An Instruction for the Third Sunday of Great Lent: On the Bearing of the Cross

“Whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”, the Lord said to His disciples, calling them before Him, as we heard today in the Gospel (Mk 8:34).

Beloved brethren! We too are disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we are Christians. We too are called before the face of the Lord in this holy temple to hear His teaching. We stand before the face of the Lord; His gaze is fixed upon us. Before Him our souls are laid bare; our secret thoughts and hidden feelings are manifest to Him. He sees all our intentions; He sees the righteousness and sins we have committed from our youth; He sees our whole life both past and future; what we have not yet done is already written in His book. He foresees the hour of our passing into immeasurable eternity and proclaims to us for our salvation His most holy commandment: “Whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

By the power of living faith let us lift our mind’s eye to the Lord, and we shall see Him, we shall see Him, the omnipresent, present here with us! Let us open our heart, rolling away from its entrance the heavy stone of hardness; let us hear, consider, receive, and assimilate the teaching of our Lord.

What does it mean to “deny oneself”? To “deny oneself” means to abandon sinful life. Sin, through which our fall was accomplished, has embraced our whole nature so completely that it has become, as it were, natural for us: renunciation of sin became renunciation of nature; renunciation of nature is renunciation of self. Eternal death, which has struck our soul, has become for us a life. It demands its nourishment – sin, its pleasure – sin; through such nourishment and such pleasure eternal death maintains and preserves its dominion over man. But fallen man regards the maintenance and development in himself of the dominion of death as development and progress of life. So the man stricken with a deadly disease is overpowered by the violent demands of the disease and seeks foods that intensify the disease, seeks them as most necessary nourishment, as essential, most pleasant gratification. Against this eternal death, appearing as life to the wretched fallen human race struck with terrible disease, the Lord pronounces His judgment: “Whoever wants to save his soul,” developing in it the life of fall or eternal death, shall “lose it: and whoever loses his soul for my sake and the Gospel,” mortifying in himself sinful desires and renouncing sinful pleasure, “shall save it” (Mk 8:35). Pointing to all the world before our eyes, with all its beauties and charms, the Lord says: “What profit does a man have if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?” (Mk 8:36) What benefit is it to man, what gain, if he were to possess not something of little importance, but even the entire visible world? This visible world is only man’s brief inn! There is nothing on earth, there is not one single advantage on earth that we could regard as our own possession. Inexorable and inevitable death takes all from us, and often before death unforeseen circumstances and upheavals take them from us. Even our body we lay down from ourselves at the sacred threshold into eternity. Our possession, our property and treasure – this is our soul, only our soul. “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mk 8:37), says God’s word. We have nothing with which to compensate for the loss of the soul, when eternal death kills it, deceptively appearing as life.

What does it mean to take up one’s cross? The cross was an instrument of shameful execution for the common people and prisoners, deprived of the rights of citizenship. The proud world, the world hostile to Christ, deprives the disciples of Christ of those rights which the children of the world enjoy. “If you were of the world,” the Lord says to His followers, “the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you” (Jn 15:19). “They will put you out of the synagogues, … and whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (Jn 16:2). To take up one’s cross means to bear magnanimously the mockeries and insults with which the world pelts the follower of Christ, the sorrows and persecutions with which the sin-loving and blinded world persecutes the follower of Christ. “For this is commendable before God,” says the holy Apostle Peter, “if, because of conscience toward God, one endures sorrows, suffering unjustly. For to this you were called” (1Pet 2:19, 21) by the Lord, who has informed His beloved: “In the world you have tribulation: but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).

To take up one’s cross means to courageously endure the heavy invisible toil, invisible anguish and martyrdom for the Gospel in the struggle against one’s own passions, against the sin living within us, against the spirits of wickedness, who will rise up against us with fury and resist us with obstinacy when we resolve to cast off the yoke of sin and subject ourselves to the yoke of Christ. “Our struggle is not” the holy Apostle Paul said, “against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). “The weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but mighty through God for the destruction of strongholds: casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and taking captive every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2Cor 10:4–5). Having won victory in this invisible yet much-labored battle, the apostle cried out: “Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14).

To take up one’s cross means to submit with obedience and humility to those temporal sorrows and afflictions which the divine Providence graciously permits for the purification of our sins. Then the cross serves for man as a ladder from earth to heaven. Up this ladder climbed the robber mentioned in the Gospel, climbed out from the midst of the most terrible crimes into the brightest mansions of paradise: from his cross he pronounced words full of humble-mindedness; with humble-mindedness he entered into the knowledge of God; with the knowledge of God he acquired heaven. “We are receiving what our deeds deserve,” he said, “but remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:41–42). And we, beloved brethren, when sorrows surround us, will repeat the words of the robber, words whose price is paradise! Or, like Job, we will bless the just and compassionate Lord who strikes us. “We have received good things from the hand of the Lord” said this sufferer, “shall we not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10) “As it pleased the Lord, so has it happened: blessed be the name of the Lord forever” (Job 1:21). May the true promise of God be fulfilled upon us: “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been tried, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him” (Jas 1:12).

To take up one’s cross means to willingly and zealously submit to the deprivations and labors by which the brutish impulses of our flesh are restrained. To such a crucifixion of the flesh the holy Apostle Paul also resorted: “I discipline my body”, he says, “and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified” (1Cor 9:27). “Those who are in the flesh”, that is, those who do not restrain their flesh but allow it to prevail over the spirit, “cannot please God”. And therefore, living in the flesh, we must not live for the flesh! “If you live according to the flesh, you will die” with eternal death; “but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” with eternal, blessed life (Rom 8:8, 13). The flesh is essentially restrained by the spirit; but only then can the spirit rule over the flesh and govern it, when it is prepared for obedience by its crucifixion. The flesh is crucified by fasting, by wakefulness, by genuflections and other bodily labors, imposed upon it wisely and moderately. Wise and moderate bodily work frees the body from heaviness and coarseness, sharpens its powers, keeps it constantly light and capable of activity. “Those who are of Christ”, says the apostle, “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24).

What does it mean to take up one’s cross, and to take up precisely one’s own cross? It means that each Christian must patiently bear precisely those insults and those persecutions from the world that befall him, and not any others. It means that each Christian must courageously and steadfastly struggle precisely with those passions and with those sinful thoughts that arise in him. It means that each Christian must with obedience, with devotion to God’s will, with acknowledgment of God’s justice and mercy, with gratitude to God bear precisely those sorrows and deprivations that divine Providence permits him, and not other ones, painted and proposed by prideful fantasy. It means to be content with precisely those bodily labors which correspond to our bodily strength, which our flesh itself needs for maintaining it in order, and by no means to strive, being carried away by vainglorious zeal, according to the expression of holy John of the Ladder, toward excessive fasting, toward excessive wakefulness and other immoderation in labors, which destroy bodily health and direct the spirit toward self-conceit and self-deception. All mankind labors and suffers on earth; but how varied are these sufferings; how varied are the passions that assail us; how varied are those sorrows and temptations which God sends us for our healing, for the purification of our sins; what difference there is among men in bodily strength itself, in health itself! Truly: each man has his own cross. And this very cross of his own is commanded to each Christian to take up with self-denial and follow Christ. He who has taken up his own cross, having denied himself, has become reconciled with himself, with his circumstances, with his position, external and internal, and only he can reasonably and rightly follow Christ.

What does it mean to follow Christ? It means: to study the Gospel, to have the Gospel as the sole guide to the activity of the mind, to the activity of the heart, to the activity of the body. It means: to draw one’s thoughts from the Gospel, to attune one’s heart’s feelings according to the Gospel and to serve as the expression of the Gospel by all deeds, by all movements, secret and manifest. To such following of Christ is capable, we repeat, only he who, having avoided the deception of “false humility” (Col 2:18), has desired to find true humble-mindedness where it rests – in obedience and submission to God. He who entered into obedience to God, into obedience combined with complete self-denial, has taken up his cross, has recognized and confessed this cross as his own.

Beloved brethren! While we render, according to the ordinance of the holy Church, veneration to the honorable Cross of the Lord with our bodies, let us render veneration to it with our spirit as well! Let us honor the honorable Cross of Christ – the instrument of victory and the standard of Christ’s glory – by confessing each from his own cross: “I receive what my deeds deserve! Remember me, Lord, in your kingdom!” By consciousness of our sinfulness, by gratitude to God, by submission to God’s will, let us make our cross – an instrument of execution and a sign of disgrace – an instrument of victory and a sign of glory, like the Cross of the Lord. Let us open paradise to ourselves with the cross. Let us not allow ourselves harmful murmuring, especially let us not allow ourselves soul-destroying blasphemy, which often issues from the mouth of the blinded, hardened sinner, who writhes and thrashes on his cross, vainly striving to escape from the cross. With murmuring and blasphemy the cross becomes unbearable heaviness, dragging the crucified one down to hell. “What have I done?” cries the unaware sinner and accuses the just and merciful God of injustice and mercilessness, reproaches and rejects divine Providence; seeing the Son of God crucified, mockingly and craftily demands of Him: “If you are the Christ, save yourself and us,” (Lk 23:39) come down from the cross (Mt 27:41–42). But our Lord Jesus Christ “willingly accepted in his flesh to go to the cross and to endure death, in order that by the cross He might reconcile mankind with God, and by death save mankind from eternal death. In preparing the holy apostles for the great event – the redemption of the human race which was to be accomplished by the sufferings and shameful death of the incarnate God-man, the Lord timely told the apostles that He must be delivered into the hands of sinners, suffer much, be killed and rise again. Such a prediction seemed to some of the holy apostles strange and impossible. Then the Lord called His disciples before Him and said to them: ‘Whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ Amen.

Holy Symeon the New Theologian. From the Book Written in Verse, Homily 55

The Ladder. Homily 26

Resurrectional Troparion, Tone 2 and Resurrectional Troparion, Tone 5”