PATRIARCH KIRILL URGES THE PEOPLE TO COME TO THE DEFENSE OF RUSSIAN INDEPENDENCE
Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill called the people to rally around the authorities and not allow foreign centers of power to destroy the independence of Russia. He said this on 25 April in a sermon after a service in the cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin.
"Today our people especially need internal unity. It is not easy for things to develop around our fatherland. . . . And thus our people today especially should rally around this historic center of all Rus, around the city of Moscow, understanding that only in unity is our strength, and so long as we are united and strong, so long as we will maintain faith in our hearts, so long as we are inspired by the great example of our predecessors, then Russia will be invincible," the primate of the RPTs urged.
He said that victory is always not just a physical victory, not just the victory of arms. "It is always the victory of the spirit," Patriarch Kirill noted.
"And today many would wish that this spirit would disappear. And in order for this to be so it is necessary to sow confusion, to create new idols, to call attention to new false values, and to redirect the consciousness of man from the vertical dimension of life, which unites one with God, to the horizontal, on which all the needs of the human body are sown."
The patriarch noted that the current service was held in the monument church created in the 15th century as a sign of the unification of the Russian lands, and he wished that the heroic examples of the past would inspire Russians to defend the fatherland, "our genuine independence from the mighty centers of power that exist on the earth today."
"May the Lord keep us in genuine freedom, and all this is directly linked with the maintenance of the Orthodox faith in the hearts and minds of our people," the RPTs primate concluded. (tr. by PDS, posted 27 April 2022)
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