Every
Christian must bear his cross
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky)
During
the Divine Liturgy today we all heard what our Lord Jesus Christ said,
that every Christian must bear his cross: " Whoever wants to be
my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me." He Himself bore a cross His whole life; not only to Golgotha
did He carry His heavy wooden Cross, on which He would soon be
crucified. He carried a cross His whole life! He bore a cross in being
the Son of God. The Infinite God united with human nature and, as the
God-man, lived among the people, sharing their life with them. This
was insufficient: He brought to earth a deposit of love and mercy. He
forgave everyone, judged no one, performed countless miraculous acts
of mercy, love, forgiveness, and healing. And the more He poured out
this light of love amongst the people, the tighter and tighter did His
embittered enemies close in around Him, hating Him with a satanic
hatred, until finally they nailed Him to the Cross.
As you heard,
it was commanded that a Christian can only follow Him if he takes up
his cross and follows Him. As St. Theophan the Recluse taught, this
most holy cross is threefold. One part of this cross is all of the
hardships that a man must bear, desiring to live a pious Christian
life and seeing that he is unsuccessful, because his sinful habits and
habitual sins control him and subject him to themselves. Thus it is
often: a man’s soul is aflame, hoping for a good Christian life, but
his habitual sins, all those habits that he has nurtured, inexorably
pull him toward themselves. And wherever he may go, this follows him
everywhere. For that reason St. Theophan himself compares the
condition of a sinful person with that of a person to the back of
whose shoulders has been tied a smoldering, stinking, rotting corpse.
He is bound, and wherever he may run, all of this stays with him. So
it is with our sinful nature – "you can’t escape
yourself" – as one Russian once said.
The second
cross is comprised by the efforts of every struggle and hardship of
our earthly life. This is what is so often called our CROSS – namely
those sorrows, infirmities, losses, etc. But here I must point out
that if man ultimately faces all of these sorrows humbly and
obediently, accepting them as sent by God’s providence for his own
good, he will accept everything differently. So long as he grumbles,
resists, and rages, his soul will never be at rest. But when he stops
grumbling, humbly and obediently receiving these trials from the right
hand of God, he will see that although everything around him is
seemingly the same, he himself is different: he accepts all of these
sorrows and difficulties calmly, with a Christian conviction, that
this is how it must be! Our Lord and Heavenly Father will not give you
a stone instead of bread, and when he gives you sorrows, it means that
you must endure it in a Christian manner.
The third part,
the third cross, is, according to St. Theophan (and he is famous for
his spiritual labors) the cross of those temptations that attack a man
when he has overcome the allure of everyday sins, as it was with the
great spiritual athletes. They were well beyond the seduction of
conventional sins. Then come the force and abyss of the most dangerous
temptation – the temptation of pride. And then sometimes they would
falter in their struggle against these temptations of prideful
thoughts. This cross is rightfully known only by those who have to
carry it, as that same St. Theophan noted. But one way or the other,
our duty is to bear our cross, for the Lord recognizes no other
followers.
Amen.
Translated from the original Russian by Rdr. Gregory Levitsky
Media Office of the Eastern American Diocese
