Metropolitan Onuphry: Theotokos’ prayers are the strongest

His Beatitude Onuphry. Photo: UOC Press Service

On August 28, 2025, the Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, Metropolitan Onuphry celebrated the divine service in the Church of St. Agapitus in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, where he delivered a sermon on the spiritual meaning of the feast.

The central theme of the sermon was the affirmation that the prayers of the Mother of God are the strongest prayers that exist in the spiritual world. Metropolitan Onuphry particularly emphasized that “the Mother of God is the mother of all people,” and that “today she prays for each of us and prays for the entire Christian race and all humanity.”

The Metropolitan urged the faithful to turn more often to the Theotokos in prayer, since her intercession before God possesses unique power.

In his homily, His Beatitude recounted remarkable historical testimonies about the earthly life of the Mother of God. Especially striking was the letter of the Holy Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite to the Apostle Paul, in which he described his encounter with the Theotokos: “When I heard her words and beheld her image, my soul was filled with such bliss as cannot be compared with any earthly happiness.”

The Primate spoke to the faithful about the events that preceded the Dormition, when the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Theotokos her approaching repose, giving her a heavenly palm branch. “The Mother of God rejoiced, because she had prayed and asked that God take her to Himself. But this prayer continued for more than 20 years,” Metropolitan Onuphry related.

An interesting part of the sermon was his account of the rite of the panagia – the ancient monastic tradition of leaving a place at the refectory table for Christ and lifting up bread with the words: “Most Holy Theotokos, help us.” This tradition, the Primate explained, goes back to the Apostles themselves, who first pronounced these words when they beheld the Theotokos on a cloud after her Dormition.

Metropolitan Onuphry also explained the theological meaning of the Dormition of the Theotokos: “In the Holy Scriptures it is written that where the Lord is, there also will be the ark of His holiness – that is, the Mother of God. The Lord took to Himself the ark of His holiness.”

Concluding his sermon, the head of the UOC called on the faithful to remember that the Theotokos “prays for all of us and asks that each person, each soul, may know God, that every soul may live according to God’s law – for God created us precisely that we might live according to His law, which makes us capable of living eternally in blessedness.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that His Beatitude Onuphry presided at the Divine Liturgy in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on the Feast of the Dormition.

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