On June 2, 2019, on the Sixth Sunday of Pascha, the Metropolitan of Rostov and Novocherkassk Mercury led the Divine Liturgy. On a hot summer morning, in the temple, there were cool and homelike. Our male choir sang remarkably during the divine service, and our priests, Archpriest Valery Voloschuk, and priest Ioan Tsupko, served the bishop among the clerics of the Rostov diocese.

On the last Sunday before the Ascension Day, the Church remembers the healing by the Lord Jesus Christ of a man blind from birth. Metropolitan Mercury in his sermon highlighted the recent dialogue of today’s Gospel reading:

“Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said
– Do you believe in the Son of Man?
– Who is He, sir, that I may believe in Him?
– You are looking at Him, and He is speaking with you.
– I believe, – and the man worshiped Jesus.”

“Our life is also full of different sorrows and joys, it is filled with circumstances that we sometimes call random, and while thinking over them, we derive an absolutely regular chain and sequence of events.

They give a reason for us to think about our life, to look at it not only as a temporary stay on this earth but as a road that leads us to Heaven. And this road can only go the way, in the direction in which the Lord went.

And how would we enter this Kingdom if do not meet the Lord? This meeting is possible through the correct, reasonable, spiritual understanding of all those events that occur in our lives.

I know a large number of people who have come very close to faith, who understand the meaning of what is happening in their lives, understand nonrandomness, feel something that they cannot explain. Here for most of these people, as probably for most of all of us, the Gospel voice asks today: “Do you believe in the Son of God?” We also say, like the blind: “Yes, but who is he?” And the Gospel tells us powerful words which affirm us in faith: “He is now before you and is speaking to you.”

And therefore, of course, when we begin to understand our life, when our conscience begins to tell us, when everything in us comes into the spiritual movement from prayer, from contact with the Church of God, with the Holy Sacraments, this is the voice of God. He stands and speaks to us. And of course, our answer must be so, as one of this man who was born blind and healed by the Lord. He said, “I believe,” and bowed to his Savior. ”

Metropolitan of Rostov and Novocherkassk Mercury