Homily Over the Epitaphios (St. Sergius Mechev)

 

Homily Over the Epitaphios 

(Delivered in 1929) 

 

By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev

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

Now the God-man has need of our participation, of our love, just as every human being in his time has need of it. He who came into the world to serve us, who gave His soul for the deliverance of many, who endured insults and blows for our sake, betrayal and abandonment by all, and a shameful death — now asks for our help, our participation in His burial. And just now the Church, with weeping and lamentation, has offered Him the funeral hymn together with Joseph, together with Nicodemos. Yet these funeral hymns were accompanied and pierced through by other hymns, still quiet and indistinct, speaking yet of the future, but proclaiming with certainty the Resurrection: “This Sabbath is most blessed, on which Christ, having fallen asleep, shall rise on the third day.” “Why do you, O disciples, mingle myrrh with merciful tears? The Angel, shining in the tomb, speaks to the Myrrhbearing women: Behold the tomb and understand, for the Savior is risen from the tomb,” — so we sang at Matins, and just now we proclaimed: “Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered” (verse at the Alleluia of the Apostle). Still more deeply and clearly do the hymns of the Resurrection sound at today’s Vespers and then at the Liturgy, where we hear the joyful hymn of the Resurrection: “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You shall inherit all nations,” and the Gospel of this day already fully reveals the joy of the Resurrection. The Midnight Office will still be sorrowful, but then at Matins the joy is fully revealed, and we sing the victorious hymn: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.” Such also is our whole life. We must walk in it in repentance and be crucified with Christ. There is no other way. “In the world you will have tribulation,” the Savior told us (John 16:33); and “through narrow gates” must we enter into eternal life, for “wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in by it” (Matt. 7:13). But as we walk this path, we must gradually begin to feel also the joy of the Resurrection.

At His Tomb Christ gives us the lot of serving Him.

Our Russian land is now beginning to be seized by unbelief; we are reviled in every way, they want to wipe us from the face of the earth, they want to force us to renounce Christ — and here, at this Tomb, we must all think about this. All of us must take up the cross and go with the Lord to Golgotha. If only we were spiritual, if only we had in our soul that burning, fiery faith which the martyrs and ascetics had — then, in these sorrowful days of ours, our soul would be more and more illumined with the joy and light of Christ’s Resurrection. But we, my dear ones, are lazy and careless. How good it would be if we all wept and lamented at this Tomb. This does not mean that Christianity is only weeping, only sorrow, only lamentation — no, but the joy of Christianity is closed to us by our sins. Each of us individually — you, my fellow ministers, and you, my spiritual children, and you, worshippers, and above all I, sinful and unworthy — must strive to cleanse our mind and thoughts and enter into our covenant with God, of which I have spoken to you more than once. And if we go by this path, we will gradually begin to experience Christian joy, and it will also penetrate our sorrowful life, just as it penetrates this sorrowful funeral service.

There is no other way.

The only difference is how each of us will walk it; each has his own measure — among us are both strong and weak — but the path is one.

And now, remembering that joy which perhaps we do not yet possess, let us try to partake of it at least through the divine services composed by those who walked the true path of the Christian, composed by the great Fathers.

Here lies the New Covenant — the crucified Son of Man, the God-man: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and stand with fear and trembling, and think nothing earthly within itself...”

Yet there is something earthly which we must think of even at this Tomb — our sins. We are condemned by our own words… Let us all therefore fall down before the Tomb of the Lord and answer Him by making a covenant with Him. Do not fear your former life, do not fear the sins you have had until now; but truly desire to respond by a hidden covenant for the correction of your life, and, falling before the Tomb, ask forgiveness and the healing of your soul, that you may finally receive from the Lord the answer: “See, you are made whole; sin no more” (John 5:14). We will endure everything if we secretly make a covenant with Him; and then let them persecute us, deprive us of our daily bread, and do with us whatever they will.

If we go in this way, then truly there will come a moment when we shall feel within our soul the growing joy of the Resurrection, and we shall pass from Great Friday to Great Saturday and then to the Bright Resurrection of Christ — not somewhere else, but within our own soul. And then we shall come to Him together with the saints and feel the joy of the Bright Resurrection of Christ, and we shall sing to Him: “Christ is risen.” Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.