An Instruction for the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women: On the Deadness of the Human Spirit

The Gospel announced today (Mk. 16:1–8; Lk. 23:54–56, 24:1–11; Mt. 28:1–10) the deeds of holy women who followed the God-man during His earthly sojourn, who were witnesses of His sufferings, who were present at His burial. The burial took place in the evening of Friday. When the malice of the Jews was pouring forth like fiery lava from an erupting Etna, directed not only at the Lord but at all near to Him; when the holy Apostles were forced to hide or could only observe the wondrous event from a distance; when one intimate of love, for whom nothing is terrible, steadfastly remained with the Lord, then the disciple who had always been concealed, constantly hiding his heart’s pledge from fear of persecution by the Sanhedrin, the honored member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph, suddenly tramples upon all obstacles, hesitations, and bewilderments that had hitherto bound and troubled him, comes to the cold and cruel Pilate, asks for the body of the one who had been executed with shameful execution, receives the body, and buries it with reverence and honour. The Gospel gives to Joseph’s deed the significance of a deed of courage and magnanimity. Such it was. A member of the Sanhedrin, before the face of the Sanhedrin that had committed deicide, before the face of Jerusalem that had taken part in deicide, takes from the cross the body of the God-man, murdered by men, carries it to a garden located near the city gates and walls. There, in solitude and silence, under the shade of trees, in a new tomb hewn in solid stone, with abundant pouring of fragrant ointments and spices, he places the body by which both bodies and souls of all men have been redeemed, wrapping this body in the purest linen, as a precious treasure is wrapped and concealed. In the burial of the Lord another member of the Sanhedrin took part—Nicodemus, who had come to the Lord at night, who had recognized the Lord as a messenger of God. Having rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb—the Gospel calls this low opening to the cave the doors—Joseph departs as one who has completed his service with appropriate dignity. The Sanhedrin watched Joseph’s actions. After his departure, it took care to post a guard at the tomb, to set a seal upon the stone that barred the entrance. The burial of the Lord was witnessed by both His followers and His enemies. Some members of the Sanhedrin, in their frenzy and fury committing the greatest evil, unconsciously committed the greatest sacrifice (Acts 3:17–18): by the slaying of the all-holy Sacrifice they redeemed mankind, ended the fruitless series of prefiguring sacrifices, made these sacrifices and their very institution unnecessary. Other members of the Sanhedrin, representatives of all the Old Testament righteous, in godly intention and disposition of spirit served the burial of the Redeemer of mankind, and concluded and sealed by this action the devout activity of the sons of the Old Covenant. From this time begins the exclusive ministry of the ministers of the New Testament.

The holy women were not inferior to Joseph in courageous self-sacrifice. Having been present at the burial on Friday, they did not deem it permissible on Saturday—the day of rest—to disturb the rest in which the body of the Lord reposed in the sacred darkness and enclosure of the sepulchral cave. The women intended to pour out their devotion to the Lord by pouring ointment upon His body. Returning from the burial on Friday, they at once bought a considerable quantity of fragrant preparations and waited for the following day after Saturday, called the day of the week, the day of resurrection. On this day, as soon as the sun rose, the pious women set out toward the tomb. On the way they remembered that a great stone had been rolled to the entrance of the tomb. This troubled them, and the women began to say to one another: “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” The stone was “very large” (Mk. 16:3–4). Coming to the tomb, they saw, to their amazement, that the stone had been rolled away. A radiant, mighty angel had rolled it away: after the Lord’s resurrection, he descended from heaven to the tomb that had held Him who cannot be contained by heaven, struck terror in the guards, crushed the seal, and moved the heavy stone. He sat upon the stone, awaiting the coming of the women. When they came, he announced to them the resurrection of the Lord, commanding them to tell the Apostles of it. For their devotion to the God-man, for their determination to pay honour to the all-holy body, which was guarded by armed soldiers, which was watched over by the Sanhedrin’s hatred, the holy women, first of all people, received exact and true knowledge of Christ’s resurrection, became the first and mighty preachers of the resurrection, having heard the news from the lips of an angel. With the all-perfect God there is no favouritism: all men are equal before Him, and he from among men who with great self-renunciation turns to God is worthy of special gifts of God in special abundance and spiritual grace. “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” These words of the holy women have their mysterious significance. It is so instructive that love for one’s neighbour and desire for their spiritual benefit do not permit us to remain silent about it.

The tomb is our heart. The heart was a temple; it has become a tomb. Into it Christ enters through the sacrament of Baptism, that He might dwell in us and act from us. Then the heart is sanctified as a temple to God. We deprive Christ of the ability to act by quickening our old self, acting constantly according to the inclination of our fallen will, our mind poisoned by falsehood. Christ, brought in by Baptism, continues to dwell in us, but as though wounded and slain by our behaviour. The unbuilt-by-hands temple of God becomes a narrow, dark tomb. To its entrance a stone is rolled “very large”. The enemies of God post a guard at the tomb, secure the opening shut by the stone with a seal, sealing the stone to the rock so that besides its weight, the significant seal forbids touching the stone. The enemies of God themselves watch over the preservation of the slaying! They have calculated and established all obstacles to prevent the resurrection, to hinder it, to make it impossible.

The stone is the sickness of the soul, by which all other ailments are preserved in their inviolability and which the holy Fathers call spiritual insensibility102. What is this sin? We have never even heard of it, many will say. According to the definition of the Fathers, insensibility is the deadening of spiritual sensations, is the invisible death of the human spirit with regard to spiritual matters while there is full development of life with regard to material things. It happens that from prolonged bodily illness all strength wastes away, all the body’s faculties wither, then the illness, finding no nourishment, ceases to torment the body; it abandons the sick one, leaving him exhausted, as though slain, incapable of activity because of exhaustion by suffering, because of a terrible, silent sickness that expresses itself in no particular suffering. The same thing occurs with the human spirit. Prolonged negligent living amid constant distraction, amid constant willful sins, with forgetting about God, about eternity, with inattention or only superficial attention to the commandments and teaching of the Gospel, deprives our spirit of sympathy for spiritual matters, deadens it with regard to them. Though they exist, they cease to exist for it, because its life for them has ceased: all its strength is directed to one material, temporal, vain, sinful thing.

Whoever wishes to examine the state of his soul unbiasedly and thoroughly will discern in it the ailment of insensibility, will perceive the extent of its significance, will recognize its weight and importance, will confess that it is the manifestation and evidence of spiritual death. When we wish to occupy ourselves with reading the Word of God, what boredom attacks us! How does all that we read appear to us incomprehensible, unworthy of attention, strange! How we desire to free ourselves quickly from this reading! Why is this? Because we have no sympathy for the Word of God.

When we stand to pray, what dryness and coldness we feel! How we hasten to end our superficial prayer, full of distraction! Why is this? Because we are estranged from God: we believe in God’s existence with a dead faith; He is nothing to our feeling. Why has eternity been forgotten by us? Are we excluded from the number of those who must enter its boundless realm? Does not death stand before us face to face, as it stands before other men? Why is this? Because we have clung with all our soul to matter, never think and do not wish to think about eternity, have lost the precious foretaste of it, have acquired a false sensation toward our earthly sojourn. This false sensation represents earthly life to us as infinite. We are so deceived and seduced by this false sensation that we arrange all our actions according to it, offering the soul’s and body’s faculties as a sacrifice to decay, taking no care for the other world awaiting us, whereas we must assuredly become eternal inhabitants of that world. Why do idle talk, joking, judgment of neighbours, cutting mockery of them flow from us as from a source? Why do we spend without difficulty many hours in the emptiest amusements, find no satisfaction in them, try to replace one vain occupation with another, yet are unwilling to devote even the shortest time to examining our sins and weeping for them? Because we have acquired sympathy for sin, for all that is vain, for all by which sin enters man and by which sin is preserved in man; because we have lost sympathy for all exercises that introduce into man, increase and preserve in man virtues pleasing to God. Insensibility is planted in the soul by a world hostile to God and by fallen angels hostile to God, with the cooperation of our own will. It grows and strengthens by life according to the principles of the world; it grows and strengthens from following our fallen reason and will, from abandoning the service of God and from negligent service to God. When insensibility has long dwelt in the soul and becomes its quality, then the world and worldly powers apply their seal to the stone. This seal consists in the communion of the human spirit with fallen spirits, in the adoption by the human spirit of the impressions produced upon it by fallen spirits, in subjection to the violent influence and predominance of rejected spirits.

“Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” A question full of concern, sorrow, and bewilderment. Those souls feel this concern, this sorrow, this bewilderment who have turned toward the Lord, leaving the service of the world and sin. Before their eyes the sickness of insensibility is revealed in all its awful extent and significance. They desire to pray with compunction and to engage in the reading of the Word of God to the exclusion of all other reading, and to remain in constant contemplation of their sinfulness, in constant sorrow over it—in a word, they desire to belong to God—and they encounter an unexpected, unknown resistance to the servants of the world within themselves: the insensibility of the heart. The heart, stricken by the preceding negligent life as though by a deadly wound, shows no sign of life. In vain the intellect gathers thoughts about death, about God’s judgment, about the multitude of one’s sins, about the torments of hell, about the delights of paradise; in vain the intellect tries to strike the heart with these thoughts: it remains without sympathy for them, as though hell, paradise, God’s judgment, sins, the state of fall and ruin had no relation to the heart whatsoever. It sleeps in deep sleep, in death’s sleep; it sleeps, drenched and intoxicated with sinful poison. “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” This stone is “very large”.

According to the teaching of the holy Fathers, for the destruction of insensibility there is needed on man’s part constant, patient, uninterrupted action against insensibility—there is needed a constant, devout, attentive way of life. This life wages war against the life of insensibility; but this death of the human spirit is not killed by man’s own efforts alone: insensibility is destroyed by the action of Divine grace. A God-sent angel, by God’s command, descends to help the struggling and exhausted soul, rolls away the stone of hardness from the heart, fills the heart with compunction, announces to the soul the resurrection which is the usual consequence of constant compunction103. Compunction is the first sign of the heart’s quickening with regard to God and eternity. What is compunction? Compunction is man’s sense of mercy and compassion toward himself, toward his own miserable state, the state of fall, the state of eternal death. Concerning the Jerusalemites, who were brought into this disposition by the preaching of the holy Apostle Peter and inclined to accept Christianity, Scripture says that they “were cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37).

The body of the Lord had no need of fragrant ointment from the myrrh-bearers. The anointing with ointment was forestalled by the resurrection. But the holy women, by their timely purchase of ointment, their early journey, at the first rays of the sun, to the life-giving tomb, by their disregard of the fear inspired by the malice of the Sanhedrin and the armed guards watching over the tomb and its inhabitant, demonstrated and proved by their actions the pledge of their heart toward the Lord. Their gift turned out to be unnecessary: it was hundredfold rewarded by the appearance of an angel such as had never been seen by women before, by the news of the resurrection of the God-man and of mankind’s resurrection with Him—news that could not fail to be abundantly certain.

God has no need, for His own sake, of the dedication of our life, of the dedication of all our strength and abilities in service to Him—for us this is necessary. Let us bring them, as ointment, to the tomb of the Lord. Let us timely buy ointment—good intention. From our youth let us renounce all sacrifices to sin; at this price let us buy ointment—good intention. Service to sin cannot be united with service to God: the first destroys the second. Let us not allow sin to kill within our spirit sympathy for God and for all that is Divine! Let us not allow sin to seal us with its impressions, to gain violent predominance over us. He who has entered into service to God from the days of uncorrupted youth and remains in this service with constancy is subjected to the constant influence of the Holy Spirit, is sealed with grace-filled and most holy impressions flowing from Him, and in his time acquires active knowledge of Christ’s resurrection, comes to life in Christ in spirit, and becomes, by God’s election and command, a preacher of the resurrection to his brethren. Whoever through ignorance or infatuation has enslaved himself to sin, entered into communion with fallen spirits, been numbered among them, lost within his spirit the connection with God and with heaven’s inhabitants—let him heal himself by repentance. Let us not defer our healing from day to day, so that death may not creep upon us unexpectedly, may not seize us suddenly, so that we may not prove incapable of entering into the dwellings of unending rest and festival, so that we may not be cast, as useless chaff, into the fire of hell, burning forever yet never consuming. The healing of chronic diseases does not proceed as quickly and conveniently as ignorance imagines. Not without reason does God’s mercy grant us time for repentance; not without reason did all the saints beseech God for the grant of time for repentance. Time is needed to erase the impressions of sin; time is needed for the impressions of the Holy Spirit to be sealed; time is needed to cleanse ourselves from defilement; time is needed to clothe ourselves in the garments of virtue, to adorn ourselves with qualities pleasing to God, with which all heaven’s inhabitants are adorned.

Christ rises in the man prepared for that, and the tomb—the heart—is again transformed into God’s temple. “Rise up, Lord, save me, O my God” (Ps. 3:8); in this mysterious and at the same time essential resurrection of Yours lies my salvation. Amen.

The Ladder. Homily 18.

The Ladder. Homily 1, Chapter 6.