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On the Day of Consecrated Life head of the UGCC met with monastics
18-02-2010
On February 14, 2010, in Kyiv, in the St. Basil the Great Church, on the occasion of the Day of Consecrated Life (February 15), a meeting of His Beatitude Lubomyr, the head of the UGCC, took place with the monastics. The main theme of the meeting was dedicated to spiritual exercises. The speaker was His Beatitude Lubomyr.
First of all, the attention of those present was on the morning's intention with which is needed to begin a new day. "Concentrating thoughts on the Lord, in a very special was is necessary to thank Him for the fact that we have been awakened. Then two things follow. The first one is to devote oneself, open oneself to the acts of the Holy Spirit. It demonstrates Jesus Christ on the Jordan, when He began His activity. Not so we roamed the world, searching for what we must do, how to do it, but so that on this day we are led in everything by the Holy Spirit. And the second one is to define what we want to understand today. To fulfil the will of the Heavenly Father like Jesus Christ and to carry out this what the Heavenly Father wants is the greatest intention that we can have every day and should have every day," explained the head of the UGCC.
Next was the prayer which, in the opinion of the preacher, is liturgical or communal and private or personal. "Prayer is a substantial part of our life," His Beatitude Lubomyr remarked. Examining the liturgical prayer, the speaker noted three important moments. The first is unity, in fact, "when we pray together we carry out the unity of Christians and this is extraordinarily important." The second one is the school of prayer, "when we consider that we refuse or sing, and consider what we say, then we learn how to pray properly." Third - "liturgy prayer operates in a very special way, fully independent from us. Our task is to be present, and already the Lord with the help of our grace works on us."
Private prayer, in the opinion of His Beatitude Lubomyr, "is our very personal attitude toward the Lord," that is why it might be filled in the very different methods.
The prayer was followed by spiritual exercises where there was spiritual reading and contemplation. According to the bishop "this is the nourishment which we have to eat daily to support ourselves, to increase one's inner strength." In the opinion of His Beatitude Lubomyr, "every day we have to include communication with Jesus Christ with the help of the Holy Scripture. From the pages of the Holy Scripture God especially talks to us... and suddenly, some light began to shine as if we realized was said to us."
Contemplation is the application of that which we read to our own life before we experience it. It is good to join it with spiritual reading, mainly with the reading of the Holy Scripture, because the Holy Bible is communication with Jesus Christ.
"Not all that we do is always good, and not all that we do is bad. There occur good and not so good acts. Therefore, if we really want to walk ahead spiritually it is very useful to have balance on this day. It is like a good merchant who calculates in the evening what he sold, how much he earned, how much he maybe lost," summarized His Beatitude Lubomyr.
At the completion of meeting the preacher noted the importance of accepting the Holy Scripture in the life of consecrated persons. "Prayer is extraordinarily important, but more important for us from nature itself is the Holy Communion. It is already communication with the Lord, in God's manner. A person would not even be able to invent something in order to be so close to the Lord," concluded the head of the UGCC.
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