My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF GREAT AND HOLY LENT: ON THE PRECIOUS AND LIFE-GIVING CROSS (Part IV)
Homily Eleven
By Saint Gregory Palamas
The Cross of Christ was mysteriously proclaimed in advance and foreshadowed from generations of old and no one was ever reconciled with God except by the power of the Cross. After our First Parents transgressed against God through the tree in Paradise, sin came to life, but we died, submitting even before physical death, to the death of the soul, its separation from God. After the transgression we lived in sin and according to the flesh. Sin "is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Roman 8:7-8).
As the Apostle says, "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh" (Galatians 5:17). God, however, is Spirit, absolute Goodness and Virtue, and our own spirit is after His image and likeness, although sin has made it good for nothing. So how could anyone at all be spiritually renewed and reconciled with God, unless sin and life according to the flesh had been abolished? The Cross of Christ is this abolition of sin. One of our God-bearing Fathers was asked by an unbeliever if he really believed in Christ crucified. "Yes," he replied, "I believe in Him who crucified sin." God, Himself has borne witness that there were many who were His friends before and after the law when the Cross had not yet been revealed. David, the king and prophet, says as if there were definitely friends of God in his day, O God!" (Psalm 139:17)...
"...Even if a man could gain the whole world, brethren, it would be of no benefit to him because he would have lost his own soul. In reality, each person can only acquire an infinitely small share of this world. What a disaster, then, if someone loses his soul in his efforts to acquire this tiny share, rather than choosing to take up the sign and the word of the Cross and to follow the Giver of Life. Now both the sign which we reverence and the word concerning it are, in fact, the Cross.
As the word and the mystery came before the sign itself, we shall expound them to your charity first. Or rather, Saint Paul expounded them before us, Saint Paul who boasts in the Cross crucified (cf., I Corinthians 2:2). What does he say? The Cross means crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires (cf. Galatians 5:24). Do you think he is referring only to the passions of sensual pleasure and gluttony? In that case, he would not have written to the Corinthians, "Since there is among you strife and divisions are ye not carnal and walk as men? (I Corinthians 3:3). Consequently, anyone who loves glory or money, or simply wants to impose his own will in his eagerness to prevail, is carnal and walks as men, since such things are the source of divisions...
"...Surely we should honor and use this divine trophy of the freedom of the whole human race. Its appearance alone put the serpent, the originator of evil, to flight, triumphs over him and disgrace him, proclaiming him defeated and crushed. It glorifies and magnifies Christ, and displays His victory to the world. If it were really necessary to disregard the Cross because Christ suffered death on it, then His death too would be neither honored nor salutary. So how can we have been baptized into His death, as the Apostle tells us (Romans 6:3)? And how can we share in His Resurrection, if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death (Romans 6:5)? On the other hand, if someone were to reverence the sign of the Cross without the Lord's name written upon it, he could justly be accused of doing something incorrect. Since "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in the earth, and things under the earth" (Phil. 2:10), and the Cross bears this venerable name. How very foolish not to bow the knee at Christ's Cross!
As we reverence and greet the Cross with faith, let us draw and keep the abundant sanctification flowing from it. Then, at the sublimely glorious future advent of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus, as we see Him come in glory, we shall rejoice and skip for joy unceasingly, having attained to a place on His right hand and heard the promised joyful words and blessing, to the glory of the Son of God crucified in the flesh for us.
For Him belongs all glory, together with His Father without beginning and the All-Holy Good and Life-Giving Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen. (Source: Saint Gregory Palamas, The Homilies)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George