“It seems to us that it will always be that we still have time – and to the Church for the service to go, and our parish endeavors to implement… Could not make it. The Ukrainian events of recent years illustrate this clearly” – says the journalist from Donbas, the press Secretary of the Gorlovsky and Slavic diocese Svetlana Okhrimenko.
Photo: Michael Pochuev/TASS
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There is a beautiful procession, all in white robes. Virgin, Which is destined to become our Saviour, is introduced to the temple in Jerusalem. Brought her godly parents. Her, to the surprise of all, meets the high priest enters into the Holy of holies. Here is the fulfillment of all the prophecies and aspirations of the people! It would seem, then – only Golden age. But it doesn’t take centuries, as the temple will be destroyed, and people will only have the wailing Wall.
Why did this happen?
Most people needed the Church – but didn’t need a God Who lives there.
A people, whose profession was to help others come to God, regarded the temple as their ancestral lands. Profited from it and all who had the opportunity. That there is only one scheme with the temple currency! Tax the Church can not pay what got coins, you only need sacred – changers for your service! Would you like a lamb for the sacrifice? Or at least a pair of doves?
When these people come to their God with the words that they should become the temple of God, few who were interested. And even if He expels from the temple the merchants with their merchandise, overturns the tables of money changers and encroaches on the ideological power of the scribes is guilty of death! God judged that these people do not need the temple, and took him away from them. But left the most important in a lifetime opportunity – to come to Him without any religious conventions and cultural layers.
Something similar happened in our country in the beginning of the last century. We twenty-five years of talking about the revival of the Church after the Soviet persecution – the way it is. Restored and built churches, new monasteries, developing Sunday schools, there is a lot of great social projects. But we should not forget that fed the stable life has the tendency to discourage. It seems to us that it will always be that we still have time – and to the Church for the service to go, and our parish endeavors to implement… Could not make it. The Ukrainian events of recent years illustrate this clearly.
In the dioceses of the Donbas war paused not one or two Church project – and already taken off and were in various stages of preparation. Something we have to do practically on the knee, with very limited resources, the range of ideas is refused at all. Someone’s temple destroyed shells. But only some five years ago, the most worn-out stamp on the region was “our flower Donbass”.
Orthodox monasteries and parishes of Ukraine today, trying to drive as defensive. When you have the threat of termination of registration, searches and armed men under the walls of the temple to prepare for Sunday school lesson, or conversation with the parish youth. You have to put aside your plans to meet the challenges of the time.
In times of persecution for Christians clearly opens the opportunity to be faithful to Christ and the Church, but the periods of stability given the opportunity, we just need her to see.
I don’t know how much of the righteous the city to resist a thousand, a hundred, or enough for ten. But I believe that if each of us will remember that its ability to build at any time to end, and to make every effort to do as much good, persecution is no longer needed.