Ukrainian Catholic ChurchAustralia, New Zealand and Oceania
Christmas in the Cathedral
December 25, 2023
On the Great Feast of the Nativity of Christ, Bishop Mykola Bychok, Eparch of Melbourne, performed the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Melbourne.
This year, for the first time, the Melbourne Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul celebrates Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar: on December 25. As Bishop Mykola emphasised, Ukrainian Catholics in Australia had been going for 70 long years until this date of Christmas celebration. Celebrating Christmas together with the entire Christian world was the dream of the first hierarch of the Melbourne Eparchy, Bishop Ivan Prasko, and his successor, Bishop Peter Stasiuk.
The clergy of the Cathedral and the faithful gathered in large numbers for a joint prayer. In his homily, Bishop Mykola Bychok emphasised that “Christmas is a feast of hope, of joy, and of God’s love for people. At Christmas, God becomes visible, comprehensible, and researchable for us because he takes a human body for himself. God becomes one of us.”
Today, it is difficult for us to feel the fullness of this joy because the war continues in Ukraine. However, as Bishop Mykola noted, “God was born in a manger, practically abandoned, and today God is born where our soldiers are. God is there where there is crying, where there is suffering, and where a person needs heavenly help — God’s grace.”
At the end of the liturgy, those present together with the bishop sang the Christmas carol “The Eternal God,” after which they went to their homes to celebrate the birth of Christ in the family circle because: “All creation is filled with joy today. Christ is born of the Virgin!”
