Patriarch of Antioch congratulates UOC Primate on enthronement anniversary
Pat. John said this anniversary of His Beatitude’s enthronement comes as the UOC endures “infirmities, reproaches, needs, persecutions, distresses, for Christ’s sake.”
His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East congratulated the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, on the ninth anniversary of his enthronement, the Information and Education Department of the UOC reports.
“On the occasion of the ninth anniversary of your election as Metropolitan of Kyiv and Primate of our Sister Ukrainian Orthodox Church, I send your Beatitude our best and warmest congratulations,” the message says. “I send them in my name, and in the name of my brothers the hierarchs of the Holy Synod of Antioch, and all the Antiochian faithful.”
According to the Patriarch, God, having chosen His Beatitude Onuphry for this ministry, endowed him with "'the wisdom that is from above', the wisdom that ‘first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy’ (James 3:17). This wisdom that you have is exactly what your blessed Church needs in these difficult times,” the Primate of Antioch is sure.
He noted that this anniversary “comes at a time when your people are suffering from the scourge of war, and your Church endures ‘infirmities, reproaches, needs, persecutions, distresses, for Christ’s sake’ (2 Cor. 12:10)."
“We lift up our prayers to ‘the Lord of peace Himself to give you peace always in every way’ (2 Thess. 3:16), and that God strengthen you, so that nothing separates you from the love of Christ, neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword (Rom. 8:35). May ‘God of all comfort who comforts us in all our tribulation’, strengthen your Beatitude and embolden you so that you remain steadfast in the right faith and labors. May you ‘comfort those who are in any trouble’ (2 Cor. 1:3-4), so that their hearts may not be troubled, neither be afraid (John 14:27), for Christ has conquered the world,” wrote the Patriarch of Antioch.
As the UOJ reported, congratulations on the anniversary of enthronement were sent to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry by the Primate of the Polish Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sawa, and the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, Metropolitan Tikhon.
