UGCC Head on the Feast Day of St. Mykolay: "Only love of God and the Motherland can make a person a hero."

Saturday, 20 December 2014, 17:19

The Archierarch asked people to contemplate about the figure of the Saint whose Feast Day we commemorate today. After all, states the preacher, Mykolay is known in Christ's Church today because he was the full and valid personification of God's love. He was a Christian, a teacher of the Church, a father of his children, because with all of his soul he loved God and others.

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"Therefore, also for us today," says the Church head,"he became the teacher of love. Perhaps, it is because of this that children today love St. Mykolay , because on his day they feel special attention and love towards them. Saint Father Mykolay was a visible and acting face of our loving God. Through his life, he preached that God who is Love, a love which saves, heals, which is eternal and grants eternal life to those who carry the Love in their heart. It is God's love which is the reason that today we celebratethe memory of a great teacher, one whom we should love."

His Beatitude Sviatoslav asks us to look closer at the saint. His name is Mykolay. In Greek, it is pronounced exactly as it sounds "Nikolaos" which translated into Ukrainian is "Victory of the People".

How often in this year have we thought about victory... And in his person, today St. Mykolay opens for us the road to this victory," believes the archierarchwe can see and understand the path to our all-national victory, "which only love of God and one's Motherland can make a person into a hero." "Not hatred towards the enemy, not the desire to call it quits with someone, but love. Love to one's family, to one's children, becomes that strength thanks to which a person is capable of giving up one's own life for one's friends, one's people, one's Church, one's Christian faith," emphasized the Church Head.

There is one more great truth, beliieves His Beatitude, which St. Mykolay wants to teach us. "We willbe able to be one as a nation, as a country, only when we express solidarity with those who suffer, hunger, experience freezing temperatures. We can really overcome through God's love only when we will not wait for the state to love us and to do something for us. And we will be the first ones to take the first step towards the one who in danger, at risk, in need, and in depravity."

"And when parents" says he, "on the Feast of St. Mykolay, want to give their children the nicest gift , then give them that which does not die, which is eternal -- love of God and love of one's neighbor."

"May St. Mykola give victory to our people, may he protect us in all dangers. May he protect all those today in the front lines.

UGCC Department of Information