When Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal, during his visit to Georgia at a meeting with Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II, speaks about the historical similarity between the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) and the schismatic OCU, then of course he is not talking about parallels between the ancient history of the GOC and a two-year remake of “OCU”. He talks about Russia.
We understand that the whole logic of the creation and existence of the “OCU” is generally only one thing: “Further from Russia, against Russia.” The OCU has no creative mission. Neither the Gospel message, nor the Liturgy, nor the salvation of souls, nor, moreover, Christ Himself is not the main thing in the existence of the OCU. The main thing is anti-Russian policy.
This is the only explanation why it was necessary to create the “OCU”. Why it was necessary to try to drive the clergy of the canonical UOC there, why Poroshenko had to promote this project, why the Americans supported it, why it was necessary to seduce Phanar into its creation, why it was necessary to accept the obviously most flawed tomos of autocephaly in the history of the Orthodox world. Why was it necessary to recognize the costumed laymen as allegedly bishops and priests, why seize the churches of the “Moscow Patriarchate”, so that later they would stand empty and boarded up…
The problem of such leaders is the lack of faith, for them the Church is just a decoration of political functions, but not the Body of Christ. They cannot understand how some parishioners of the canonical UOC take the Russian oath in Crimea, while others collect help for the Ukrainian army, how some are rooting for the Russian Donbass, others for Ukraine, and still others are rooting with the fullness of their hearts and praying for everyone… That for the first, and for the second, and for the third – politics is secondary in comparison with Christ. The first, second and third can make mistakes and sin, but they know for sure that they cannot be saved without Christ, without His Church, and no substitute, even a politically close one, suits them.
And in Georgia there can be many historical or fresh grievances against the ROC, provocations to disunity with which are organized every month by local liberals. Anti-Russian sentiments may be strong in Georgia due to the factor of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But in the Georgian Church, despite all this, Christ is above national grievances and political interests. And when Shmygal draws analogies between Donbass and Abkhazia, between 2008 and 2014, between the Euro-Atlantic integration of Georgia and Ukraine, he simply does not know about one important difference: the Georgian and Russian Churches are parts of the Body of Christ, in their Chalice the true Blood and Flesh of the Savior. But in the OCU – no, mystical grace is replaced by political expediency in it.
That is why they cannot understand the motives of the majority of Local Churches, which stubbornly do not recognize the “OCU” – they are looking for the hand of Moscow there, but they need to look for the blood of the Savior.
That is why even in the Greek and Cypriot Churches, which recognized the schismatics, the church plenitude could not come to terms with this step. There are too many of those for whom “there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor circumcision, nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but all and in all is Christ” (Col. 3:11).
