Metropolitan Onuphry: Holy is one who cannot be separated from God's love
His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry celebrated the Divine Liturgy on June 14, 2026, at the Holy Dormition Kyiv Caves Lavra on the Sunday of All Saints who shone forth in the Russian Land, reports the UOC Information and Educational Department.
The service took place at the Church of St. Agapitus of the Caves. After the Liturgy, the Primate addressed the faithful with a sermon centered on the question: what is holiness and how can a person approach it.
Metropolitan Onuphry highlighted that the Lord created man from the earth, breathed into him the breath of life, and adorned him with His divine image. The image of God is reason, the gift of speech, and free will. Reason gives the ability to know God and to see His beauty and majesty. Speech reveals the mysteries both of God and of His creation – through it, a person enters into the depths of the divine. Free will, in turn, makes a person capable of experiencing happiness, joy, and blessedness.
"If we did not have free will, we could not be happy," emphasized the Primate. It is precisely free will that makes man capable of being a partaker of that bliss which God has in Himself.
The image of God exists in every person, but divine likeness is achieved only by one who lives according to the sacred Divine laws and becomes like the Creator.
A special place in the sermon was given to the concept of “saving patience.” The Metropolitan explained that it is steadfastness on the path of holiness, when a person is tried to be turned away from the way of God’s commandments through fear, promises, and temptations, but does not give in. It is precisely this kind of patience that the Lord meant when He said: “By your patience possess your souls.”
However, as the Beatitude warned, there is also “destructive patience”—a persistence in sin, when a person, like an alcoholic, remains in their ruinous state despite all admonitions.
The Primate emphasized that the saints glorified on this day lived in different eras and circumstances: among them were princes, tsars, nobles, priests, bishops, monks, and ordinary pious people. The devil tempted each of them – sometimes directly, sometimes through circumstances, and sometimes through spiritually inexperienced people. But no one was able to turn them away from the path of holiness.
“Holy is the person who has preserved himself in the bosom of divine love, who loves God and loves all people as bearers of the divine image. One whom no one can tear away from Divine love – that one is holy,” said Metropolitan Onuphry.
The Primate called on the faithful to preserve the purity of the faith and not to mix it with human reasoning. According to him, faith and love are inseparably linked: correct and pure faith teaches one to rightly fulfill the divine commandments, and the fulfillment of the commandments is itself love. “Whoever loves Me, let him do My will,” Metropolitan Onuphry recalled the Savior's words.
As the UOJ reported, Metropolitan Onuphry has repeatedly spoken about how trials help a person understand what is most important in life, and that saints achieved holiness through feats and steadfastness in faith.
