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Your Eminence, beloved brother in Christ, Archbishop Demetrios
of America,
Your Eminence, beloved brother Metropolitan Evangelos of
New Jersey,
Beloved and blessed Brothers, Sisters, Fathers and Children
in the Lord,
We glorify the most-holy Name of
God, Who enabled us to come to you in the middle of the
Holy and Great Lenten period, to bless you and your spiritual
endeavors, and to paternally strengthen your God-loving
efforts in achieving virtue. We also came to perform the
bloodless mystagogy, together with your Archbishop and your
young in age and prelacy Metropolitan and shepherd Evangelos,
who is a hope-bearing servant of the Gospel. We also came
to pray for the restoration of peace in the entire world,
for the stability of the holy Churches of God and for our
salvation.
Today, is the Third Sunday of the
Holy and Great Lent, a Sunday which, during the ancient
times, appears to have been dedicated to the instructive
parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, as it is shown
by some relative hymnological remnants, which are chanted
until the present day. Such remnants are the Doxastikon
of the Praises “The high-minded judgment of the worst
Pharisees” and the Idiomelon of the most reverential
Vespers service “I do not dare raise my eyes to the
sky, me, the wretched one,” both of which refer to
this exact parable. Later however, the Church moved the
commemoration of this parable to the First Sunday of the
Triodion and dedicated today’s Sunday to the Holy
and Life-giving Cross of Christ, inviting us to venerate
it with piety.
The fasting period is arduous and
exhausting for the body, and many become disheartened and
hasten to give up the good fight, risking falling out of
Lord’s grace. The Lord is greatly pleased by the fasting
and prayer of His children. For this reason, the Church,
in her wisdom, projects in front of us today the holiest
Cross of the Lord. She invites us to behold it attentively
and to ponder about the unique sacrifice of our Saviour
upon it, His grief, His agony, His pain, and the experience
of death, which He accepted to endure for our salvation.
In turn, our Church hopes that we will make every effort
to endure also the sorrow of the body and the pain and hardship
caused by fasting, a way through which we will show to Christ,
by means of our bodily deprivation, our faith, love, and
dedication. The Church invites us to approach the Cross
with joy and fear—“Fear due to sin, of being
unworthy”, but also “joy for the salvation”
which is offered to us by the Son and Logos of God who was
nailed to the Cross. She invites us to approach and venerate
with great devotion “the life-giving wood”,
namely, the life-giving tree, which yielded the fruits of
forgiveness, the remission of our sins, and our reconciliation
with God, eternal life, and salvation, which springs forth
from the ensuing harmony. Because the Holy Cross is indeed
the tree of Life which God planted in the center of Paradise,
and because Adam and Eve failed to taste of its fruits due
to their disobeying of the commandment of fasting given
to them by God; for us to be able to taste of these fruits,
God had to send His Son to us. Through God’s incarnate
economy and the Cross and death of His son, we, the offspring
of the first-called, are able to taste of these sweet fruits
of true eternal life and salvation. When we venerate the
Holy Cross, which became the footboard of the feet of the
Lord, according to the prophetic exhortation: “Elevate
the Lord our God and venerate the footboard of His feet,”
we receive strength, blessing, grace, and sanctification,
which had been offered to the previously murderous instrument
by the Son of Man, Who was crucified on the Cross. The gifts
of strength, blessing, grace, and sanctification will not
only strengthen us to continue our spiritual struggles in
the “vast sea” of fasting and prayer, but they
will also render us unassailable when we constantly face
attacks by the enemies of our salvation, the demons. These
gifts will transform us to light-bearing children of the
Church worthy of welcoming the Bridegroom of our souls Who
is walking to His Passion, and they will enable us to participate
in His Passion and Resurrection.
Today’s Holy Gospel according
to the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark reminded us of the
Lord’s words: “If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me” (Mark 8:34). Here, we see a clear invitation and
challenge, an invitation that encourages free choice. Notice
the words: “If any want.” No one is forced to
follow Christ. Free will is respected by God, and it should
be equally respected by people. Suppression of will, coercion,
blackmail, even when it is employed for a good end, are
morally unacceptable. Christ invites the willing ones, by
free choice, to follow Him. Once we choose to follow Christ,
though, we ought to keep in mind that the Christian life
cannot be conceived without the Cross: “deny yourself,
and take up your cross and follow me.”
Usually, people think of the sad
situations they encounter in life as life’s crosses,
such as human loss, widowhood, the state of being orphaned,
disability or illness, poverty, being reproached or disdained
by others, social disgrace and isolation, deprivation of
bodily freedom, forceful expatriation, family problems,
etc. No one can deny that all these do partake of the characteristics
of the sacrifice of the Cross, and they do cause grief.
One needs great amounts of patience, spiritual power, and
resignation to endure and handle them; but, the essence
of the “cross” we are invited to lift—we
who believe in Christ and choose to become His Disciples
and Brothers—is not exactly that. The essence of the
Cross is the denial of the old falling person within us,
the denial of decay and of sin. It entails the inauguration
of new conditions of love, faith, and confidence in the
“God-man,” the person of the Savior. It entails
the taking on of the light yoke of obedience to His holy
commandments, which are contained in the Holy Gospel and
are outlined by the Fathers, the Synods, and the Canons.
It entails the crucifixion of selfishness through humility
and the abandonment of self-love, which is the root of all
weakness and sin; it encourages the cultivation of love
toward one another instead. It involves the denial of our
own will and the embrace of God’s will. It requires
the uncompromising struggle against blameworthy enmities,
which prevail in the depths of our hearts, and, contrary
to these, the cultivation of virtues under the systematic
observation and support of experienced spiritual fathers.
It involves the true experience of the prayer of the Church.
It necessitates the respectful use of the world, meaning
that besides the respect we owe to other human beings, we
ought to also respect the wonderful environment, which God
created. It also involves the bloodless sacrifice of consciousness
through humility and our renunciation of even legitimate
rights in favor of the commandment of love; it, also, entails
the blood sacrifice, when it is necessary, for the Name
of God, although this constitutes a paramount gift of God
reserved for a few select ones.
In these terms and very briefly
we understand the concept of lifting of our personal cross
and following of the Lord. Anyone who thinks that living
with these principles is hard and unbearable is free to
choose a different way of life and a different course. But
the course that leads to Eternal Life is one: Christ. It
is He Who said about Himself: “I am the Way and the
Truth and Life.” His Cross is both life and resurrection:
“Your Cross, Lord, is life and resurrection to your
people.” Its yoke is virtuous, and its weight is light.
The Devil falsifies the truth and presents things to be
completely different than what they are. Behold, though,
the humiliating and unbearable slavery of the person who
chooses the wide gate and the broad road! Look around you,
and you will see it. The ones that are “free”
of the duties of the cross, as outlined in the Gospel, become
inebriated by vain and temporary worldly fame. They worship
money and materialistic values; they worship youth, bodily
beauty, and carnal pleasures; they spend their time in casinos
and racecourses and gambling clubs; they seek paradises
induced by drugs and hallucinogens; they search for pleasure
with every pore of their body and every trace of their soul;
they seek an imaginary earthly immortality; they run out
of breath chasing after inane accomplishments; they cut
their soul into many senseless and sinful pursuits. They
do all these things for what reason? Their reason is the
pursuit of nothing, which lies threateningly opposite of
them; or, rather, their reason is for the pursuit of what
lies behind nothing, which is nothing else but the ancient
dragon in hiding, from whose slavery Christ delivered us
through the Cross, the Passion, the Third-Day Death and
Life-giving Resurrection! Such “freedom” or
rather “looseness” is synonymous to slavery,
decay, eternal perishing and hellfire. We should listen
to the calling of the Apostle Paul “For freedom, Christ
has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit
again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Let us
offer our freedom to Christ as a gift through our obedience
to His Gospel by means of our fasting, prayer, charity,
forgiveness, repentance, confession of sins, through a “liturgical”
and “incensed” life, as it is said, having always
as our company and mighty protector the Holy and Life-giving
Cross of the Lord. May we all be worthy to experience the
joy of the Resurrection and to participate in the glory
of the Heavenly Kingdom. Amen.
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