Catholic Viachaslau Barok: Truth, God Are With Us!

On March 25, we remember our belonging to the Belarusian people, and are proud of our nation.

Catholic Priest Viachaslau Barok addressed Belarusians on Freedom Day:

- We are Belarusians. Our people have more than a thousand years of history. Our state was built on the foundations of the Principalities of Polatsk and Turau. And we are Belarusians, descendants of the legendary ancestors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. And for the last 103 years we have had a fixed date of March 25, when we celebrate the declaration of independence of the Belarusian People’s Republic.

For Belarus, this is not only a memorable date in the history of its glorious past, but for each of us it is also Freedom Day!

This is the day when we remember our belonging to the Belarusian people, and are proud of our nation.

For all Christians and all believers, this is exactly the day when we thank God that the fathers of the BPR on March 25, 2018 by a legislative act recognized the equality of religions in rights and recognized the right of everyone to freedom of conscience. (“unconditional freedom of conscience” - was already announced earlier, in the second BPR charter of March 9, 2018).

Freedom of conscience is one of the fundamental human rights. In the realization of this right man finds a reflection of his resemblance to the image of God, and freely builds his life with God on earth.

And just as every person has the right given by God to be free, so every nation and every people has the right to independence. As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 157 on “the rights of peoples and nations”: “The sphere of human rights extended to the rights of peoples and nations, because what concerns one person also applies to all peoples.” The nation has the basic “right to exist”, to “its language and culture” ... to “sovereignty”.

In modern Belarus, Freedom Day is not only a remembrance of a glorious page in the country's history and an understanding of the right to independence, but it is also an understanding of one's duty: to fight for one's rights. For the right to live in a free, independent state. In which there are no political prisoners. In which one is not imprisoned for days, just for what a person thinks, expresses, preaches or lives in a Christian way. The state in which you are not punished for not supporting the state ideology, which in essence is far from Christian teaching, over religious motives.

Freedom Day in modern Belarus is another test for each of us. We must show our will in order to remain and be human in an atmosphere of lawlessness.

On March 25, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation, and reflects on the sanctity of life.

So, based on the Social Teaching of the Church, we can say: our earthly life reaches the level of holiness and perfection when we stop focusing exclusively on our spiritual experiences, but begin to see every person and all people in community walking “the way of love”, building a country on the fundamental values of public life: truth, freedom, and justice (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 197-208).

I encourage all of you to pray for Belarus on Freedom Day, and to recall the names of those who died innocently for political reasons.

Let us ask for freedom for prisoners of conscience, and for the families of political prisoners to return their relatives home as soon as possible.

May the Lord strengthen our will.

May God bless Belarus and fill the days of our lives with peace and tranquility.

The truth, and God are with us. Long live Belarus!