Word VIII. On Great and Holy Friday

“«Behold the man!» (Jn 19:5).”

See how our sinless and most holy Lord Jesus Christ was mocked, wounded, tormented! What need, then, had the passionless God to suffer so terribly from men in His flesh? What need had the God-Man Himself to endure these, as it were, hellish torments upon earth? There was, brethren, no need whatever for God to subject Himself to such dishonor and such sufferings on earth: His self-sacrifice was wholly voluntary—He might have chosen not to become incarnate, not to suffer, and not to die. Only then would all of us, as sinners and as enemies of God, have remained forever captives and slaves of the devil, and all would have perished eternally; then there would have been no these two sides, right and left, it would not have been said: the righteous shall go into eternal life, and the sinners into everlasting torment (Mt 25:46), but there would have been one fearsome sentence for all—eternal torment. It is fearsome even to think of it! But the Lord, in His boundless mercy, unable to bear seeing the human race tormented by the devil, came to free us from slavery to him and from eternal torments. And that He might free us from bondage to the enemy, to whom we surrendered and still surrender ourselves, He willed, according to His humanity, to become for us the most obedient servant to His heavenly Father, to whom we became, and still constantly remain, disobedient—and in human flesh and with a human soul, by human powers strengthened by His Godhead, to conquer the devil the tempter, to whom we so easily surrendered ourselves captive and still surrender ourselves through our sins; further, that He might free us from the eternal torments of hell, to which our immortal souls, held captive by the devil, would justly have been subjected, He, the pre-eternal God, willed Himself, in His human nature, to bear upon Himself our eternal torments. And so, as you see, as you hear from the Gospel, He endured these torments for us. He endured all the shame and all the ferocity of torment from men and from demons, that He might draw us up out of hell, where, without a Savior, we should have had to suffer eternally. — But Christ has drawn us up out of hell, and we ourselves go down into hell (Reader! let us heed Father John, and if we stand on the broad way, whose end «looks down into the depth of hell,» let us turn sharply and diligently onto the narrow and strait way, the way of the Gospel.): we go fearlessly, with our eyes shut, that we may not see the light and may plunge into it the sooner. Many of us fearlessly give ourselves over to every sin and do not think of amending, as though Christ were a minister of sin and would bring even the unrepentant, those unchanged in heart and deed, into paradise. Incomprehensible hardness of heart and insensibility possesses many of us. At the sufferings and death of Christ the Savior all creation trembled with fear—the earth shook, the rocks were split, the dead rose—but our souls do not tremble with fear at the sight of the sufferings and death of the God-Man, at the remembrance of the eternal and fierce torments to which we would have been subjected, had the Lord not suffered and died for us. Our hearts do not break, do not soften, and do not part with weak faith, unbelief, hardness of heart, pride, malice toward our neighbor, envy of his prosperity, condemnation, gluttony, overeating and drunkenness, avarice, love of money, fleshly impurity. How many such people there are who, even in this sacred and awesome time, do not cease to serve the devil and to nourish malice against their neighbor; who envy one another; who think of silver coins, of theft, of drunkenness, of impurity. How many there are who, no sooner do they see the feast approach, than they get drunk at once and give themselves over to debauchery, defiling the temple of their own body, which was, though only for a short time, a Temple of the Lord after receiving and partaking of the holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord! But why do I speak only of the feast? Do we not see, even before the feast, even now, as we call to mind the sufferings of Christ for us, people drunk and given over to debauchery? They are a lawless people, who today bless Christ with their lips, and tomorrow, or even today, will blaspheme Him by their deeds. O ungrateful, insensible, senseless, stone-hearted people, who today, as it were, suffer with Christ and are crucified with Him, and tomorrow or the day after will crucify Him! But how long shall this go on with us, brethren? How long shall we go on being hypocrites? (Father John rightly calls it hypocrisy when a man’s deeds and words do not agree with the Spirit of the Gospel that rests in the teachings of the Orthodox Church.) How long shall we serve the devil and grieve the Lord in the most sensitive way? This, then, brethren, is what awaits us: if our stony hearts, with their manifold malice, their attachments, their impurities, do not break; if we do not strip from them weak faith, unbelief, coldness, overeating and drunkenness, shameful deeds, malice, pride, envy, sloth and idleness, and the other passions—then we will one day be condemned by those very stones that were split at the death of Christ. If we do not repent and turn to God with our whole heart, we shall plunge into that same hell out of which the Son of God came to deliver us. Yes, brethren, in very truth! Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish! (Lk 13:3). Of how much sorer punishment, think you, shall he be thought worthy, who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and has done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said: vengeance belongs to Me, I will repay, says the Lord. It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebr 10:29-31). Amen.