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Today is Thursday 6 October 2022 and in Ukraine it is already the 225th day of this terrible war which every day gives new blows of killed, wounded, maimed, and refugees. The Ukrainian land is filled with the blood and tears of our people every day.
Over the last day, from what we could find out this morning, heavy battles are again taking place along the entire front line. The Ukrainian army is successfully counterattacking in the Kharkiv Region and in the north of the Luhansk Region, and in the south of our Motherland, in the Kherson Region, liberating our towns and villages step by step. Fierce fighting is going on in the Donetsk Region. The enemy incessantly throws his large forces into battle again and again around the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and our army courageously holds the defence so that the enemy cannot advance.
Over the last day, the Russians hit Ukraine with five cruise missiles, carried out eight airstrikes, and fired 65 missiles from various jet fire systems. Cities and villages located up to 100 kilometres from the demarcation line or the front line are constantly being shelled. Peaceful people are suffering. There is a real feeling that the enemy is waging a war to destroy and exhaust the Ukrainian people.
Kharkiv was on fire last night. A rocket attack was carried out on the centre of the city and huge fires were started. Right now, rescue operations are underway in the city of Zaporizhzhia where the enemy fired seven rockets at multi-story residential buildings. There are people under the rubble. Remember them in your prayers, because in those moments when we are hearing about it, there is a struggle going on to rescue them and their lives.
But Ukraine is standing! Ukraine is fighting! Ukraine is praying!
And you and I continue to draw from the unique spiritual experience of our people a testimony of resilience, precisely through the example of prisoners, through the example of our brothers and sisters who were held in Russian torture camps in the occupied territories. We want to learn from their experiences of personal resilience. Yesterday you and I reflected on the fact that resilience is not infallibility and it is not inviolability, but it is the ability to get up again and again, even when we fall. We also mentioned yesterday that sustainability is impossible without values. Stability is impossible without truth, without truth that is the rudder we must hold in our hands in order to know in which direction to move our lives.
Today we are reflecting on the second rule of personal stability in the conditions of war. And this rule is prayer. Without prayer it is impossible to stand, especially in the fight against evil. Prayer for us Christians is the moment when we hold the hand of our God. Prayer is the moment when the Lord God takes me and my life in his hands and leads me with him. He is the source of renewal of our strength. Therefore, prayer during captivity, during suffering, during personal grief, during war is a source of renewal, the renewal of our strength and it is the secret of our resilience.
The prophet Isaiah tells us about it like this: "Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:30-31). So, in order to stand up, we need not just to know what is true, to know the truth and to be convinced that we are doing the right thing, we need to give the opportunity for that truth to touch me personally, and that truth, that way, and that life is not something, but someone. This is our Lord Jesus Christ, who stands by us and whoever trusts in Him, whoever leans on Him, will not be shaken.
As we know, you can pray in different ways. It is important to find your own way, the way that brings me closer to God. The way that gives an opportunity to taste the Word of God. That is why it is so important to read the Holy Scriptures. To have it with us even where we have lost everything. The Apostle Paul calls us to constant prayer. And so, we must enter the world every day with an open heart that is able to listen and hear God, and thereby to share the heard Word of God with others.
In these days, we were moved by new discoveries that Ukrainian society saw in the lands of Kharkiv, liberated from the Russian occupiers. In the city of Vovchansk, prisoners scratched icons of the Theotokos and Jesus Christ on the wall of the torture chamber. These icons, which made present for them the living God, our Saviour and His holy Mother for them. These icons, next to which the prisoners scratched marks that counted the days of their imprisonment. These icons, which are for us, Christians of the Eastern rite, the mystery of the presence of eternity in the temporal. They are a place, a moment of encounter of a person with God...
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