Video-message of His Beatitude Sviatoslav. July 3. 130 th day of the war

Today is Sunday 3 July 2022 and the Ukrainian people have been holding back a full-scale Russian invasion for the 130th day, which is penetrating the cities and villages of Ukraine, holding back and repelling the enemy who set foot on our Ukrainian soil.

And today, on this Sunday morning, we thank the Lord God and the Armed Forces of Ukraine that we are alive, that we have the opportunity to stand before God on this day of the Lord, to thank the Lord God for the gift of life and to pray for peace in Ukraine and for victory, victory over evil.

Again, the last days and nights were difficult for the Ukrainian people. Maybe someone will say that the same news is repeated every day, but we, as Pope Francis urges us, do not have the right to get used to the fact that people die every day, even peaceful, innocent residents. Fighting is particularly intense on the Ukrainian Luhansk front, in the Ukrainian Donetsk region. Yesterday, the President of Ukraine warned the world and the citizens of Ukraine not to be somehow reassured by the fact that the front has relatively stabilized, because the brutality of those military clashes is only increasing every day. The enemy is attacking the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region, which today is the epicentre of the confrontation. The enemy is bombing all along the front-line towns and villages. Kharkiv and Mykolayiv, our Kherson region and our Zaporizhzhia shuddered again under Russian missiles and bombs. People are dying again, mothers are crying, Ukrainian blood is flowing.

We thank all those who pray and work to defeat evil and restrain the Russian aggressor. These days, we are contemplating certain rules of spiritual struggle with you day after day, because we see that this war in Ukraine also has a spiritual character. You and I have already thought about how the enemy attacks a person, how a person needs to be attentive in order not to open his ears to what the enemy suggests, how not to do anything so that the enemy's opinion becomes my personal opinion. We talked about how we need to reject all that he brings to our heart.
Today I would like to reflect on the third stage of this invisible battle, this struggle with evil thoughts, which is precisely the struggle itself. You see, all those stages of this spiritual confrontation, which the fathers and teachers of the Church describe to us, they still consider the unceasing advance of the enemy into our hearts. If we lose the first stage, the enemy then goes to the second stage. The third stage is typically the struggle itself, the struggle with those evil thoughts, which are already suggestions on how to sin, which the enemy brings into our heart. This spiritual struggle in the third stage is similar to street fighting when the enemy has already entered the city. This thought—which because of the conversation with the devil, because of our thinking about the attractive aspects of the proposal to sin—has already penetrated the heart and it is then quite difficult to drive it away. Without struggle and without effort, a person cannot get rid of it, but even then one cannot give in to evil. We must fight, we cannot accept this state of affairs. The key to victory in this struggle is the Word of God and prayer, because it is so important to ask for help in that struggle. If we think that we can single-handedly drive out the enemy who has already infiltrated our mind, our will, our heart, then we will surely lose. Some teachers of the Church, such as Theodore the Studite, urged us to reveal our thoughts, even those evil thoughts with which we struggle, before the spiritual father, in order to receive advice, because we know that when the enemy is brought to light, exposed and we also ask for help in the fight against it, only then can it be very successfully overcome. So, even when we are waging this invisible battle in our heart, fighting our own false thoughts and intentions, we pray and we ask for help. And the grace of the Holy Spirit will come so that the enemy does not capture our heart and our will.

Today, this Sunday, we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. It is the tireless help of the most pure Virgin Mary that was, is, and will be the guarantee of the strength, strength, and victory of Christians in the fight against evil. It was the Mother of God of Perpetual Help, to whom our people called for centuries, who was always the one who protected and saved when there was no human salvation. Today, on this first Sunday of July, Ukraine celebrates the Day of the Naval Forces of Ukraine. And it is no coincidence that on the feast of the Mother of God of Perpetual Help, our naval forces celebrate their holiday. Today we especially want to entrust to her help and to her protection our sailors, seamen, our foremen and sergeants, officers of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, who today defend Ukraine at the cost of their lives. Especially today we pray for the missing, for the prisoners, for the wounded, we pray for their relatives and friends, whose hearts are full of anxiety and sadness today. We pray for the eternal peace of those who died fighting our aggressor, our enemy who attacks us.

O God, bless the naval forces of Ukraine. Mother of God of Perpetual Help, save Ukraine from a stronger and more numerous enemy who is killing us today. Mother of God, help every Christian to defeat the evil one, as you did, crushing the head of the ancient serpent, who destroys the human heart. Mother of God, ask our Lord for a blessing for Ukraine and for her children.

May the blessing of the Lord be upon you through His grace and love of humankind, always, now and ever, and for ages of ages. Amen. 

Glory to Jesus Christ!