A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday

“If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself” (Jn 12:32)—that is, if I am lifted up on the cross, then by My sufferings on the cross I will redeem the whole world, and by the power of My cross I will draw to Myself a multitude of the chosen. This, among other things, is what our Lord Jesus Christ said not long before His sufferings for us. O Christ, our love, and I will say again: O Christ, our love! To what has Your love for us brought You! You were spat upon, struck on the cheek, wounded, and You died in inexpressible sufferings on the cross. O Christ, our love! How strongly You have loved us!

Beyond measure great are Your sufferings for the world, but beyond measure great also are the fruits of Your sufferings: “by Your wound we have all been healed” (1Pet 2:24; Is 53:5). You endure sufferings in order to free us from the passions; You accepted the crown of thorns so that our hearts might not be torn cheerlessly, like prickling and burning needles, by the thorns of sins; You accepted wounds so that repentant sinners might hide in Your wounds from the arrows of heavenly wrath; You endured the cross in order to grant us in it a mighty weapon against our invisible enemies, who fight fiercely against us, and, I will say finally, You endure the fierce torments of the cross in order to deliver Your faithful followers from the still fiercer, unceasing torments of hell—and the end of all this is one: to draw us to Yourself and to unite us with Yourself forever.

Thus, beloved, our Head—Christ—suffers so that His whole body, that is, we, might be at ease; our Head is consumed by the fire of the torments of the cross in order to deliver His members from sins and from the eternal fire of Gehenna. Who can grasp with his mind, or feel with his heart, the whole worth of this benefaction? He alone knows fully how great is His sacrifice for us: for He alone knew and saw, as though present, the eternal torments of sinners and all the fierceness of the eternal torments, when He said of sinners: “these will go away into eternal torment” (Mt 25:46), which will unfailingly, in very deed, overtake the unrepentant sinners. But we—“we scarcely understand the things that are on earth, and the things in our own hands we find with difficulty”, and very often we do not understand the whole calamity of our present condition—“but the things that are in the heavens”, that is, what will be after death, “who has searched them out?” (Solom 9:16)? O our most precious Savior! What shall we bring You in return for Your infinitely great sacrifice for us? Faith and love. So, beloved, believe with all your heart, without the least doubt, that the Only-begotten, incarnate Son of God suffered for you also—yes, for you also—in order to deliver you from the eternal torments to which we were bound to be subjected by the justice of the heavenly Father, and to which we shall now be subjected if we do not believe with all our heart in His Son, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, and keep His commandments; bring His torments close to your heart, value them as far as you can with your weak minds, and let each of you bear magnanimously, without murmuring, with thanksgiving to God, his own sorrows, illnesses, and sufferings in his own life, and let the fire of love blaze in your hearts toward Him who out of love for you endures the tormenting fire of sufferings both bodily and of the soul. Let each of you flee from lovelessness, hatred, and discord among yourselves: because our mutual lovelessness and hatred pierces, as with arrows, the heart of the Lord, who loved us even to the cross and death, and excludes us from the number of His followers; let no one attach his heart to the world, to its pleasures: our place is not in this world; no, our place is in heaven: “where I am, there they also will be with Me” (Jn 17:24), said the Savior of His followers. “Our citizenship is in the heavens” (Phil 3:20), says the Apostle. The world with its goods is not worthy of us: heaven must be in our thoughts and in our heart. Let us more often be carried there by our thoughts and desires.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who suffered willingly for our sake, You said, as You went to Your sufferings: “if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself” (Jn 12:32). Draw us, then, to Yourself, into Your kingdom, by Your grace. Amen.