In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Dear fathers, brothers, and sisters! The fourth week of Lent is coming, and Wednesday will be the half point of the Holy Forty Days of Lent. We are almost halfway to the Radiant Resurrection of Christ. Today the Church has brought out for us the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord to venerate, and we sing: “Before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy Holy Resurrection we glorify!”
We venerate the Passion of Christ, we run to Him, we receive strength, we pray, and at the same time we glorify the Radiant Resurrection of Christ. Each one of us has an object closest to our hearts—our baptismal cross; we bless it, we kiss it and pray, and today in the prayers that we have read at the Divine Liturgy the priest has asked the Lord to vouchsafe all those present to receive Communion and that the Lord may be and live in human hearts. Christ is inside us, and the Lord’s cross is close to our hearts.
Here are the Gospel words that we have heard today: Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me (Mk. 8:34). Everyone has their own cross, and everyone is called to take it up and follow Christ. When Roman soldiers and legionaries would go on long-range military campaigns, they would take with them gear in the form of two wooden poles, bound to each other in the shape of a cross. It was called a furca. They would load the necessary things onto it—all that they would need during the campaign. As for us, we have embarked on a spiritual journey, a “military campaign” of following Christ in order to reach the Radiant Resurrection of Christ. We have taken with us the most necessary tools to fight sin and our passions, and every Sunday we stop and remember a special event in the history of Orthodoxy.
The Sunday of the first week of Lent is called the Triumph of Orthodoxy. We kissed holy icons and remembered how the Holy Church established the veneration of icons. By praying in front of images of the saints, the Savior, and the Mother of God we turn to the prototypes—to the holy personalities; we pray, asking for help to continue on this spiritual path. On Sunday of the second week of Lent we commemorated St. Gregory Palamas: a great ascetic who spoke and wrote much about the work of the grace of God, about solitary prayer, hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer. Today we commemorate the Life-Giving Cross of the Savior and venerate it. Next Sunday will be the feast of a celebrated ascetic of the Holy Church—St. John Climacus. Then St. Mary of Egypt, and then Palm Sunday. And all these very important stops on our walk in Christ’s footsteps during Lent help us, strengthen us, and encourage us to spend both this fasting period and our whole lives worthily, to live with God, not to be despondent or depressed, and, looking at the Cross of the Lord, to take courage from the love that the Lord has for people and for which He became incarnate, voluntarily accepted Crucifixion, rose from the dead and gave us all eternal life—the opportunity to live with Him in the Heavenly Kingdom.
Today we also sing: “The Cross is the guardian of the whole world, the Cross is the beauty of the Church, the Cross is the might of kings, the Cross is the strengthening of the faithful, the Cross, angel’s glory, and wound to demons.” Protecting ourselves with the sign of the cross every time and every day, let us be strengthened in faith in God, try not to succumb to weaknesses and passions, and not commit sins, but become more and more rooted in love for God and our neighbor, and be faithful children of Christ our Savior that we may inherit eternal life with God. Amen.
