His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is confident that the days of self-isolation should be devoted to spiritual development and to the renewal of Russia and the whole world.
“The time we are currently experiencing is the best for making a certain spiritual breakthrough in our lives,” he said in his sermon on the feast day of the Holy Ascension after the liturgy at St. Alexander Nevsky Church near Peredelkino, in the Moscow region.
The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church is confident that this “quarantine that has fallen upon us” has happened for a reason. Thus, the Lord gives us time to comprehend our lives.
He reminded those present of the holy ascetics who left the world so that they had such time for the most important thing. Now we are experiencing a unique time when not one, not two, not ten, not a thousand, but the whole world is given the opportunity to concentrate, think about their sins, turn to God, and repent. “Who knows if the Lord gives us such an opportunity ever again,” the Patriarch noted.
“As everything else, this time of solitude will pass as well. We will again plunge into the bustle of daily obligations, worries, and labor. Let us use this time that the Lord has given us now for spiritual concentration, repentance, and prayer,” he pointed out.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill wished the faithful to get out of this time of solitude as “spiritually refreshed, renewed, and strong. Then this time will be for our physical and spiritual healing, for changing the life of not only a single person, but hopefully our Fatherland and the whole human kind, if everything goes right, according to the will of God,” concluded the Patriarch.
