Metropolitan Volodymyr Greeted Kyivites on the Day of Kyiv
Honorable Kyivites! Dear brothers and sisters!
Residents of our State's capital and parishioners
of the cathedral city of our Church!
Every day we see these Kyivan hills upon which the
grace of God has shone. And the great city has rosen. And the Lord has built many churches. That's what the Holy Apostle Andrew the
First-Called foresaw almost two thousand years ago.
Lately we have commemorated 1020 years of the Baptism
of Rus by the Holy and Equal-to-the-Apostles Kyivan Prince Volodymyr and the
day of his church remembrance became a national feast - the day of the Baptism
of Rus. This year we mark 1150 years of the historical event of baptizing a part
of Kyivites by the Kyivan prince Ascold. The Holy and Right-Believing Prince Yaroslav
turned Kyiv into a Christina gold-domed city, crowned by the Cathedral of St Sophia, the Wisdom of God - the cathedral
of Kyivan metropolitans. And it is almost 1000 years that Oranta - Mother of
God the Unbreakable Wall protects us.
It is not by chance that Kyiv is called New Jerusalem.
As in Jerusalem the main shrines of Christianity
rest and as the Church took its rise at Zion
room, the same way Christianity in Rus took its rise in Kyiv. The Dnieper
is Our Jordan River - there Rus was baptized. The Kyiv Caves Monastery is the
Russian Athos, for it is from here that the Russian monkhood originates. The
hierarchy of the Russian
Church started from the
Holy Hierarch Michael, the first metropolitan of Kyiv, and Hieromartyr
Volodymyr, Metropolitan of Kyiv chairs many-thousand synaxis of the new martyrs
of the 20th century.
Today Kyiv restores its golden-domed churches and monasteries after the sequent
atheist onset. At the same time the new churches rise on
the Dnieper's riverside. This year the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
started building its main temple - the Cathedral of Resurrection of Christ and its
large Religious-Enlightenment Center which has to become the center of educational,
social and charitable activity of our cathedral city and all Ukraine.
We heartily greet the Kyivites on the Day of Kyiv! We wish
God's assistance in all the good deeds. Peace, consent, love of God and God's
blessing to you! We pray that God sent each
of you everything necessary for salvation of immortal soul and all required for
the earthy life, through the intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, through
the prayers of the Holy and Equal-to-the-Apostles great Prince Volodymyr and Princess
Olga, our venerable and God-bearing Fathers Anthony and Theodosius of the Kyiv-Caves
and all the Kyivan saints.
†
Volodymyr,
Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine,
Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
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