In just a week we will celebrate Easter and spiritual sadness will be replaced by joy. But our awareness that the path of salvation is that of the cross must remain unchanged – that the price of our liberation is the price of the life of the Son of God Himself, and that all this imposes a special responsibility on each of us.
This is stated in the sermon delivered by His Beatitude Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine on the day of the Feast of the Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem.
Dear brothers and sisters! Glory to Jesus Christ!
I congratulate you all on the feast of the Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday. Today we remember the Gospel event when, on the eve of His suffering and death on the cross, the Savior solemnly entered the Holy City, fulfilling ancient prophecies.
As the Messiah promised by God, Jesus of Nazareth is the true King, but His kingdom, according to the Savior’s own testimony, is not of this world. That is why the solemn procession of the entrance is carried out by Him on a donkey – an animal that is not identified with the greatness of a royalty. However, precisely such an entrance, marked by humility, as a special sign of the Messiah, was announced in the prophecy. And this is another testimony for everyone that we too have to accept the Lord Jesus as the true Christ, the promised Savior, the King of the Most High.
Actually, as a testimony of our faith and a personal recognition of Christ by each of us, we use the willow branch on this day. When the people met and accompanied the Savior, they used palm branches and tree branches as a sign of celebration, holding them in their hands and paving the way with them. Therefore, on the occasion of the holiday, we bless the wreath in the temples and wear it, symbolically overcoming space and time and joining the people who rejoiced upon meeting the Messiah.
Although this is only a symbol and a sign, at the same time it is also a certain important evidence of our faith that, despite all external circumstances, we, as the Church of Christ, as a community of His disciples and followers, form a single entity. The time machine exists only in fiction stories, but in reality we spiritually overcome all distances in order to now stand at the gates of Jerusalem and also glorify Christ as our Savior and King, as the living Truth that came into the world.
Awareness of this should not only inspire us, but also remind us of our own responsibility. For we know that the present celebration and joy took place on the eve of Christ’s sufferings and His crucifixion, death and burial. And with memories of the resurrection of the four-day-old Lazarus and the Entry into Jerusalem, we begin Holy Week again this year – a time of commemoration of the events of the last days of Christ’s earthly life.
Divine services and memories of Holy Week remind us of what a great price we were redeemed from the slavery of sin and death – the price of voluntary suffering and death on the cross of the Son of God. On Maundy Thursday, we remember the institution of the main sacrament of the Church – the Eucharist, the sacrament of communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, which unites us with the Savior. Every time we perform this bloodless Sacrifice, when the bread and wine offered at the liturgy become the true Body and Blood of Christ and are presented to us for consumption for consecration – we spiritually return to Jerusalem and to all those great events that took place there in those days for our sake and our salvation.
Together with the apostles, we once again enter Zion’s Upper Room for the Easter dinner, together with them we witness the spiritual struggle of Christ during prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we relive the unjust judgment and the path to Calvary, crucifixion, and death. Together with the Immaculate Virgin and myrrh-bearing women, we mourn the dead Christ, seeing His body laid in the tomb. And only after going through these memories of Holy Week, spiritually witnessing these events, we can truly appreciate and realize the meaning of the Resurrection of Christ.
In just a week we will celebrate Easter and spiritual sadness will be replaced by joy. But our awareness that the path of salvation is that of the cross must remain unchanged – that the price of our liberation is the price of the life of the Son of God Himself, and that all this imposes a special responsibility on each of us. So that we don’t just follow folk traditions, honoring holidays. And that we come to the temple not just for the consecration of the willow tree or the paskas, but for the consecration of ourselves, for the sake of purification in repentance and renewal in the Sacrament of Communion. So that we come not several times a year for the sake of great holidays or because of a special need, but so that we really live as a community of the faithful and the body of Christ, as the Church is alive throughout time.
Dear brothers and sisters!
Today, we are not only experiencing a special time of spiritual recollections of Gospel events, but we are also in a time of real historical events. A sign of these events is the renewal of our great shrine, this Pechersk Lavra, the abode of Saints Anthony and Theodosius, the home of the Most Holy Theotokos.
Today, we again offer prayers at this holy site in our native language and ask for the blessing of the Pechersk fathers, so that it will be like this until the end of time – that this monastery will finally be freed from the yoke of the false ideology of the “Russian world”, and the brothers of the Lavra will forever become free from serving the self-proclaimed “third rome”.
It is with great joy that we welcome Father Avraamiy, who is entrusted with the duties of leading the brothers of the Lavra. Just as the Old Testament Abraham began his journey, following God’s call to the promised land with faith, Father Avraamiy became the beginning of the restoration of the Ukrainian Lavra. From the fullness of the Local Church, we prayerfully wish the vicar and brothers of our Lavra success in this difficult work. And we also call on everyone who is still hesitating to stand on the path of truth, to reject the delusion of the “Russian world”, to create together with us the future of the single Local Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
This path is not easy, it is thorny, but it is true. Christ showed us an example of this, testifying that spiritual victory over evil cannot be achieved without sacrifice and struggle, without suffering.
But pointing us to this narrow and thorny path to salvation, the Lord encourages us with the testimony of His constant help to those who follow it. The Lord does not leave us alone, but strengthens and directs us, giving us strength to overcome difficulties. He inspires us to fight because of the awareness of the inevitability of the victory of truth.
Because after crucifixion comes resurrection, after death come renewal and eternal life. The weeping over the grave will be replaced by joy at the news of the Risen Lord. I believe that with God’s help, the current hardships that the Ukrainian people are unjustly suffering from foreigners, from Russian aggressors who torment both our state and our Ukrainian Church – these sufferings and this struggle will end in victory and renewal. May the Lord help us in this work and bless it with success!
Happy holiday, dear brothers and sisters! Glory to Jesus Christ!
Amen.
