“Christ – the first Heavenly Hundred victim,” His Beatitude Sviatoslav

Wednesday, 16 April 2014, 21:49

It was just in the recent past that our Church and our people were tortured and crucified, false witnesses testified about us, we were shot at and thrown into prisons.

See also:

Appeal of His Beatitude Sviatoslav to the Sons and Daughters of the Ukrainian People in Ukraine and Abroad, and to all People of Good Will
His Beatitude Sviatoslav congratulated Sisters of the Incarnate Word Order with on holding Cathedral Chapter
A patriarchate for the UGCC is not only a title. Above all, it’s a way of existing, — His Beatitude Sviatoslav

“However, we survived all of that, and thanks to God, we were reborn to a new life of a community of Christ’s students,” states UGCC Head, His Beatitude Sviatoslav in his Easter Epistle.

According to UGCC Prelate, today again they are threatening us with weapons and frightening us with a division of the country and a takeover of churches. Yet, today, Christ is also with us!

“Our pains He perceives as if He personally were wounded. It was He who was defiled by the attack on youth at the Maidan. It was He who was made indigent when the goods of the people were ransacked by the corrupt regime. It was He who was imprisoned and wrongly sentenced, forced to stand naked on the snow and tortured during kidnappings. It is He – the first victim of the Heavenly Hundred,” emphasized His Beatitude Sviatoslav.

It is the conviction of UGCC Head that the strength of weapons dissipates before the glory of the Resurrected One. We all feel this – in our Motherland as well as in our settlements. “The Power of Christ’s Resurrection today is our hope in the church, social, and personal life.

We have no more certain nor stronger assistance – neither in international diplomacy, nor in the force of the armed efforts nor in personal agreements, willing for thirty pieces of silver, to put a price for the Priceless One. In His Resurrection, Christ through the strength of the Holy Spirit, makes one nation from those who once opposed each other,” states the Epistle.

The author notes that the sign of our “rising” with the Resurrected Savior, who raises us from the “grave” of sin, should be our, renewed by God’s Love, attitude towards all people – without exception. “Let us love and embrace everyone next to us, in our village, town, city, region, and on all of Earth. Let us learn to respect and love the one who is different from us: thinks differently, follows other traditions or speaks a different language – this is that, which bears testimony to the glory of the Resurrection! – stressed His Beatitude Sviatoslav.

UGCC Department of Information