His Beatitude: Pride takes away our ability to receive God’s gifts

Metropolitan Onuphry. Photo: UOC's press service

His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, in a homily for the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord and on Meatfare Sunday, reminded the faithful that pride makes a person incapable of accepting salvation. This was reported by the UOC’s Information and Educational Department.

According to the Primate, the Lord exalts the humble and resists the proud. Humility, the hierarch explained, opens the heart to receive divine grace, while pride deprives a person of spiritual strength.

A proud person attributes to himself what belongs to God and thus distances himself from the Source of life. The humble person, by contrast, bows his will before the will of God and becomes able to contain grace. That is why Holy Scripture says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5; Jas. 4:6).

He noted that a Christian must learn humility and love, because it is precisely these virtues that make a person capable of receiving God’s gift. Reflecting on Simeon’s words about a “sign that will be spoken against,” the Metropolitan emphasized that the greatest division of humanity occurs around the Person of the Savior, and that the fullness of the truth about Him is preserved in the Orthodox Church.

As the UOJ previously reported, His Beatitude Onuphry officiated the Divine Liturgy at the Bancheny Monastery. The Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church regularly addresses the faithful with pastoral words about the need for inner purification, good deeds, and the constant reading of Holy Scripture as the path to spiritual renewal and salvation.

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