A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday

O Life, how do You die? (Sticheron for Great Saturday)

Come, all creation: let us bring the funeral hymns to the Creator. O countless hosts of the heavenly powers! All you rational dwellers born of earth! Come, let us bring the funeral hymns to our common Creator, who after the fiercest sufferings rests peacefully in the tomb! Let us draw near to Him and begin to ask Him: “Why are You numbered among the dead, You who live in the highest and are uncontainable by the heavens, and are received as a stranger into a little tomb?” How is it that You, the immortal Author of life, have Yourself tasted death, and like a mortal are laid in the tomb? How did it come to pass that Your weak but malicious creatures, men, brought You to the tomb? Clearly You willingly consented to ascend the cross in the flesh: otherwise, who would have dared to touch You, O Almighty? Clearly there is here a great mystery, which Your evildoers, and the prince of darkness himself, did not know. And indeed, people did not know what they were doing to Jesus. Clearly, from this extreme condescension of Yours toward men much good will come to them: for You do all things only for the increase of the good and the blessedness of Your creatures. You must have suffered out of great necessity, with a most gracious and most wise purpose: You “have made all things in wisdom” (Ps 103:24), and You “are good to all” (Ps 144:9): can it be that Your sufferings and Your death were not the work of Your infinite wisdom and goodness? Hear, brothers, the answer to this from the Lord Himself, who suffered for us: “unless a grain of wheat, falling into the ground, dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24). And so here, brothers, is the mystery of the death of Jesus Christ, God and man: as a grain of wheat, if it does not die when it falls into the ground, remains alone, but if it dies, brings forth much fruit; so also the Savior died in order to bring by His death the greatest benefit to men, as indeed He did. Christ the Savior, the Son of God, took upon Himself the great work—to redeem and to justify us sinners by His sufferings and death before the heavenly Father: this is “our justification” (Rom 4:25), says the Apostle, and therefore His death for us, with the sufferings that preceded it, is the work of God’s greatest love and wisdom toward us, which no created mind can value at its true worth; and since this death is the work of God’s wisdom, it is also the greatest mystery. What a comforting truth! The death of the Savior is the cleansing sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. “He is the propitiation”, says the holy Apostle John the Theologian, “for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:2). He died, and His death on the cross destroyed our curse, which we had earned from the heavenly Father by our sins. He died: and eternal death, which without a Redeemer must inevitably have overtaken us, now no longer holds sway over us. He is our righteousness in the midst of our unrighteousness; our deliverance in the time of our despair; our sanctification in the midst of our impurities; He is our light in our darkness; our life in our death. Does the righteous judgment of God frighten you when you picture your unrighteous deeds? And “there is no peace in the bones” of yours “because of the sins” of yours (Ps 37:4): the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ will justify you before the heavenly Father. “It is God who justifies; who is he who condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died, and rather is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us” (Rom 8:34). Do you despair of obtaining the kingdom of heaven, finding yourself unworthy of it? Truly, none of men is worthy of it. But Christ, our Lord, is worthy; by His priceless Blood He has earned it for us. On His worthiness our worthiness too depends. By His worthiness He has made even us unworthy ones worthy: and it is by His grace that the good and man-loving heavenly Father, in His matchless mercy, accounts men worthy of the kingdom of heaven. You will say: I am a great sinner. But Christ the Savior “came into the world” “to save sinners” (1Tim 1:15). Only do not sin deliberately and with malice for the time to come. You say: how can I be and rejoice with the saints, who shone on earth with such virtues? But the saints too were saved by the grace of Christ. If it seems too much for you to be together with the saints, then pray to be at least together with the thief, crying out: “remember me, O Lord, in Your kingdom” (Lk 23:42), and strive to live as a Christian ought.

We are all sinners, brothers; but if we believe in Christ our Lord, crucified for us, and strive to live according to His teaching, if we resist sin, or, though we fall, yet rise again, then the death of the Savior, His wounds, are our defense (Rom 3:25): we shall escape the torments of hell and be accounted worthy of the heavenly kingdom. If we magnanimously bear the sorrows, illnesses, deprivations, and various misfortunes of life, and account them a due recompense to ourselves for our own sins, remembering with faith and love the dread Passion of the Savior endured for our sake, then blessed are we: the crucified Lord will save us. But woe to those who are Christians in name only, and who trample on His saving teaching by their contempt for Him, or by their insolent speculations about Him (Rom 2:8), who live according to the will of their own heart in unrighteousness, in impurity, in forgetfulness of God: they ought to be horrified at their dreadful condition: “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebr 10:31). God “will miserably destroy the wicked” (Mt 21:41). Unrepentant sinners will not be saved by the death of the Giver of life, but condemned; but sinners who repent sincerely of their falls, who have heartfelt faith in the Lord and hope in Him, and who cleanse themselves from their sins, will be saved by Him: by His sufferings on the cross the Savior will cover over their sins, committed through human weakness. O Christ God, who was crucified and by death trampled down death—save us! Amen.