UOC Primate: a grateful person is worthy of big gifts while an ungrateful one is unworthy of what he already has
Each person lives on God’s grace even without being aware of it. It was said by His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine during his sermon on the occasion of the Pochaev icon holiday. It is reported by the UOC Awareness-Raising.
His Beatitude underscored that without God a human being is weak. “All of us – rulers, grassroots, priests – have a need in God’s mercy,” he emphasized.
According to the Archpastor, it doesn’t matter whether humans realize it or not: “even a person, who does not understand it and admit it, lives thanks to the grace of the Lord.” However, blessed are those people, according to the Primate, who “know this, remember about this and always thank God for this.”
He called ungratefulness a big sin, since “God endowed a person with big talents and does not demand anything in return, except for one thing – we should be grateful to Him.”
Metropolitan Onuphriy remarked that the biggest need for each person is salvation in eternal life and only the man, who is able to be grateful for what he/she receives in earthly life, can inherit the Kingdom of God. An ungrateful person, in his turn, is unworthy of what he/se already has, said the Metropolitan.
Besides, in his word to the many-thousand parish the Primate reminded of an important contemporary history of the miraculous Pochaev icon. He told that in July of the current year All-Ukrainian Cross Procession for peace was held in Ukraine, which started in the West and the East of the country. Sacred procession was accompanied by the great sanctities – the Pochaev and Sviatogorsk icons of the Mother of God.
