Dear brothers and sisters!

I wholeheartedly greet you on the Feast of the Translation of the Relics of Saint Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, the Wonderworker!

Every spring, this feast brings us back to a wondrous event: in 1087, residents of the Italian city of Bari sailed overseas to save a great sacred thing from desecration. God's Providence protects His pleasers — and sometimes leads to it on the most unexpected paths.

Saint Nicholas left no theological treatises. Only a living witness, written by deeds.

We remember how he stood between an executioner and the wrongly convicted — and stopped the execution. How he threw gold into a bankrupt father's window under the cover of night — secretly, anonymously, with the preservation of another person's dignity. Human 'help' often humiliates or makes people debtors. His mercy was different: the person praised only God.

When devotion to one's faith starts to be presented as guilt, and eagerness for peace as weakness, the image of Saint Nicholas reminds: steadfastness in the truth and mercy towards man do not contradict each other. He was unwavering in his defence of the truth — and infinitely merciful towards man. Not towards sin but towards man. That is what made his help healing instead of humiliating.

Today, when our people, our Church, and our land are going through the most difficult trials, we again reach to him — who reads sorrow straight from the heart without a need for long explanations, who comes earlier than we even ask.

I believe: he hears us and continually intercedes for us before God.

May the Lord, through his holy prayers, protect our Church, fortify everyone who bears his cross, and give our land long-awaited peace.

Happy feast, dear brothers and sisters!