Dear brothers and sisters!
I cordially greet you on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary! It is a special feast, a bright and wonderful one. The entire earthly life of the Most Holy Theotokos is a story of complete faith, of hope that knows no doubts, of limitless love, which managed to embrace Heaven and earth and become a response of everything made to the Creator’s love. Due to the humility and obedience to God and full trust in His will of many generations and, first and foremost, of the Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Most Pure Virgin Mary, She became the purest fruit and gift to God of the entire mankind that had ever lived. Her Nativity is an example of how unshakable faith, steadfastness in prayer, and piety open the way for God to work true wonders with us and with this world. In the present days, full of pain, tribulation, and deprivations, we ought not to fall in despair, not to lose faith and hope — our Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Pure Mother, the Most Holy Theotokos, are always with us! We are all weak and feeble in our virtues. But we can always cry out in our prayers to the One Who has become our Ladder to Heaven, Who Herself is an indefatigable Intercessor for the whole world and Who tirelessly prays for it — and we can be absolutely sure that we will be heard. Countless miracles testify to the fact that the Most Holy Theotokos will always help, pray to Her Son, and will not leave Her Domain — our holy Ukrainian land and our God-loving people. And we ought to be faithful to Her Divine Son, to our native canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, to its Primate, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy, and be steadfast in prayer and trust in God in everything.
I once again cordially greet all of you on the feast, dear brothers and sisters!