Theological commentary on the Sunday of the Adoration of the Cross
We have arrived, by God's grace, on the Third Sunday of Lent, on the Sunday of the Adoration of the Cross, during which the Holy Cross is displayed for worship, in order to draw strength from it, to continue our spiritual struggle until the Resurrection. May we recover from the fatigue of the previous days and victoriously repel the furious attacks of the devil against us in this holy season, who strives to frustrate us in our struggle. And this is because the Holy Cross is our great weapon against the devil and his traps. It is the great trophy of victory against ungodly forces and the comfort of all suffering.
The Cross of the Lord is for our Christian faith, a leading symbol of sacrifice and sanctification. The Cross together with the Resurrection act as two main axes on which the life of faithful Christians moves. The Resurrection follows the Cross and presupposes the Cross, and the Cross foreshadows the Resurrection. Without the Cross there is no Resurrection. The Theology of the Cross is based on these principles and its great importance for the life of the Church.
The great apostle of the Gentiles Paul, the theologian par excellence of the Cross, often emphasizes in his divinely inspired letters that the Cross of Christ is for him a boast. "We were not born boasting but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6,13), because "the word of the cross is to those who are cleansed a particle, but to those who are saved it is the power of God" (1,17 Cor. XNUMX:XNUMX). The Lord of glory "in the hands of the lawless" he was nailed to the wood of the Cross, to suffer the painful torture of crucifixion and die as a shameless criminal. But this human crime, because of the immeasurable divine love, worked beneficially for the god-killing human race.
According to the high theology of Paul the heavenly, the Cross of Christ, from a dishonorable and horrible murderous instrument to kill evil people, was transformed, after the death of the Lord on the cross, into a symbol of salvation, a means of reconciliation with God and a source of sanctification. Human wickedness gave God pain and death through the wood of the Cross, divine injustice and extreme charity, on the contrary, gave His executioner love and redemption! So the power of the Cross lies in the pure love of God, which is now channeled to humanity and the whole creation through the Cross.
However, in order for man to receive divine sanctification through the Cross, it is necessary to believe in Christ the Redeemer and in His redemptive Sacrifice on the cross and to crucify himself, just like Christ, to be crucified with Him, of course not literally as do some papists, who every year on Good Friday, who are crucified on a wooden cross, but to crucify, not his body, but his sinful and bad self, "the pleasures of life", as the holy hymn writer of M. Week exhorts, "so that we may live together in him (Christ)».
We must point out here the obvious aversion, even enmity towards the Cross of Christ, of many heretical Christian groups. As a whole, then, the Protestant world does not pay any respect to the Cross. It is known that Protestants do not make the sign of the Cross and use it only as a decorative element! Jehovah's Witnesses, even worse than them, fight furiously against the sign of the Cross, characterizing it as
pagan symbol, despite the fact that it was for more than seventy years the logo of their magazine! They don't even pronounce the name Stavros and call him instead "stake". In the New Testament they have replaced the word Cross with the word "wood", in contrast to the apostle Paul, who boasts about the Cross of the Lord (Rom.6,13)!
We Orthodox, who keep the Christian teaching unadulterated, worship the holy Cross and draw strength and sanctification from it. Every year, in addition to the many feasts of veneration of the Lord's Cross, we also venerate it on Holy Cross Sunday, in order to receive, as we mentioned above, strength in our spiritual struggle during this holy season.
Ο Saint Cyril of Jerusalem he wrote the following important about the power of the Righteous and Livestock: "The sign of the Cross is great security. It does not require any expenditure and for this reason it is accessible even to the poor. It is not trouble even for the sick, because Grace is from God and is a sign of the faithful and a fear for demons. Because on the Cross, he conquered the demons, cast them out, clearly humiliated them. So when they see the Cross, they think of the Crucified One. They fear Him who crushed the heads of the mental dragon".
Ο Saint Chrysostom urges us: "Make the sign of the Cross on your forehead and then the Devil will not be able to harm you in any way. With the power of the Cross, the demons ceased to be terrible and became easy to despise and because of this, death was conquered and disappeared and at the same time death ceased to be death, but sleep. The Cross is the trophy of victory against demons, it is the knife against sin, the sword with which Christ pierced the serpent. The Cross which is the will of the Father, the glory of the Only Begotten, the splendor of the Spirit, the jewel of the angels, the security of the Church, the boast of Paul, the wall of the Saints, the light of the whole world".
Ο Saint Germanos, Patriarch of Constantinople, praising the Holy Cross, which is projected for veneration, names him "royal bed". Bed, on which rested the Son and Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, during the horrible sacrifice of Calvary.
The rapture and joy of M. Tessarakosti and especially the experience of the Holy and Immaculate Passions of our Christ, can give us the real joy of the Resurrection. This makes us endure with determination and patience the problems of life, that is, to endure our personal cross (Matthew 16,24), hoping all the time in the coming resurrection, metaphorically and literally. This steadfast faith gives us strength and makes us face life with optimism, in contrast to the papal-protestant West, which eagerly seeks bliss without sacrifice, that is, it seeks resurrection without the cross. That's why he can't meet her anywhere. Our Greek Orthodox tradition is based on the Pauline principle: "and if we die with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with him, seeing that Christ, being raised from the dead, does not die, his death does not dominate" (Rom. 6,8-9). This makes us stand out from the heretical West, which lives in pessimism, because of its spiritual death, having no hope of resurrection, because it does not believe in the power of the Cross of Christ and does not have the humble disposition to cross itself with Him, so that it can so to meet Him. Our Orthodoxy is the Church of the Cross for this
experiences and lives unceasingly the unspeakable joy of the Resurrection, as the real and unique Church of the Resurrection.
Christ calls us, with the reading of the Gospel of the Sunday of the Adoration of the Cross, to take up our personal cross and follow Him. Our own cross is our personal obligation, the struggle
us, to expel evil and sin from within us. Let's cut our passions. To fight evil wherever it is. To oppose the devil, who is next to us and tries to lure us into sin, to destroy us. To detach ourselves from the mire of sinful generations and adorn ourselves with virtues. To shake our faith in Christ and expel from within ourselves the pernicious seeds and weeds of unbelief, which Satan sows in us. To live a virtuous life, adapting our life to the great model, our Christ.
To see our fellow human beings as our brothers and to stop considering them as our enemies and rivals. To stop any hostile attitude towards anyone we consider our enemy, no matter what harm he may have done to us, and to reconcile with him. To put into practice the love for them, with works of charity, having the certainty that whatever we offer to our suffering fellow man we offer to Christ.
To include in our personal crusade, our conscious church life. Let's go to church incessantly. To be constantly in a state of penance, to confess, to regularly receive the Body and Blood of the Lord. And finally we are called to boldly confess God in every word, wherever we are. To declare our Orthodox faith, as the only saving faith, in order to have the hope that, as we confess our Christ, so He will confess us, before our Heavenly Father!
This cross may seem heavy to us, but it is not. It is useful, easy to use, light, as our Lord assured us. He with His redemptive grace makes it light and our journey of the cross pleasant. He calls us: Come to me all those who are tired and burdened by the burden of sin, from the problems and sufferings of life and I will give you rest. Enter into my yoke, walk in my path, be exemplified by my meekness and humble and submissive heart, which burns with love for you, and find true and lasting rest for your weary and afflicted souls. I will make the burden of the cross of our life light and easy to use! No religious founder, philosopher, social reformer ever uttered such consoling words of love and compassion to suffering man. They were proclaimed by the only true philanthropist, our Incarnate God, our Lord and Redeemer Christ. We have only to accept the invitation of our salvation, to say to Him the great and decisive, Yes! To surrender ourselves to Him soul and body, to belong only to Him. To change course in our life.
The overwhelming climate of Holy and Great Lent can help us make this great leap of ours, from the rough and dark roads of sin, which lead to decay and death, to the bright road of salvation, to our union with the Savior our Christ, in the heavenly kingdom of God, in eternal life and blessedness. And one last and important thing: to put the Cross in our lives. Let's shield ourselves with him. To make the sign of the cross, when we get up from our bed, when
we eat when we leave the house and cross the door when we pass in front of a church. When we hear something good or bad. When we go to bed at night. Always wear a cross on us. Because "A Christian without the sign of the Cross is like a soldier without a weapon", as he assures us Saint Theophanes the Enclosed!
On the Sunday of the Adoration of the Cross, our Holy Church invites us to worship the Holy Cross, to gain strength and courage, to continue our spiritual struggle to the end. Let's make our anti-devil, who strives to take us to his side and distract us from God, flee in disorder. To understand that our real interest is to be with God, even if this relationship seems difficult to us, rather than with the plan, which beautifies our sin, to lure us into destruction. So let us hasten to kneel before this supreme and saving symbol of our Church, to receive God's grace and the strength to continue our spiritual struggle, arriving cleansed and sanctified at Holy Easter, to ontologically experience the great and world-saving event of Divine Resurrection, the abolition of death and the hope of our own resurrection!
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