Ukrainian Archbishop: Men Are ‘Begging’ to Defend Their Homeland

Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said Monday that Ukrainian men are waiting in line to enlist in the military for the opportunity to defend their homeland.

“Ukraine is standing, Ukraine is fighting,” Archbishop Shevchuk said in his daily video message, while designating “the forty-seventh day of national grief.”

Speaking with people in the Kyiv region, “one can feel that many people, many men in even territorial defense, are afraid that victory over the enemy will come without their participation, and after the liberation of the Kyiv region and the Chernihiv region, they are begging, begging to go where there are battles,” the archbishop said.

“In our military enlistment offices there are queues of people wishing to defend their homeland,” he added. “The people stood up to defend their homeland.”

Monday marks “the forty-seventh day of pain, blood, suffering, human tears, mass killings, large numbers of refugees,” Shevchuk notes, but it also marks “47 days of nationwide resistance to the Russian occupation.”

The archbishop said that amidst the horrors of the war, there are moving scenes of compassion and care.

“It is very moving to see how Ukrainians honor their elders and even during evacuations they carry the elderly in a reclined state, mothers or fathers lying on their sickbeds,” he observed.

“Today our priests, our volunteers visit elderly people in the cities and villages of Ukraine who are left alone and this is an opportunity to see God’s power in their eyes,” he declared.

“O God, accept the sacrifice of Ukraine, the sacrifice of love, to You, O God, and to their neighbor!” he exclaimed. “Behold the tears of our elders, the weak people who need your help!”

“O God, bless our army, which protects and defends Ukraine, protects life, defends peace in our homeland,” he said. “O God, grant Ukraine victory! And let us all pray together for the victory of good over evil in Ukraine.”

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