His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros Homily for the Service of the Twelve Gospels

Matins of Great and Holy Friday - April 16, 2020

Archdiocese Chapel of Saint Paul, New York, New York

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Perhaps there is no other service of Great and Holy Week that brings us into the presence of God’s love more than this Matins of Holy Friday. Tonight we read the Twelve Gospel περικοπές that take us from the Soliloquy of Love to the Burial of our Lord in the Tomb of the Rich Man from Arimathea.

Every year, these Twelve Gospels bring us the most important words ever spoken by our Lord, and they also bring us the agonizing details of His Arrest, Trial, Torture, Crucifixion, Death and Burial.

In these Gospels, we hear what are commonly referred to as the “Seven Last Words” of the Lord. These seven utterances, the last words that He spoke in his earthly existence from His Cross, each one is a sermon of the greatest significance and meaning.

Although you have heard all of these “Seven Words” in the course of this evening’s service – I would share one of them yet again with you, my beloved Faithful. I would share the one that I believe speaks to us most profoundly in this present global crisis.

In His agony upon the Cross, in His pain and unspeakable suffering, our Lord Jesus Christ cried out:

᾿Ελωῒ ᾿Ελωΐ, λιμᾶ σαβαχθανί;

This is not Greek, but Aramaic, for:

O My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?[*]

He exclaims this agonizing cry – whose origin is in the Psalms of David:

Ὁ Θεός, ὁ Θεός μου, πρόσχες μοι· ἳνα τί ἐγκατάλιπές με;[†]

And we are left to wonder. Does He cry out in anger? In horror? In fear? In utter abandonment?

And we ask ourselves: How could God abandon His Only-Begotten Son?

Or: How could Christ, feel any separation from his Father, with Whom He shared Pre-Eternal Glory before the created world came to exist?[‡]

And if these questions have challenged theologians and philosophers through the ages, how much more so do they challenge us, who live in these difficult days of a worldwide and virulent pandemic.

Therefore, my beloved Christians, I am asking that you consider the words of our Lord not as a mere personal cry of agony, but as an invocation, an entreaty, an appeal on behalf of us all.

You see, our Lord Jesus Christ was much more than a human being, he was the God-Man Who was fully Divine and fully Human, as the definition of the Ecumenical Council says:

ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαρέτως, ἀχωρίστως.

“unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably”[§]

Total God and Total Human. And in that humanity of His own Divine Person, He enfolded every human being who had ever lived before Him, was living during His earthly ministry, or would ever live thereafter.

He took upon Himself not only our sins and sinfulness, but our fears, our anxieties, our worries, our insecurities and all our pain – whether of the body, mind, or soul. All of this weight – this unfathomable burden – He took to the Cross.

In His Humanity, He began by living a perfect life without ever sinning. Then He incorporated all of us into Himself at the Mystical Supper, where, as the Holy Chrysostom says, He drank His own Blood.[**] And before the Lord was seized in the Garden of Gethsamene, we see Him in the agony of His prayer, beseeching His Father to let “this cup” – the cup of suffering, pain and death – “pass from Me.”[††]

He understands our fear of death, because He felt it – every human beings’ fear of dying – and He felt in one moment of time. Is it any wonder then, that in Gethsemane – which means “olive press” – that the Lord sweat blood? The Gospel record is clear and even graphic:

As He prayed more intensely, He was wracked with agony.  His sweat rained down on the ground like bloody clots.[‡‡]

Finally, upon the Cross, in these excruciating words, He expressed the ultimate separation of every human being from God:

O My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?

He felt all our loneliness, all our sense of desertion and abandonment. All our deepest fears that, especially at the moment of death, can drown a soul in waves of despair.

And because He experienced all of this out of his infinite love for us – for each and every one of us, we have the blessed assurance that no one will ever face death alone.

In every hospital and Intensive Care unit, every Nursing Home, every bed of suffering in America and around the world, where our fellow human beings are enduring pain and fear, where they are facing death, our Lord Jesus Christ is with them all.

In the deepest and most profound spiritual reality that a person can confront – the moment of their own death, our Lord is with them because He already died with all of us and for all of us two thousand years ago. He transcends time and space, just as He transcended death by His Mighty Resurrection!

This, my beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, is our greatest hope. For it leads not to extinction, not to some nothingness after we die. It leads to our own resurrection from the dead and live everlasting.

Yes, one day, We must all die; because we are mortal, made so by sin.[§§] But He is immortal, and His gift to us through the Resurrection is eternal life.[***]

May we always remember of our Lord Jesus Christ’s willing sacrifice of perfect love for us, and hold this promise of hope in our hearts, to attain now in this moment of anxiety and fear – and even death – the Holiest Pascha of our lifetimes. Amen.