His Beatitude: The Cross is our sign of Victory over sin

On March 27, 2022, in his sermon on the Holy Week of Great Lent, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry said that the Cross is a sign of Victory over sin, news.church.ua reports.

The Primate of the UOC explained that on the third Sunday of Great Lent, the Holy Church takes out the Holy Life-Giving Cross to be revered by everyone as a sign of the victory of holiness over sin, for our strengthening in the future.

“The cross the Church is taking out today is the spiritual rod with which, by God’s grace, 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,” His Beatitude noted.

According to him, “The Cross is a sign of Victory, which the Lord gave us and thanks to which we can overcome many things in our lives, which is called vice and sin. We wear the cross on our chest, we make signs of the cross, we decorate churches and chapels with the cross, and we install and decorate holy crosses in some famous places on earth.

His Beatitude Onuphry added there are spiritual crosses that a person needs to bear 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, from 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 provides for us,” His Beatitude added.

The Primate of the UOC also said that during fasting, a person forwards his forces in the right direction.

“Holy fasting is a time when a person, with special diligence and effort, purifies himself of the filth of the flesh and spirit, when a person frees himself from sin,” the Primate of the UOC emphasized.

His Beatitude recalled that “sin is a spiritual disease that strikes human nature, making it incapable of entering into eternal life,” and “the Lord gave us fasting and prayer to fight against sins.”

“By fasting, a person balances his bodily strengths and abilities, forwarding them in the right direction, and by prayer, a person puts his soul in order. The Holy Fathers call fasting and prayer two wings with which a person rises above the earthly, temporal and perishable and elevates himself to God, the Eternal and Immortal,” summed up the Primate of the UOC.

As the UOJ reported earlier, on the Week of the Adoration of the Cross, His Beatitude officiated the Divine Liturgy at the Kyiv Lavra.

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