Dear friends!

Another hard year of our lives is over. The last twelve months brought a lot of trials and losses.

Blessed Augustine once said that when God made the world, He also made time for it. It is a reminder of how fragile and fleeting the present is: barely does it appear when it immediately becomes the past. And still: how important it is for us to learn to use this invaluable gift of time for good, so that every moment of our lives may become a step towards eternity.

Unfortunately, the last year did not bring peace to our land, nor brought us closer even to visible outlines of peace. We are meeting the third New Year in the conditions of an unending war.
Throughout 2024, every day, we received tragic news of bloody battles, shellings of cities, catastrophes, distress, and sufferings. Newsfeeds told us about new tools for continuing the war, about the supplies and production of weapons, about the mobilisation, about the situation on the frontlines. Peace initiatives were too unconvincing and detached from reality. “Peace summits” were non-serious. Even those who made statements on peace did not believe in them. Hundreds of thousands of human lives were being thrown into the furnace of war. Politicians completely ignored the longings of ordinary people, whom this war had brought troubles, distress, and sufferings. Lies and hatred were firmly established as the basis of state policy.

It was a year of hopes and imitations. Hopes for a miracle: what if the war ends by a wave of a magic wand? What is Trump's election puts an end to the war? And imitations of independence, imitations of care about people, imitations of readiness to end the war, imitations of nationwide support of the current Ukrainian authorities. Never before had Ukrainians followed the elections in the USA so closely, hoping that it was the outcome of those elections that would decide the fate of war and peace in Ukraine. It shows how strong the dependence on external influence is and how non-sovereign our authorities are in their actions.

It was also a year of the continuation of the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. A year when the Ukrainian authorities, led by Zelenskyi and Yermak, continued their attack upon the Church, adopted the anti-Church and anti-Orthodox law, seized churches, and put hierarchs, priests, and laypeople behind bars under trumped-up pretexts. It was a year of sufferings for the faithful of the UOC, but at the same time, it was a year of a test of our steadfastness in the faith of Christ and in our faithfulness to the Church.

Today, we pray to the Lord to strengthen us in the faith and help to stop the war, which has brought innumerable tribulations to people. We ask Him to help to return peace into our hearts and to our land. For only with faith and prayer can we oppose hatred and malice, which burn one's heart, both in personal relationships and in public life. We pray that every citizen of Ukraine may understand that simple values — peace, love, happiness, stability — are what should truly be kept. And that our main wealth is the Orthodox faith, turning away from which leads to upheavals and catastrophes, including those we are living through today.

Dear friends! Let us start the new year from thanking for everything the Lord sent us in the year that has passed, for His grace, and for His not forsaking us in these difficult days. For only with strong trust in God do we have hope for the future.

I wish all of us the coming of PEACE and qualitative changes in our country, first of all in her leadership. May we see a peaceful revived Ukraine and the triumph of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the year to come. I wish our families love, strong health, and well-being!

Happy New Year, dear friends!
God save us all!