“It is hardest for a person to permit God to lead them. The contemporary man is a standard of oneself by oneself…” UGCC Head in the newspaper Slovo

   “Faith is the path of man, who does not yet fully see the face of God. On the road of the believing person, in other words, the person who seeks a fullness of understanding, knowing and experiencing God, there will always be crisis. Therefore, one who has never experienced a crisis of faith, is not truly a deeply-believing person, is not searching for a full knowledge of God,” said His Beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk), UGCC Head, in an interview for the newspaper Slovo.
In the opinion of UGCC Primate, it is the crisis of faith itself which pushes the person closer to God in order to find a closer union with Him, to delve into the Word of God, which exists in the Holy Scripture. Therefore, a crisis is a kind of specific motor which moves the life of a person. In describing his own life experience as the experience of a believing person, the UGCC Primate noted that the family was that environment which taught the future Head of UGCC to learn faith. I experienced a personal meeting with that Christ about whom my grandmother talked so much, whom she loved so much. Later my road of faith led me on very strange paths. In childhood I never saw a visible expression of the Church. It was always the persecuted Church, the Church of suffering people and maybe, it is exactly because of this, that one felt its authenticity. I could never even imagine that I could be a priest in this Church. If someone had once told me that, I would have experienced a crisis,” he explained.
UGCC Head emphasized that the hardest thing for the contemporary person is to permit God to lead her or him. After all, in the post-modern society a person often measures oneself by oneself, and does not want to allow that someone else may do or understand something better than he or she.
“A Christian is the one who lives, being led by the Holy Spirit. Do not be afraid to permit yourself to be directed by your spiritual leader, the Church, in fact, the Holy Spirit who will teach us how to believe in Jesus Christ and Jesus will give us the knowledge of our Heavenly Father,” said His Beatitude Sviatoslav in the interview.
UGCC Department of Information
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