RELIGIOUS AND OUTLOOK PROBLEMS OF NEW YEAR AND CHRISTMAS SERMONS OF CHURCH LEADERS AT THE END OF THE 19’TH CENTURY

Abstract

The religious and outlook issues of the sermons delivered during the New Year and Christmas holidays by church leaders of the end of the 19’th century are analyzed in the article. The main attention is paid on the main levels of a person’s existence that based on the results of his life activity during the past year. An important place belongs to the main moral and religious dimensions of righteousness and spiritual perfection of person. They are Christian love, friendship, trust, humanism, morality, the right way of life, spirituality and joint efforts for noble causes. Understanding the individuality and uniqueness of person as a bearer of Christian values, his strong internal moral and religious core are connected with peace of mind, purification from sins, achievement of the highest degree of perfection through knowledge of God’s essence, heart and soul self-knowledge, perseverance in achieving the goal, conscientious attitude to affairs, indifference to the outside world, responsibility for one’s own actions. It is noted that the existence of each individual, his spiritual and moral being form the spiritual and religious atmosphere of society as a whole. This fact demonstrates the realization of the dialectical categories “part” and “whole” in the views of church leaders. In the conclusion, it is stated that the problem proposed in the study of revealing the religious and outlook issues of New Year and Christmas sermons of church leaders of the 19th century gives an idea of the religious and spiritual situation at the end of the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th century in Volyn among Orthodox church leaders. A future research will be devoted to the analysis of the religious and philosophical views of church leaders of the 19th century as the basis for the formation and development of spiritual and educational heritage of the past in the context of modern Ukrainian spiritual enlightenment.