UOC priest on brothers who defected to OCU: Feared of people and gave up

Archpriest Vasyl Balan. Photo: facebook.com/mk.hram

The rector of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Murovany Kurylivtsi, Archpriest Vasyl Balan said that those priests and bishops who defected to the OCU did so because they were afraid of people and gave up.

"We hear that a priest or a bishop went to the OCU ... No, brothers and sisters, they did not go anywhere, they just gave up," Father Vasyl said in a sermon published on the church's Facebook page.

The priest said that "Antony the Great was beaten, badly beaten. So much that he was carried into the settlement as if he were dead. And he said: "Lord, where were You when it was so hard for me?" The Lord says to him, "Antony, I was near you, and it pleased Me to watch you struggle!"

According to him, "when we hear that an archimandrite with two crosses went to the OCU, it is not because he found something better there. It's just that there are fewer monks there and he wants to be a bishop, he wants power!"

"Why do priests transfer? They're used to the glory of men, the praise. And here you don't have that, you get rebuked by everyone. You're afraid of being bad-mouthed!" he said, commenting on some priests defecting from the UOC to the OCU.

He stressed that such transfers occur because "a person is afraid of the people like ourselves and left the path of Christ".

"It's not just 'transferred'! He stopped fighting, he gave up! And thank God there are fewer of them <...> those people who write on us – do not understand that they are from God to give us medals," said Father Vasyl.

As reported, according to priest Vasyl Balan, Serhiy Dumenko behaved towards Filaret like an ungrateful son.

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