemorate the righteous of the Old Testament and all the ascetics of the Christian life of the New Testament. However, what is holiness, and how does it manifest itself in life? His Beatitude Sviatoslav recalled the words of Christ from today’s Gospel: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven”.
What does it mean to ‘acknowledge’? According to him, it does not refer to knowledge as an act of our mind but rather to acknowledging Christ before people: “To acknowledge God before men mean to confess to Him, it means to testify to what God has done to me… Today, for us Christians, to acknowledge Christ before men means to admit the love of God that He has for us, to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit lives in us, to confess to the love of God that we carry within us.”
His Beatitude Sviatoslav reflected on how to be a saint during the war. “This week, we have experienced a deep shock from the explosion of the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station. We have seen the sea of devilish anger spread over Ukraine once again. How can we preserve the power of Divine love amid a sea of evil? And here we have a really compelling call from today’s Word of God. Remaining the bearers of God’s love is the path to holiness,” His Beatitude Sviatoslav emphasized.
So now, he said, the UGCC churches are collecting everything that will help save human lives in the Kherson region: water, food, and equipping new places to take in people whose homes are flooded or destroyed.
“Can patriotism be a path to holiness?” he asked. “When Ukrainians speak of love for the Motherland, we are often accused of nationalism. When we defend the right to existence of our people, our state, we are accused of violating the plans, even the so-called peaceful plans, belonging to globalized humanity of our time. But the saints have always, in all times and nations, been a kind of provocation for everyone around them because they show a certain further perspective of human life.”
“For all that we have in this life: father, mother, fields, home, relatives, friends are only an icon of God’s love for you and me, a love that calls for reciprocity, a love that the Lord gives us, calling each of us to give ourselves to it. And only when we recognize God as the source of this love in front of modern humanity will we accomplish our task and give our Christian witness.”
The UGCC Department for Information
