On Monday, December 4, 2023, at 6 p.m., the National Council of Churches of Korea (NCCK) held a “Prayer for Peace in Palestine” at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Seoul.
Many Koreans attended to support peace in the Middle East, including two Palestinians. Metropolitan Ambrosios of Korea and Exarch of Japan, before the prayer service began, welcomed the guests and conveyed the blessings of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his wish that the war would end as soon as possible.
“Unfortunately,” the Metropolitan said, “on both sides, there are pro-war people who do not care about the image of God, the human being, but about their own interests. We, as Christians, who believe in Christ, the Lord of Peace, must condemn war and any form of violence from interpersonal to inter-state relations.” The Ecumenical Patriarch recently stressed, “that those Churches in which their leaders do not have the courage to say no to war, how will they sing the joy of the Nativity?”
The Metropolitan added, “that in addition to the unequivocal condemnation of war, we must at the same time ask the Lord through prayer to enlighten the powerful of the earth so that they understand that they must ‘seek peace with all’, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews advises the Jews and all of us.”
Also during his address, the Metropolitan presented to the audience a letter from His Beatitude Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Eminence Patriarch Theophilos, in which he thanked the members of the NCCK for their support “in these troubled and very difficult times of the present war” and asked them to wish “for the prevalence of justice, peace, and reconciliation in the Holy Land and the wider Middle East region”.
Finally, the Metropolitan wished “that all people in the world may celebrate Christmas in peace, especially in the place where Christ was born, walked, taught, worked miracles, was crucified and resurrected, as well as in Ukraine, where after about two years the war unfortunately continues.”