We have reached the half-way point in our journey through Great Lent. Most of us are already tired. We’re tired of praying, and of prostrations. The service schedule is more demanding. We’re certainly tired of fasting. It seems as if Lent will never end. And, for many people (if not all of us), the enthusiasm that carried us through the first week of Great Lent, and the strength of that enthusiasm, which helped us to resist the temptations that beset us – the enthusiasm has worn off, and everything seems to be going wrong. We get sick, we get tired – and our sins come crashing back on us, and we yield to temptations that we did so well to resist only a few weeks ago.
That’s why the Church remembers and venerates the holy Cross on this day. We are to be encouraged by the visible display of the sign of the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over death. We are also called to remember that He Who is without sin bore our sins to the Cross for us. Our failures show us that we cannot, by ourselves, in our own strength, overcome our habits of sin. It is by the Cross of Christ that we conquer the enemies of sin and death; and we need to redouble our efforts, beginning with calling on God in prayer, asking for the strength we lack in ourselves to live a life that is pleasing to God, and beneficial to the salvation of our souls.
Our Lord calls us to take up our Cross, and to follow Him. This works itself out in a number of ways. One is by returning to the disciplines of Great Lent, whether we feel like doing so, or not. Another is by facing the problems and cares and concerns of each day without fear, and without complaining, but rather with prayer, and with patience, and with humility. We take up our Cross by embracing and pursuing the Orthodox way of life – of prayer, and fasting, and giving, and struggle; of loving and caring for each other, and for all who are made in the image of God – knowing that the way of the Cross leads to death, in order to obtain life without end. What is this death? It is death to the world: to the pleasures that tempt us, and the problems that beset us. By the asceticism of the Orthodox way of life, we rise above these things, and so become dead to the world – by pursuing and living the life of the world to come, the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, the life we were give in our baptism, the life without end that is the fruit of the victory of our Lord.
We sing, “Before Thy Cross, we bow down to Thee in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection, we glorify.” We come forward to kiss the Cross. When we do so, we are, the fathers tell us, confessing that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Master, and our Savior. But these are empty words, and our bowing and kissing are empty actions, if our lives are not transformed by the knowledge that the way of salvation has been opened unto us by the way of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we say that Jesus Christ is our Lord, but live instead in the ways of the world, with a worldly mind, pursuing worldly things, and living for ourselves, rather than for Christ in us, we are false witnesses. But if we live the Orthodox way of live, we will lose our life – perhaps literally, but certainly, lose our life in the world; that is, lose life as the world sees it – and gain life without end in the kingdom of God.
Brothers and sisters, the way of the Cross is before us. As we sing with our mouths, as we bow down and kiss the holy Cross, let us resolve to show Christ forth in our lives; and let us continue our journey through Lent, to the foot of the Cross at Golgotha – and to the empty tomb of Pascha.
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