Alexandria, Kirovograd Province, Ukraine, August 22, 2024
Met. Bogolep of Alexandria. Photo: raskolam.net
“No one can defeat Christ, no one can outlaw Christ, no one can take the Risen Christ away from us,” a hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church said in a message of encouragement and consolation yesterday, in the aftermath of the Ukrainian Parliament’s adoption of Bill 8371, aimed at banning the Orthodox Church.
Having been approved in both its first and second readings, the bill now awaits the promised signature of President Vladimir Zelensky in order to pass into law. Nine months later, courts will be able to begin banning parishes and monasteries that remain faithful to Christ in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
“I know that today’s event causes great concern among our believers and our priests. And I’d like to stress right away that no catastrophe is happening. More precisely, it is happening, but it’s been ongoing for more than a decade, obviously, and will continue for a long time. This catastrophe is the change in mankind,” His Eminence Metropolitan Bogolep of Alexandria said in a video address, reports the Union of Orthodox Journalists.
The UOC lived before the bill, and it will continue to live after its adoption, the hierarch emphasized.
Only the Lord fully understands what is happening and why, Met. Bogolep said, thus faithful Christians should try as much as possible to approach the situation with a spiritual mindset. For Orthodox Christians, this is also a period of losing false illusions, he said, in particular, regarding Church-state relations, with individuals who were baptized in the Church now openly persecuting it.
The Metropolitan emphasized that the UOC will defends its rights at all levels, but “we mustn’t forget about the narrow, thorny, but saving path leading to eternal life.”
“We must be Christians. We must approach all such, even seemingly terrible challenges that today’s world offers us, very calmly, very balanced. We must understand that the goal of our life is not to save this perishing world, but to save ourselves from this world so as not to perish with it,” the metropolitan noted.
Those who think that the Parliament’s decision is a win for them have simply forgotten that “no one can defeat Christ, no one can ban Christ, no one can take the Risen Christ away from us.”
It is through such trials that we become better Christians, Met. Bogolep said, encouraging his flock to bear their crosses:
I ask you, my dear ones, do not despair, do not be discouraged. We pray, we work, we save ourselves. We repair churches, build churches, we create new projects. Our life continues. In no case should you become isolated, and don’t think that you can somehow avoid what the Lord has determined for all of us to go through. Let us be obedient to His will, let us be devoted to His will, let us joyfully and obediently carry His blessings, heavy and difficult though they may be.
Meanwhile, Epiphany Dumenko, the head of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” which was created by Ukraine and the Patriarchate of Constantinople specifically to displace the canonical Church, praised the move to ban the Church as a “historic decision.”
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