On January 23, an ecumenical prayer service organized by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was held in the Church of St. Basil the Great in Kyiv.
This is stated on the Facebook page of the Monastery of St. Basil the Great.
A week of prayers for Christian unity is traditionally held all over the world on January 18-25, 2022. This year, the main theme of the prayer is the slogan: "In the East, we saw his dawn and came to worship Him" (Mt. 2, 2).
The service was also attended by Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine Visvaldas Kulbokas, assistant bishop of the Diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr of the RCC Oleksandr Yazlovetsky and clergy of Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as representatives of the Jewish Messianic Christian community.
Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas delivered a sermon on the meaning and significance of prayer for Christian unity: "the week of prayers for Christian unity is a very good event, but also very dramatic on the one hand, when we raise up our prayer to God the Father so that all believers in him, in his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, have one heart and one soul. We know that we are doing a very worthy and very just thing. On the other hand, when we compare the thoughts of our heart with those of Jesus Christ, we often realize that our heart is cruel and indifferent. We're even used to seeing Christians divided, and our hearts don't cry enough about it."
The preacher stressed that we can't say that we love our God enough while we are divided."
"That is why today we pray to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to pay attention to signs, events, and people, as well as to give us creativity and courage in spreading true unity among all Christians. And may the Lord forgive us all the sins committed by our actions, words and omissions, when we did not fulfill our obligations to seek this unity," the nuncio stressed.
At the end of the Ecumenical Prayer, the clergy and all the faithful sang together the spiritual hymn "God Great and One".