Sermon for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Sermon for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today we venerate the Cross of the Lord with awe and gratitude. As two thousand years ago, the Cross of the Lord remains a stumbling block for some, and folly for others, but for us, believers and saved by the Cross of the Lord, it is strength, it is the glory of the Lord.
The Cross of the Lord is terrifying: it is the instrument of cruel, agonizing death. The very horror that grips us when we gaze upon its instrument should teach us the measure of the Lord’s love. The Lord so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to save it. And this world, after the incarnation of the Word of God, after Christ’s life on earth, after He proclaimed the Divine teaching for all peoples to hear, and after He confirmed and proved the preaching of love by a death without malice, a death unmixed with a single moment of resistance, revenge, or bitterness—after all this, our world is no longer the same. Its fate is not tragically terrifying and painful before God’s judgment, because God Himself entered into this fate of the world, because this, our present fate, has bound God and man together.
And the Cross tells us how dear man is to God and how precious this love is. Love can only be answered with love—love cannot be redeemed by anything else.
And so we are faced with a question, a question of conscience for now, which in due time will become the question the Lord will ask us at the Last Judgment, when He stands before us not only in His glory, but stands before us wounded for our sins. For the Judge who will stand before us is the same Lord who gave His life for each of us. What will we answer? Will we really have to tell the Lord that His death was in vain, that His Cross was unnecessary, that when we saw how much the Lord loved us, we lacked any reciprocal love, and we told Him that we preferred to walk in darkness, that we preferred to be guided by passions, by our lusts, that the broad road of this world is dearer to us than the narrow path of the Lord? While we live on earth, we can deceive ourselves that there is still time. But this is not true—time is terribly short. Our life can end in an instant, and then our standing before the Lord’s judgment seat will begin, and then it will be too late. But now there is time: there is time only if we transform every moment of our life into love; Only if we transform every moment of our lives into love for God and love for every person, whether we like them or not, whether they are close to us or not, only then will our soul mature to meet the Lord.
Let us gaze upon the Cross. If someone close to us died for us and because of us, would our soul not be shaken to its very depths? Wouldn’t we be changed? And so: the Lord died—can we remain indifferent? Let us bow before the Cross, but not just for a moment: let us bow, bow beneath this Cross, take this Cross upon our shoulders, as best we can, and follow Christ, Who gave us an example, as He Himself tells us to follow Him. And then we will unite with Him in love, then we will be enlivened by the awesome Cross of the Lord, and then He will not stand before us condemning us, but saving us and leading us into the endless, triumphant, victorious joy of eternal life. Amen.
