June 19, 2014
Moscow: Address of His Holiness, Patriarch Kyrill, to the Entirety
of the Russian Orthodox Church
His
Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow & All Russia, issued an address
to the Entirety of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Dear Brothers and Sisters, I appeal now to the Entirety of our
Church, to all the peoples of historic Rus’.
There can be nothing more significant for us today than the
continuing fratricide which is blazing on the territory of Ukraine,
taking away more and more lives.
What is happening today, primarily in the Donetsk and Lugansk
regions, and how are the members of our Holy Church to assess these
events?
In the southern regions of historic Rus’, internecine strife has now
flared up.
The consequences of the bloody conflict are horrifying. No longer
one hundred, as in Kiev over this past winter, but many, many
hundreds have died, while thousands have been wounded and left
homeless. Only the devil can celebrate victory when brothers take up
arms against one another, destroy one another, maim one another, and
weaken the vitality of the people.
And of course, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Church of the
spiritually indivisible Rus’, cannot divide the united people of God
along political, national, social, or any other lines. The Church
fulfills the mission entrusted to Her by the Lord Jesus Christ, and
not the instructions or orders from elsewhere, from one political
force or another. That is how She differs from some nominally
religious ‒ but in actuality worldly ‒ organizations.
Civil strife has occurred more than once in our history. They caused
the weakening of Kievan Rus’ and the fall of the divided
principalities under the assault of Batu Khan, they led to the
terrible Time of Troubles in the Russian state in the seventeenth
century, and to the bloodletting, massive in its scope, and the
establishment for many years of the godless regime in beginning of
the twentieth century.
The lessons of history also show that internecine struggle always
gives rise to possibility of conquest of the Fatherland by outside
forces. Both in the days of old and today, we face the danger of
losing true sovereignty of the people; that sovereignty which is
expressed in the possibility and ability to arrange one’s life on
the basis of those moral, spiritual, and cultural values which were
adopted, together with Divine grace, by our ancestors in the Kievan
font of the Baptism of Rus’, which blossomed and were made our own
over the course of our centuries-long history.
I appeal to all who are in a position to make decisions: immediately
end the bloodletting, enter into real discussions to establish peace
and justice. The can be no winners in fratricidal war, there can be
no political gain more valuable than human lives.
As far as the Church is concerned, Her weapon and Her shield are
prayer and the Word of God, which "is quick, and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12).
I call all of the children of the Russian Orthodox Church to
strengthened prayer, to fastidious observance of the Apostles’ Fast,
which has now begun. And I issue a special call to the monasteries:
pray now to the Lord, as our pious ancestors knew to pray in
terrible times of upheaval; as the founding ascetics of Russian
monasticism, the Venerable Anthony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves,
in times of civil strife entreated of the Heavenly Father its
cessation; as the reconciler of the Russian lands, the Venerable
Sergius of Radonezh, prayed for the end to the hateful enmity of
this world; as the Holy Hierarch Tikhon, Patriarch of All Russia,
and Hieromartyr Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev, cried unto the Lord
in the days of bloody chaos and civil war.
May special prayers for
peace and the overcoming of civil strife tirelessly be made in
all our churches, to the text of which I gave my blessing today.
"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Thess. 5:23).
Press Service of the Patriarch of Moscow & All Russia
