Dear fathers, brothers and sisters, laypeople, faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, representatives of the world community. Our churches today are being seized by people who do not believe. They do not believe in God, they do not understand the nature of the Church, and in the Church they see only what is earthly — the setting: real estate, places of worship, plots of land, weak and strange people who for some reason do not seek what is earthly but seek what is heavenly. The seizers do not understand that in the Church there is the chief thing — the Pearl, the Diamond — Christ. And they, falling barbarously upon our churches, parishes and monasteries, gouge out and throw away this Diamond, neither understanding nor knowing about Him, taking only the setting, putting it into their own pocket and thinking to grow rich by it. The persecutors do not understand that behind us, weak people, stands a strong God, an almighty God. A God Who begins to act in full measure only when we, the people of the Church, are exhausted in our human strength, when we have already spent all our resources and possibilities of defending our churches, of defending our faith, when we are worn down under the weight of the persecutors' cross — it is then that our Lord and His saints come and begin to act in power.
The persecutors of the Church enter into enmity not with us but precisely with Him. And the point is not even that every persecutor or seizer will receive requital according to his deeds while still in this life. Know that everyone who took part in this particular lawless raider seizure of the Meeting of the Lord church (Cherkasy diocese), everyone who gave the order, or shouted into the microphone, or put his signature to it, or broke the locks — every one of them has by his own actions cut himself off from the Holy Orthodox Church. But the point is not even in this. The point is that God nevertheless remains with His suffering children. And He departs from the church that the persecutor seizes. God departs and leaves such a church empty, devoid of grace, cold. As it is cold in an abandoned house in a thirty-degree frost, with the windows broken, so it is in a church from which God and His grace have departed. And this can be felt by everyone whose heart is not yet finally broken by hatred.
And God goes together with the priests faithful to Him and with the community faithful to Him wherever they go: they go into flats, into private houses, into cellars. And He begins to act there with still greater power of His grace. He begins to act where the holy antimension is unfolded once more and a genuine canonical Divine Liturgy is celebrated. And then a private house, a flat, a hangar or an attic is transformed into a magnificent, spacious and bright cathedral, in which the heart and the soul are lifted up, in which the Christian heart so exults and rejoices. In this magnificent cathedral, in which a persecuted priest and his community pray, God is especially near. He hears every prayer. He fulfils every petition...
Brothers and sisters, many of you are already standing today on the thresholds of these magnificent cathedrals: in flats and hangars, in warehouses, and sometimes in attics... Remember this time. It is altogether particular and extraordinary. God will be especially near to every praying and grieving heart. Not every generation of Christians is granted this nearness of God. Yes, this time will end and we shall return again to our churches, after the spiritual occupiers have left them. This time will certainly end and a new one will begin: also joyful, also full of grace. But the prayer and the nearness of God that we shall experience now, during the persecution, will be beyond all comparison. We shall remember it afterwards for the rest of our lives. We shall live by that memory.
Do not lose heart, brothers and sisters, we stand on the threshold of a great joy!
