Head of UGCC gave advice to presidential candidates

During his Sunday sermon at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Patriarch Sviatoslav touched on the issues of politics and the 2019 election race that is gaining momentum in Ukraine. The first hierarch pointed to mistakes that modern politicians are making in trying to be “successful”.

Today's world, according to UGCC Head, often practices idolatry of success. We must be successful. At all costs. Even through humiliation or destruction of your neighbor. Go through everything in order to make a good career, the Head of the UGCC said analyzing modernity.

“In order to become a successful politician, they overcome even the dignity of people who want to turn into electorate, which is manipulated by political technologists, in order to have more votes, to take a better place in parliament or in some kind of warm armchair. But the one who does this, and lives this way, is already dying. And the things he took from his neighbor would never make him a man to the full extent. They will never give him life, all the more so the eternal life,” the Head of the Church said.

The Primate recalled one of the key messages that our beloved Lubomyr (Husar) had left us – “Being a Man.” “The importance of being more than having is the cornerstone of Christian spirituality. For God's greatest treasure is not what we have as people but who we are. To have a treasure in heaven means to become a better person,” this is the message the preacher urges us to think about.

The Head of the UGCC believes that these words today are a call to the Ukrainian society. We already feel that the election campaign started in Ukraine. “So many different candidates today," says His Beatitude Sviatoslav, “are promoting themselves to us. But while listening to them, let’s ask ourselves not about what they have but what they are. For as a nation, as a state, we will become better when we build a society in which youth will no longer seek fullness of life outside of Ukraine, but will be able to live a full-fledged life at home. Then, when we see that the legacy of our nation, our fathers, lies in the only words of Christ: “Follow me.”

"Be a person who truly understands that it is God who needs to be put in the first place, and then, as the saying goes, everything will be in its place," His Beatitude Sviatoslav wished everyone. This is reported by the Department of Information of the UGCC.