Met. Luke: Now the Church is going through a period of purification
Despite external difficulties, the Church now, in the opinion of the bishop, is experiencing its best time – the time of purification and rebirth of the spiritual life.
Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko) of Zaporozhye and Melitopol said in an interview with the UOJ how to take what is happening around the Church.
“When the Church performs the functions of a state or echoes the state, it is no longer the Church,” says Vladyka. “Therefore, the process of self-purification is underway. The Lord gives us the opportunity to prove our faith. For us, this is not a time of trials in a secular sense; this is a time for testing our faith. This is a saving time, because, as John Chrysostom said, the most terrible persecution of the Church is no persecution.”
When asked about what has changed in the spiritual life of believers, the hierarch replied, “People are worried about their future. But a person gets worried if he/she does not feel the presence of God in life. Therefore, the parishioners now began to take more frequent communion, because it is the communion that gives unity with God. We are increasingly asked what patriarchate our Church belongs to. And when we say: we are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church headed by the Primate His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry, we hear in response: oh, this is the true Church!”
Regarding the "transfer" to the "new church", Metropolitan Luke said that there are practically no such "transfers" in the Zaporozhye eparchy, but the authorities are exerting pressure. The bishop spoke harshly about the interference of political leaders in the affairs of the Church: "They involve millions of Ukrainian people in a great deception."
As the UOJ reported, the day before, President Petro Poroshenko signed a law on the transfer of religious communities from one denomination to another. The document defines the mechanisms for communities to change affiliation with religious centres in Ukraine and beyond its borders.
On January 17, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the scandalous bill No. 4128-d, which, according to experts, will legalize church raiding. In the meantime, more and more information is being received from the regions of Ukraine about the forcible seizures of churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the “transfer” to the schismatic OCU. At the same time, communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church widely declare their support for the UOC and its Primate, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry.
