Met. Agafangel: The worst evil for Ukraine is division into “us” and “them”
The Ukrainian people should be united and the president should be for all, rather than one confession.
Separation, hatred, cruelty and political manipulations are the greatest evil for Ukraine, the Metropolitan of Odessa and Izmail believes.
“The biggest evil is the division into friends and foes,” said the ruling bishop of the Odessa Diocese of the UOC in the program "Good and Evil” on the Nash (Ours – Ed.) TV channel. “The Ukrainian people should be united. Many nationalities live here, and the president should be for the whole nation, for all confessions. ”
Vladyka emphasized that hatred, cruelty and political manipulation are evil for Ukraine when people hide behind politics.
“Politicians come and go, but there are traces of bitterness left when some oppose others. And we are all brothers, we are Ukrainians. They even told me that, well, I do not like Ukraine and my first speech at the meeting of the Verkhovna Rada was performed in the Ukrainian language,” he noted.
“We need to respect each other,” urged the Metropolitan. “We are all for Ukraine to become a European state, for nations and nationalities to get along in it, for the language, culture and faith to be freely expressed here too.”
According to His Eminence Agafangel, evil can only be defeated by good and people should realize that they are going to the abyss and repent.
“People are not perfect, people are divided, someone wants to be first but Christ said: if you want to be first, be a servant to all. The Apostle Paul said: Let love be in your debt. Unfortunately, in our time this love is in shortage and therefore, there is a lot of evil in this world that needs to be defeated by good. People are fighting this evil because they know it will pass,” the Metropolitan of Odessa and Izmail emphasized.
He is convinced that the sorrows that the Lord allows the Church today are meant to draw attention to the fact that “not each of us lives the way that the commandments of God require.”
“The Lord tests each of us, tests for strength. There were persecutions of the first centuries, heresies, splits, people suffered. Now the same scenario begins. Blood flowed like water, but people believed that the Church of God was alive. <...> The Lord wants "everybody to be saved and come into the mind of truth" (І Tim. 2: 4), but this salvation depends on each of us. Because the Lord has given us free will, and the one who fulfills the will of God, he goes towards Christ and wants to be with Christ and Christ with him,” concluded Metropolitan Agafangel.
As the UOJ reported, earlier Metropolitan Izmail of Agafangel of Odessa recalled that many times in the history of church preaching, rulers and sovereigns tried to create their own “church”, but each time their plan failed.
