On the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord and the commemoration of Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, on January 1, 2026, Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine celebrated the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great at the cathedral church of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery Cathedral in the capital.
Concelebrating with the Primate of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine were Metropolitan Yevstratiy of Bila Tserkva; Archbishop Agapit of Vyshhorod, abbot of the Golden-Domed Monastery; the venerable brotherhood of the monastery; and visiting clergy.
In his homily, the Metropolitan emphasized that the New Year is not merely a change of date, but a spiritual moment of thanksgiving and repentance: it is the time when “we thank God for all the blessings” received in the past, and “ask forgiveness for everything that was not good.”
At the conclusion of the service, Metropolitan Epiphaniy offered a prayer for the beginning of the new year, invoking God’s blessing upon Ukraine for victory and the establishment of a just peace. He urged the faithful to place their hope not in the calendar, but in God, and to make the coming year a time for conscious spiritual effort and good works, so that it may become a path toward life in Christ and “the establishment of justice and peace.”
Source: pomisna
