Metropolitan Onuphry: The Cross is the Sign of Victory over Sin

Pravmir.com team | 28 March 2022

The Cross is the sign of Victory that gives us the power to overcome sin said His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine in a sermon during the Liturgy in the Church of St. Agapit of the Caves of the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra on March 27, 2022, on the 3rd Sunday of Great Lent, reports the Information and Educational Department of the UOC.

“The cross that the Church carries before us today is the spiritual rod with the help of which, by the grace of God, we want to go through the second part of Holy and Great Lent in order to reach the Bright Feast of the Most Glorious Resurrection of Christ. The Cross is that sign of Victory that the Lord gave us and by which He gives us the strength to overcome many things in our lives: many things that are called sins. We carry the cross on our chest, we cross ourselves: our body and soul; we decorate churches and chapels with the cross, and in some famous places on earth we install crosses, decorating them with the Holy Cross,” said His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.

He noted that there are also spiritual crosses that a person needs to carry without grumbling.

“The holy fathers say that the tree from which our cross is made grows on the soil of the human heart. Each person has his own soil of the heart, on this soil a tree of different quality grows, of which the cross consists, on which a person must climb and on which a person must crucify himself. To crucify oneself on a cross means to accept with gratitude everything that God allows [to happen],” said His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.

The archpastor emphasized that today the people of Ukraine bear the common Cross.

“The Lord visited us all with the cross <..>, but we must not grumble, we must endure everything with patience. The Church has always prayed and will continue to pray so that people  would remember that we are all God’s children and that the Lord does not want us to raise a sword against one another,” said His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.

The metropolitan continued that the Lord wants us to solve our problems with the help of the word.

“The word reveals God to man, all the more it will open the way for a peaceful settlement of these problems that exist between people on earth. But we ourselves do not want to use this gift of God. God has given a person a mind with which a person can measure what he endures, where he is, what he carries, and make the right decision,” said His Beatitude.

The archpastor noted that the human soul is dearer than the whole world and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church prays and will continue to pray, “so that the Lord would put an end to what we are experiencing today, when people die, human blood is shed, children die, helpless people die, both old and young – who are innocent.”

“May the Lord help us, dear brothers and sisters, so that we would spend our useful and saving fast, Great Lent, which is preparatory for the Feast of Holy Pascha, and so that the Lord helps us to correctly endure the cross that the Lord has allowed [to happen to] us today, so that the Lord will deliver us from this cross, so that people can solve these problems with the help of the word and reason. May the Lord, through the prayers of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, through the prayers of all the saints of our land and all the saints, pacify the world and save our souls, so that, having passed all earthly trials, we may be participants in eternal salvation in Heaven in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to Whom be the glory, honor and worship now and ever. Amen!” concluded His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.

Translated by pravmir.com

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