"Let's learn to extract good memory from the past, which builds and gives hope" - Head UGCC in Poland

 " We look into the face of God in mercy that shines here from the icon of the Virgin, like the disciples who stared at His face on Mount Tabor, which shone more the sun. Twenty years ago, this icon was crowned crowns, which blessed the Holy Father John Paul II. Now Pope Francis praised her in the  Year of the God's mercy for the whole world "- said His Beatitide Sviatoslav during a sermon.

 

He remembered a time when we received the news that the Pope wants that this icon to open the Jubilee Year of God's Mercy in the Universal Church. "We did not realize of all that is happening, as disciples of Christ on Mount Tabor. Because from the highest chair of the Christian world this icon said the pain of the Ukrainian people. We see the diminishing light and resurrection, through which Christ reveals the Body of the Church in the modern world from this icon "-  he said.

 

Head UGCC also stressed that the Church in their native lands and settlements praying for mercy for the Ukrainian people and the world: "May Mary gather together all our prayers and  will help us, Ukrainian and Poles, to build the future together. We are two fraternal nations  and sometimes look into the past and often take out from it negative memory. But let's learn to extract from the past a good memory, which builds and gives hope. Be able to forgive and ask for forgiveness, God will make us able to accept his mercy! "

 

Returning to the events of the Transfiguration of Christ Church Primate said that the disciples who were present on Mount Tabor may not fully understand what they were witnessing, but feel very comfortable, because experienced foretaste of paradise heavenly happiness. In an instant they saw the Transfiguration collected into one human history: its past, present and future.

 

"They saw Moses and Elijah, who summarized the past, pointing to Jesus as the eternal present. But in light of the Transfiguration of Christ showed them the future. This event was a foretaste of the resurrection, for shining god, which they saw on Mount Tabor in its entirety soon arise in glorified body of Christ after His suffering and death in the three-day resurrection, "- he explained further. To introduce disciples  to this reality of Christ, God the Father had said to them, "This is - my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him." And the light that they have seen and also change the human body and the joy that filled their hearts was God's mercy.

 

With His Beatitude Sviatoslav concelebrated Bishops of the Church: Eugene (Popovich), Metropolitan of Przemysl-Warsaw, Igor (Voznyak), Metropolitan of Lviv, Volodymyr (Viytyshyn), Metropolitan Ivano-Frankivsk, John Martynyak, Archbishop-emyryt, Bohdan (Dziurakh), Secretary of the Synod of Bishops Church, Volodymyr (Juszczak), Bishop Wroclaw and Gdansk, Peter (Kryk), Apostolic Exarch in Germany and Scandinavia, Mikhail (Koltun), Bishop of Sokal-Zhovkva, Iryney Bilyk, Canonic of the papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Gregory (Komar),  Auxiliary Bishop Sambir-Drohobych diocese, and about seventy priests and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.