“If anyone wishes to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34) Third Sunday of Lent, the Veneration of the Cross.
No one can be with Christ who has not first been captivated by His Love. The God-man is Divine Love and extends an invitation of Love to our hearts. All we have to do is to open ourselves to Him, so He can take us somewhere our minds cannot conceive of. Wherever Christ is, we lack nothing and no one, because thanks to Christ we are all together in His Love as a single being and we have everything we need that He Himself has given us in order to thank Him, to worship Him and to glorify Him.
No one can hate his evil self if he has not been captivated by the Love of the God-Man. I hate my wickedness because I find that it separates me like a wall from the Love of Christ, who wants me to be one with all and everything as He has eternally willed it. The more Divine Love enters into us, the more we desire the annihilation of evil in ourselves and in all things, so that one day everyone and everything may exist only by Divine Love.
No one can raise his wicked self to the cross unless he has first been transfixed by the Love of Christ. To see, condemn and lift up my wickedness onto the cross is an unbearable torment that none of us can accomplish without the mighty Love of Christ that unites us to Him and conquers death. My cross is not the least or the greatest difficulty I face in my life. My cross is myself without Christ and my resurrection is life only if it comes from His Life.
No one can follow Christ unless they first allow Him to take them where He wishes them to go. Nor, of course, can he imitate Christ if he does not first allow Him to work in him miracles that are immense and unknown to each of us. Christ is the New Earth, the Paradise and the Resurrection. All that He said and did, all that He continues to say and do in the Holy Spirit to each of us and to all of us together, is the means by which He brings us to the New Earth, to Paradise and the Resurrection.
Often the word of Christ sounds to our ears like a ‘hard’ word: one that is difficult to put into practice. However for us the word of Christ is ‘hard’ only if we do not yet possess a ‘mind of Christ’. Christ speaks to us from a perspective which we only acquire when we have a ‘mind of Christ,’ when we give Him our hearts entirely and allow Him to dwell in us. Then His words will no longer seem ‘hard’ to us, but we will see them confirmed more and more each day within us as the only absolute reality, the one that Christ wished for us, the Christ who, together with His unoriginated Father and the Holy Spirit, is in truth, for each of us and all of us together, the New Earth, the Resurrection and Paradise.
Archpriest Dr Georgios Lekkas is a priest of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium.
