Homily One on the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord (Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov)

Homily One on the Exaltation of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord

By Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov

(Delivered in 1961)

"Today, the Master of creation and the Lord of glory 
is fastened to the Cross, pierced in the side, 
tasting gall and vinegar,  and adorned with the sweetness of the Church, 
crowned with thorns."

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Dear brothers and sisters, an involuntary sorrow fills our soul today, often pouring forth in tears, as we hear from the Gospel reading and the touching hymns the poignant narrative of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Should we, as Christians, members of His Body, beneficiaries of His grace, not feel compassion for Him, wounded by the crown of thorns? Should we not grieve with all our hearts at the sight of the indescribable sufferings of our greatest Benefactor?

It is not only difficult, but positively impossible to imagine anything more astonishing than the spectacle of Golgotha. Here is the ineffable miracle of Divine love for the disobedient creation, man. It began, this miracle, in the earthly paradise, together with the creation of man, and was accomplished on Golgotha by the death of the God-man.

Created by Divine love, the first man was endowed with all the perfections and pleasures of life. What else could he wish for in paradise, having received everything necessary from God? If we were asked: "What do you need for your life to be blessed?", we would probably answer: "We wish that there were no disasters, misfortunes, sorrows on earth, that everyone would only enjoy everything, without having reasons to be at odds with each other, and, finally, that people would never die, but be eternally blessed."

Is that so? And imagine, dear brothers and sisters, that all this was given to man: man had not yet had time to express this desire, yet everything was granted to him by a loving God without his request. God – Almighty Love – created man not for anything else, but precisely for blessedness, and for eternal blessedness. In order for man to taste the fullness of this blessedness, the loving Creator bestowed upon man reason and freedom. Yet, man remains man always. What people are with their inclinations now, we know. The same sinful inclinations were inherent in the first people.

A man who has received from God everything for blessedness is not satisfied with his wonderful state, he thinks: "This is not enough for me." The tempting words of the serpent: "You will be like gods" (Gen. 3:5) - gave birth to the desire to be God in man. "A little lower than the Angels" (Psalm 8:6 ), the king to whom all earthly animals and beasts were subject, man in the paradise of sweetness does not consider himself satisfied with his state. Man desired what is inconsistent with his limited, created nature, and thus the first great sin was committed.

And so begins the history of the sufferings of mankind, begins a long series of resistance to the Divine will, errors, crimes and disasters of a disobedient, incomprehensible creature. How many promises, covenants, threats and punishments of God were used to bring to reason and restore fallen man!

Finally, in order to raise him to his first state, lost through sin, in the last days a means was put into effect that only the infinite love of God could have invented. The Son of God Himself took upon Himself human flesh! God became man in order to make man God – to make him what man had once so boldly striven for. The God-man, who had committed no sin, sacrificed Himself for the sins of the whole world. The justice of God, demanding the punishment of the guilty, was satisfied. His suffering of the Cross extended from Bethlehem to Golgotha, and it was completed on Golgotha.

This bitterness of the cup of all human evils, which the Savior had to drink for humanity on Golgotha, was so terrible for the Sinless One that it brought Him sorrow and anguish. "My Father," He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me" (Matt. 26:39). "My soul is sorrowful even to death" (Matt. 26:38). It is sorrowful, of course, not because He was afraid of the coming death. Death is terrible for sinners, terrible because of the unknown, or rather, because of the unknown future fate beyond the grave. For the Son of God, such fear was impossible. Everything is known to Him, and the future is as present. It is sorrowful because of the idea of the terrifying, indescribable mass of human iniquities, and the severity of the punishments for these iniquities.

What was the severity of the torment of the Divine Sufferer, we, dear brothers and sisters, heard from the Gospel reading that was just read. But the Gospel conveys to us only the external suffering, tangible to the external senses of the spectators, without revealing what was happening in His spirit, without explaining the secret of the internal suffering of the God-man. And what can compare with these sufferings? There have been many sufferers in the world, inhumanly destroyed, there will be many more, but such a Sufferer has never been and never will be.

It is hard for a righteous man to suffer, to suffer undeservedly, without guilt, but if he does not meet with justice in people, he can still find consolation in the fact that there is a Just God, Who will never abandon him. This faith is capable of alleviating the most severe suffering. But the crucified Christ is deprived of even this one consolation. The fullness of Divine Justice fell upon Him with its weight, because He bore upon Himself the entire sum of the crimes of the sinful world, as the Prophet says: "the sins of our world are upon Him" (Is. 53:5). The Father abandoned Him, and from the suffering soul there came forth a stunning cry: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me" (Matt. 27:46)? There are no words worthy to depict the full grandeur of the Sacrifice of Golgotha, the fullness of the boundless Divine love for wicked humanity.

How did humanity react to this unprecedented event on Golgotha? People not only raised their Benefactor to the Cross, but did not stop mocking Him as He suffered on the Cross. Finally: "It is finished" (John 19:30)! The terrible and glorious mystery was accomplished, an indescribable, unprecedented event was accomplished: the Divine Sufferer gave up the ghost!

Unfeeling nature could not endure, could not stand this moment: all creation changed from fear, shuddered from horror, the sun darkened, and darkness covered the earth, stained with the Blood of the God-man, the rocks split, the curtain of the Temple was torn, revealing the Holy of Holies, the caves of the graves opened, and the dead rose from their sleepless sleep. And the living trembled when they heard the thunder of heavenly signs, they heard - and repented. Some of them already confessed the Crucified Son of God, and others in horror and fear, beating their breasts, returned from the place of evil (Luke 23:48). And all who cried: "Crucify, crucify Him!" (Luke 23:21), and their leaders, who did not turn to faith and did not repent, of course, received what they deserved for their deeds and are now experiencing hopeless grief in the place of eternal torment.

But, dear brothers and sisters, as natural as it is for us to weep for the agonizing sufferings of the Lord at the foot of the Cross, we need to weep here more for ourselves, for our sins. "Weep for yourselves and for your children" (Luke 23:28), the Divine Cross-Bearer said to the women of Jerusalem on the way to the place of crucifixion. We must turn to ourselves. These people who looked at the crucifixion and perhaps cried out at the time: "Crucify, crucify Him!" were ignorant, were misled by their superiors and did not know for sure that Christ is the Son of God and that He will rise again. But you and I, dear ones, know all this for sure, and therefore more will be asked of us. True, we honor the Cross of the Lord with reverence and worship the Lord crucified for us, but do we feel, dear brothers and sisters, that the solemn rite of veneration of the Cross serves not only as a remembrance of an event that once took place, but also serves as a visual reminder that Jesus Christ suffered for each of us.

He did not suffer from those and not only for those who nailed Him, but He suffered for each of us standing here. The Cross of Christ tells us that our sins are the greatest evil, for they were the cause of our Savior's death on the Cross. That by giving in to them, we become enemies of God and ourselves. That truth is infinite and punishes iniquity in the most terrible way, it poured out the whole cup of its wrath even on the God-man, who deigned to bear the sins of the world. That, therefore, the lot of a sinner, if he remains a sinner, is his inevitable eternal torment.

The Cross of Christ tells us of the infinite love of the Heavenly Father for the sinful human race, Who did not spare His only begotten Son, but gave Him up for us, and of the extreme, amazing self-sacrifice of the Son of God. And should we not repay Him for this with mutual love and the fulfillment of His commandments! The Cross of Christ reminds us of our Heavenly Fatherland, the entrance to which was closed for thousands of years, but finally, with the appearance of the Cross of the Lord, opened. It reminds us of those eternal blessings that have been prepared there for all who have loved God since the foundation of the world. O native land, the land desired by the heart! Who of the earthly wanderers would not wish to move to you in time? Who, after many difficult feats and labors, tears and weeping, would not hasten with joy to rest in your bright abodes, where there are no more tears and sorrows, but only endless blessedness? But sins, sins do not admit us, dear brothers and sisters, into the courts of the Heavenly Father, they will not allow us even from afar to behold the Heavenly Jerusalem, our city, our Fatherland, which we only seek here. Sweetly beats the heart of the righteous when, looking at the Tree of the Cross, he is transported, even if only in thought, to the paradise of sweetness opened for him by this sacred Tree. And, on the contrary, how sinners must weep at the foot of the Cross of the Lord, when they vividly imagine that this paradise of sweetness can be lost to them forever!

Dear brothers and sisters, can we, redeemed at such a price, remain indifferent when we think of the weight of our Savior's sufferings? Can we not be filled with a feeling of reverent wonder at the thought that it is not a simple man who suffers so shamefully and painfully, but the God-man, and suffers voluntarily, although whole legions of Angels could have appeared at His beck and call to His defense? Can we, finally, in the humble consciousness of our insignificance, our great sins, not feel heartfelt love and gratitude for Him when we think of the benefits brought to the human race by His death on the Cross? By it the eternal curse that weighed upon people was lifted, by it people were reconciled with God, by it paradise was opened to us.

"What shall we render to the Lord for all that He has rendered to us" (Ps. 115:3)? "He does not require our good things" (see: Ps. 16:2). "A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit, a broken and humbled heart God will not despise" ( Ps. 50:19 ). From the Cross He stretches out to us His most pure crucified hands and meekly calls us: "Give Me your heart, my son" (Prov. 23:26). Everything has been done for our happiness. It depends on us to respond to this tender call: "My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready" (Ps. 56:8) to cry out to You: "We venerate Your Cross, O Master, and we glorify Your holy resurrection!" Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.