Chairman of the Synodal Department of the UOC for youth Affairs, the rector of the Kyiv Holy Trinity ioninsky monastery, Archbishop Jonah of Obukhov
Example of how to relate to the attacks on the Church is his Beatitude, Metropolitan Onufry, Archbishop considers Obukhov ion.
Chairman of the Synodal Department of the UOC for youth Affairs, the rector of the Kyiv Holy Trinity ioninsky monastery, Archbishop Jonah of Obukhov said that had never seen a Primate in a state of despondency, despair or fear, according to Information-enlightenment Department of the UOC.
“The Church never knew peaceful times. Always raged around the world, damaged by sin, and the devil throughout the history of struggles with the Church – said the Bishop. Even in more prosperous times, in the Byzantine Empire, for example, or in the period of the Orthodox Empire in Russia, the enemy found ways to undermine the Foundation of the Church. Was the emperors-iconoclasts, the rulers, who deposed patriarchs, sought to modernize the Church, to make her life alien elements. In the Russian Empire, formally Orthodox, we know what implanted the reforms of Peter the great, Catherine the Second. Only in the last 100 years that had to pass…”.
According to him, terrified of what is happening, is not: “the Church is not worried, but during the most cruel persecution has given hundreds of thousands of martyrs and Confessors who had been exiled, driven from their homes, had been physically destroyed. And now it is not necessary to panic, seeing the attempts of external forces to influence the Church.”
The Bishop said: the Primate “firmly trust in the Lord, and a heart and mind knows Christ”: “Imagine, his Beatitude began to go to Church under Stalin! He is the son of a priest and even as a child was not some formal parishioner, but survived and Khrushchev promised to show “the last priest” (his Beatitude at this time as I have done in theological schools), and Brezhnev, and other rulers… have gone Through that state, which positioned itself atheistic. And everything that is happening, it is absolutely quiet, despite the fact that it receives negative from the whole Ukraine. Visiting priests and diocesan bishops to share with him is not always some good news. But despite all he is in complete trust that God is with us, and so the Church never be desecrated”.
“We remember the mood of the first Christians, for whom the desirable outcome was martyrdom. They mourned if had not had the opportunity to die for Christ, because he saw this as a sign of his unworthiness. About it evidenced by the many written sources of that period,” he says.
According to him, the Church is “alive and growing stronger in persecution, Christians best features – endurance, sacrifice, faithfulness, manifested in difficult times. This is potirna organization, evidenced by the fact that of all the institutions component of the Russian Empire, the Soviet regime survived only the Church. Despite the fact that its destruction was abandoned a powerful administrative apparatus of the state. We remember how the people suffered for the Orthodox faith at the time, and because government agencies – the education system, healthcare, economy, police, army, and courts were all swept away and rebuilt, and the Church sweep failed, and this is a clear testimony that Christ dwells within her. The task of the Church is not to seek prosperity, and to lead a person to Christ. To prevent this, nothing can, no persecution. The main thing – that we cannot retreat to Christ.”
As reported by the SPM, previously managing Director of the UOC Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary said today, every believer, whether Bishop, cleric, layman, should understand clearly what is the main task of the Church, it is the essence of Ministry, what are its main tenets.