Primate: If we trespass, we shouldn’t hide heads but repent before the God
His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry. Photo: UOC
To become a resident of the Kingdom of Heaven, a person must not only accept Baptism but also have continual repentance, said the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine during his sermon on Week 32 following Pentecost, after the Divine Liturgy at the Holy Intercession Cathedral of Boryspil. This was reported by the Information and Education Department of the UOC.
The Archpastor reminded the call of the Savior, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4: 17), with which He began his preaching after He was baptized. These words, His Beatitude emphasized, “sound today for each of us.”
“The Lord tells us: I have come to earth, I have been incarnated, I have received Baptism – repent, humans. Because through repentance, a person purifies himself of the sins he has been accumulating since he was christened,” His Beatitude Onuphry explained. “We are baptized, but it so happens that after this sacrament we may stumble, fall, and our sins create a barrier to our eternal salvation.”
According to His Beatitude, the Lord was baptized to show us an example of how a person enters the Kingdom of Heaven through the sacrament of Baptism.
At the same time, he emphasized, “in order to become a resident of the Kingdom of Heaven, to be a participant in eternal bliss, we all must repent.”
“One should not be ashamed if we have trespassed, done something wrong, though we must not justify ourselves but condemn before God,” said the Primate. “And when a person blames himself in self-condemnation, then this is a great sacrament through which a person receives the remission of his sins and becomes able again to receive eternal life and bliss.”
At the end of the sermon, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry called on everyone to live their lives in repentance, so that “here on earth, we become the receptacle of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which the Lord brought to earth by His Divine Incarnation, while in Heaven – the partakers of eternal bliss and life in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We will remind, earlier the Primate told how to overcome difficulties in the modern world.
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