Christ crucified (source)
Excerpt from a talk of Metropolitan Avgoustinos (Kantiotes) of Florina (+2010), at a summer camp in 1988.
My beloved children, I wanted to offer
you a few words, similar to those that I said when you came, and
which I hope that you will pay attention to. The occasion is given to
me by the group that appeared here, carrying high the precious Cross,
with the inscription: “By this [sign], we conquer.”
I will speak of the Cross, and at the
end I will give you a small cross as a keepsake. I will talk to you
about the Cross, which is the symbol of struggle and of victory, it
is the weapon of Christianity. The Apostle Paul includes this at the
end of his epistle to the Ephesians, where he speaks about thr
spiritual armor of the Christians. And as you are not just plantings
of the Lord, but also strugglers and fellow fighters against the
world, yourselves and satan, therefore, I will offer you some words
regarding the Cross, due to their timeliness, I hope that you will
give them greater care.
The Cross, my beloved children, the
Cross is everywhere. It was at the summit of Hagia Sophia. It was
illumined in the evening and enlightened the Bosporus, until the dark
day when the Turks uprooted it, and in its place, placed the crescent
moon. Let us hope that, “again with time and seasons”, that we
might raise it again on the dome of Hagia Sophia. The Cross is on the
domes of all churches. In the Holy Altar, the icon of Christ on the
Cross takes center place, and under its shadow, stands the Holy Table
and the Chalice and Paten and the Gospel. The Cross is on the graves.
The Cross is on the Greek flag. The Cross is everywhere.
What is the Cross? I will not speak of
myself, but someone else who loved it very much, and preached it to
all the ends of the earth will. This is the Apostle Paul. The Apostle
Paul, in his epistle to the Galacians, writes: “But far be it from
me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which
the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galacians
6:14) With these words, the Apostle tells us what the Cross is. But
let us try to explain this.
Men have a tendency to boast.
Scientists, rich people, great and small people take boast in
two-thousand things. It is a rare thing to find a man who is not
boasting in something...But while the world boasts in these false
boasts, the apostle Paul boasts in another great boast, one exalted,
eternal. He takes boast in the Cross of Christ. Why is this?
He does not boast in the wood. The wood
of the Cross was known even before Christ, but this was not something
worthy of praise, but of fear, for upon the cross were crucified the
most-incomparably terrible people of the Roman society, who were
condemned to the ultimate penalty, the penalty of death. Paul boasts,
because upon the Cross was sacrificed our Lord Jesus Christ, and from
then on, the wood of condemnation became the wood of blessing. Christ
was crucified, not because He did anything wrong, like the other two
“who were crucified with Him”, who confessed: “we are receiving
our just punishment” (Luke 23:41). No, Christ was sinless, He was
innocent, He never worked any offense. And as an innocent person, He
should not have been crucified, as I remark in my book: “Towards
Golgotha”, which I encourage you to read, but He was crucified on
behalf of our sins.
All of us—small, great, men, women—we
are sinners and on us lies the burden of responsibility and guilt. On
behalf of justice for our small and great sins, the debaucheries, the
licentiousness, the arrogances, the blasphemies, and the other sins
of our age, we should have been punished. Divine righteousness should
have ordered that the earth open to swallow us up, and lift up the
waters of the rivers and lake from Olympus to the Alps, and with a
universal flood to drown everyone.
Did God do this? Glory to Your
forbearance, O Lord! You did not that which we deserved. You did not
punish us. And not only did You not punish us, but You came to this
world as a man, and took upon Your shoulders the sins of the whole
world, of all the ages, as the One Who “takes away the sin of the
world” (John 1:29), and You redeemed with Your precious Blood the
debt of our sins. Christ was punished instead of us. The sinless One
for the sinners, the Righteous for the unrighteous. “The blood of
Jesus Christ...cleanses us from every sin” (John I 1:7). One drop
of the blood of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is sufficient to
blot out the sins of the whole world. If we could put the sins of all
men on one side of a scale, and on the other, only one drop of the
blood of Christ, the scale would lean towards the precious Blood!
This, therefore, is why we honor the
Cross. Because it is the Holy Altar on which was sacrificed our Lord
Jesus Christ. Because of this occurs Divine Liturgy, which is the
re-enacting, or more properly, the continuation of the sacrifice of
Christ on the Cross, in order for us to partake within us of the Body
and the Blood of Christ. This is the proclamation of the Priest:
“Drink of it all of you, this is my blood, which is shed for you
and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Therefore, when we speak of the Cross,
we are not thinking of faith in the sacrifice of the crucified
Redeemer of the world, and not simple of the wood of the Cross, like
the heretics condemn us of. As the Cross is in for parts, therefore
it is the deep and enlightened nous of the Church, extending to the
heights, to the depths, to length and width. Therefore, is from the
height of the Cross—geometrically speaking—we noetically extend
the summit of the wood above, towards heaven, passing the stars, the
sun, the moon, we will pass all asteroids, and reach the courts of
the Lord, and the Angels will behold the radiance and will chant of
the grandeur of the Cross. If again we extend the wood of the Cross
down, from the bloodied feet of Christ, we will pass the bark and the
layers of earth, and reach the abyss, and the demons will tremble and
shake. Finally, if we noetically extend the horizontal wood of the
Cross, upon which the Spotless Hands of Christ were nailed to the
left and the right, towards the East and the West, we will make the
sign of an unending circle, a divine embrace, which desires to
embrace and to unite and to make brethren of all men of the East and
of the West, of the left and of the right. And if sometime there is
some power that could unite the superpowers of America and Russia,
which satan divided into to armies and pitted them against each other
with fiery weapons. One day, may they gather together and have
nothing happen, if, as I said, there were some power to unite them.
This power is not the hammer and the sickle, nor the stars and the
stripes, nor any other worldly symbol, but he Cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let us mention a hymn among ourselves:
“O paradoxical wonder!
The length and breadth of the Cross
is equal to heaven,
for with divine grace
it sanctifies the whole world
with it the barbarian nations are
conquered,
with it the scepters of rulers are
strengthened...”
[Prosomoion from the Praises on the Feast of the Holy Cross]
I return to the word of the Apostle
Paul: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I
to the world.” (Galacians 6:14) In other words, the boast of Paul
is the Cross of the Lord. This is the boast, in other words, the deep
faith in the Cross of Christ, which made him dead to the world and to
sin. In order to understand better what it means to say: “the world
has been crucified to me, and I to the world”, I will give you an
example. Go to the graves and you will find the grave of the most
greedy person, he who would kill for one cent. Put in front of it a
sack of gold coins. What will happen? Will he be moved? No, because
he is dead. Now go to the grave of the greatest lover of pleasure and
licentious person, and place before the grave the most beautiful
women. Will he be moved? No, because he is dead. Continue on to the
grave of someone who loved positions and power and medals, and give
him the greatest staff of authority. Will he extend his hand to take
it? No, because he is dead. Therefore, when the Christian, every
Christian with deep faith in the Crucified, deadens his sinful mind
and nails down his passions, like Paul, then he becomes dead to sin,
to the world, and the world to him, and he will confess with joy: “it
is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me...” (Galacians
2:20)
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment