Looking Upon the Cross of Christ (Sunday before the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross)

Today we have three Gospel readings because we are in between the feasts of the Nativity of the Mother of God and of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. If we look closely at the three readings, we can see a common theme, Love and obedience to God.

When we look at our Lord on the Cross we are saddened because it was for our sins that our Lord shed His blood. But we are also happy because we know that by the Cross, Christ destroyed death and opened the gates to Heaven for mankind. We are also instructed of the only path to God’s Kingdom in this fallen sinful world. From the moment of our Lord’s birth until His Crucifixion, many men and demons desired the death of our Lord because they hated the Light that Christ shined in this dark sinful world. He did not fit in with this sinful world and therefore the world hated Him. However, He did not come here to stay in that state. He came to rescue those that longed for God and holiness and were tired of the filth and darkness of the sinful world.

He set the example for all that would follow. The only way to set aside this fallen world is to die to it, trusting that whatever sickness that has grown in the soul and body will be purged after death and resurrection into a cleansed world free from the stain of sin.

It is fitting that we should have the Cross as the method of death. Death on a cross was considered the most humiliating execution. To counteract the great sin of pride of our ancestors that longed to be equal to God, our Lord died in the humblest method possible. We must do likewise by picking up our cross and following Him.

In the gospel reading in John, we hear, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” This is a reference to an event recorded in the book of Numbers when the Israelites were wandering in the desert after their exodus from Egypt. They once again were complaining about life in the wilderness and wished to be back in Egypt as slaves so that they could at least enjoy the tastier foods and have some comforts. They had no patience or appreciation for all that God had done for them and what He promised to give to them. They forgot about the infanticide that the Egyptians did to them and the hard brick laying that was forced on them. To punish them, He sent serpents to where they were that bit and killed many of them. This woke them up and they repented and begged Moses to pray to God to take the snakes away. God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and to raise it high on a pole so that anyone that was bitten by a snake could look upon the bronze serpent and be healed.

We Christians today are no different than the Israelites. After being delivered from the enslavement to sin, we many times complain about the seemingly austere life of a Christian. We long for the old days of pleasurable sin, forgetting the bitterness of sin. There is no lasting joy in a life without God, because at best it will end in death after about 80 years. Our conscience will torment us the whole time as well. Instead of longing for days of the past and complaining about the ascetic life, we should fill our time with holy endeavors such as spiritual reading, attending services, associating with other Christians, seeking for ways to share the Gospel to others in word and in deed, and any other work that Christ left for us to do. We should focus on what we have been delivered from and on the eternal reward of heavenly life in communion with God, the Angels, and of all the Saints. We should look to eternal things that do not wear out such as building relationships with those that God has put in our lives.

Just as how God provided the Israelites with the bronze serpent, God the Father sent His Son to heal us of our sins. He was lifted up on the Cross for the whole world to see. How is Christ similar to a serpent? “It is because He became one of us, who are evil by disposition, for he came ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh,’’ and ‘He was counted with the transgressors.’” (St. Cyril of Alexandria) But just as how the bronze serpent did not have poison in it, our Lord did not have sin in Him.

And although Christ came to save all mankind, not everyone bitten by the serpents of sin look upon Him as instructed. They would rather stay in the darkness with the poison of sin than to look at the brilliance of Christ. “To look at Him and the Cross means to render one’s whole life dead and crucified to the world, unmoved by evil. Truly it is as the prophet says: ‘They nail their own flesh with the fear of God.’ The nail would be the self-control that holds the flesh.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa)

It is important to note that God did not destroy the serpents, but only kept their bites from causing death. This means that even for those that look to the Cross, they will still have to battle against the lusts of the flesh. There will come a time when the serpents will be destroyed, but now is a time for training.

In the second Gospel reading, we hear of a lawyer testing our Lord to see if He would contradict or add to the law of Moses. He asks what is the greatest commandment. We are blessed to hear how all of the commandments are really summed up into two commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor, and that even these two are really combined into one commandment because one cannot truly be done without the other. We are reminded of our Lord asking Peter if he loved Him, and then asking him to feed His sheep, and of the inspection at our Lord’s second coming where He will either commend or condemn us for seeing Him hungry and feeding him or not in the people we encounter. All sins are a result of either not loving God or not loving our neighbor. Therefore, the serpents can also be seen as acts of hatred toward God and neighbor. This is made clear by the fact that the Israelites were complaining about God and Moses.

Finally, we heard about the Mother of God in the third Gospel reading. We understand why God chose her from the very beginning of creation to be the person through whom the Word would become Incarnate. St. Luke records our Lord saying of her, “blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” From infancy the Theotokos kept the commandments of God and was found to be full of Grace at the time of the Annunciation. And we know that at the time of our Lord’s Crucifixion, the most pure Mother stayed there with Him looking upon Him and the Cross, being crucified herself in the spirit as she saw her sinless Son crucified as criminal.

So, as we remember these two great feasts of the Nativity of the Theotokos and of the Exaltation of the Cross, may we imitate the Holy Mother of God in her keeping of God’s word and staying at the foot of the Cross that brings Life to the world. For our Lord Jesus Christ has become for us the tree of life, to Whom be the glory together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages, Amen.

The Beheading of the Glorious Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John (Mark 6:14-30)

Today is a very sobering day. We remember the death of the greatest man born of woman, the holy and righteous John the forerunner and Baptist. It just so happens that we as a country remember this day because of the terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000 people. This latter event is a reminder that this world is not our lasting home, but rather a quickly changing, uncertain, and temporary place that God uses to train and mold us into the Sons of God that He has willed from the beginning of creation. We can also connect the events in the sense that just as on this day that the Church remembers the egregious murder of Saint John the Baptist, who represented God’s law and prophets, who was the voice of God and prepared the way for Christ, the fact that our country is infested with sin and kills the voice of God, God lovingly gave us a wake-up call to remember our sins and to repent. Many did repent and go back to Church and started living better lives, but sadly this did not last.

It is very interesting that the sins that led to the death of John the Baptist were sexual sins. First, St. John was imprisoned for boldly condemning Herod for marrying his brother’s wife. This was adultery, which Gregory Palamas calls the most shameful of sins. Then when Herodias’s daughter lewdly danced at a party for Herod, he was so drunk with lust that he gave way to the beheading of the Holy Forerunner of Christ.

Today, almost every evil is tied to these sins of the flesh. Pornography, abortion, sex-trafficking, homosexuality, transgenderism, adultery, divorce, pre-marital relations, and so on. People have shut up their conscience as Herod did by imprisoning St. John, the voice of God. And sadly, many have gone to their death in sin because they killed their conscience completely as Herodias convinced Herod to kill our God-bearing father, St. John.

But we have the choice to become forerunners for Christ. St. John not only prepared the people for the coming of Christ by his words, but also by his deeds. Far from being enticed by the sinful pleasures of the world, the world unworthy of him, he dwelt in desert places, living a frugal life without worldly concerns or material pleasures that beguile the body and its senses.

Instead of falling into all kinds of sins, we must boldly expose the sins of the world. When we fall into sins, let us punish ourselves with fasting, vigils, prayer, and almsgiving.

St. John lived such a holy life, possibly a sinless life, that St. Gregory Palamas says that it was not fitting that he die naturally since natural death was the sentence of Adam’s transgression, which was not binding on him who was the minister of the commandment and who had obeyed God even from his mother’s womb. The saints of God lay down their life for the sake of virtue and godliness and this is why St. John died this violent death appropriate for the saints. He heralded the death of Christ by his death.

With the world becoming even more intolerant of Christianity, it might be that we must die as martyrs as well. But even if we don’t die as public martyrs, we can be secret martyrs. Just as St. John the theologian and his brother James were told that they would both drink the cup of Christ which was the chalice of suffering, yet only St. James was suffered a violent death. St. John the Theologian was a secret martyr in that had he lived in a time of persecution he would have been a martyr. Secret martyrs endure the assaults of the hidden enemy and resist every carnal desire. By sacrificing themselves to God on the altar of their hearts, they become true martyrs even in times of peace. May God grant us to be counted worthy of such an end. Amen.