Head of the UOC Metropolitan Onufry congratulated Ukraine on Easter

Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Blessed Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Onufry congratulated Ukraine on Easter and called on fellow citizens to be the keepers of the world, not its destroyers.

Christ is Risen!

With these eternally living words, I heartily congratulate all of you, God-loving archpastors and pastors, pious monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters, on our greatest Christian Feast of the Resurrection of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
This year the Lord visited us with a special trial and sorrow. The forces of evil have gathered over us. But we do not complain and do not lose heart, because by His Resurrection Christ the Savior defeated evil.

The glorious Resurrection of Christ is the Feast of the triumph of the victory of good over evil, truth over lies, light over darkness. The Resurrection of Christ is the eternal Pascha, in which Christ, our Savior and Lord, transferred us from death to life, from hell to Paradise.
God, our Almighty Creator and Creator, created man from the earth, breathed into his face the breath of life and adorned him with His Divine image. Unfortunately, man has deprived himself of this high honor when he turned away from Divine Love. Man voluntarily fell victim to death. The death that the Lord allowed for fallen man was not the revenge of God, it was a manifestation of a new Divine Love for fallen man: by death, the Lord stopped human sin and did not allow evil to become immortal. When the Lord destroyed human sin on the Cross, then the Lord took power away from death. After the Resurrection of Christ, death from eternally reigning turned into a short-term sleep, the quality of which depends on the moral quality of our earthly life.

By His incarnation, voluntary suffering and death on the Cross, the Son of God, our Savior, returned to us the lost Paradise, and by His Glorious Resurrection, the Savior made Paradise accessible to every person. Heavenly doors are now opened not from within, but from the outside, and each person has received a key with which he can and must open Paradise. The key that opens the gates of holy Paradise is repentance. By repentance, the prudent thief opened the Paradise door for himself and heard the joyful words of Christ the Savior: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

How blessed were those people who were vouchsafed the great honor of seeing God incarnate, hearing His holy words, and seeing His wondrous miracles. Even more blessed were the holy Myrrh-bearing Women when they saw an Angel sitting on a stone at the empty Tomb of the Savior and who said to them: “Do not be afraid, because I know that you are looking for Jesus the Crucified. He is not here – He is risen!” (Matthew 28:5-6). But even more blessed were those who did not see the Savior with bodily eyes, but believed in Him as the Son of God, as the Savior of the world.
The news of the Resurrection of Christ rejoiced not only the holy Myrrh-Bearing Women and Apostles, it became a joy for the whole world. Human hearts, having accepted the truth of Christ's Resurrection by faith, were filled with new grace-filled power, which inspired people with a bright hope of returning to Paradise and strengthened people in the struggle against the evil that existed in the world.

Many so sincerely believed in the Risen Christ that they gave themselves completely to the service of God. They cleansed themselves from sin by repentance and united with their Creator; they humbled themselves under the will of a strong God and became strong, they became spiritual heroes. The Holy Church calls such people earthly angels.

And today there are earthly Angels in the world, strong spiritual warriors, who by faith in the Risen Christ overcome evil and for whose sake the Lord has mercy on all of us sinners. Such holy ascetics are often near us, but we are not interested in them, therefore we do not see them. We believe that the world lives for the sake of our economic, political, scientific and other achievements, but in fact the world lives for the sake of those righteous who placed in their hearts the Risen Christ, the Strong and Mighty God, Who made them strong and powerful. Such people sacrificially love the whole world, they pray for us, and for their sake the Lord sends us, the unworthy, His mercy and generosity.

Today we humbly thank our Holy Creator and Creator for the fact that the word about Christ the Crucifixion of that and the Risen One has reached our land. This saving gospel was brought to our land by the holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called. The Holy Apostle Andrew taught us to believe in the Resurrected Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, taught us to live according to the holy Divine testaments and such a life to testify to our love for God, who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him did not perish, but had eternal life” (John 3:16).

May each of us, dear brothers and sisters, reasonably force ourselves to build our lives on the sacred precepts of the Risen Christ, our Savior and God. Whoever lives according to the precepts of God protects not only himself, but also the world around him from death. Therefore, we try to live in such a way that we are the keepers of the world, and not its destroyers.

Once again I congratulate all of you, dear brothers and sisters, on the Feast of the Most Glorious Resurrection of Christ, on the great triumph of the victory of life over death. I wish you all health, peace, happiness and salvation. May the light of life that shone from the Life-Giving Sepulcher illuminate our minds and give us the strength to love God and love each other, so that today, proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ, we bow humbly to the holy Lord Jesus and together sing the victorious song of Holy Pascha: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampled down death by death, and bestowed life on those in the tomb” (Troparion of Pascha). Amen.

Indeed, Christ is Risen!

Humble
Onufry
Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine
Easter of Christ
November 2022, XNUMX
Kiev