Crucified to be Glorified

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

This Afterfeast of the Exaltation of the Cross offers us an opportunity to reflect on the experience of the Cross, both for St Paul and for Jesus Christ Himself. In the epistle today from the second chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, St Paul offers us a summary of his life. He explains that he has moved from studying and trying to follow “the works of the law” to following Jesus Christ. He is now seeking “to live to God.” So, what is St Paul’s approach to life now? In one of the most important verses in all of his epistles, St Paul writes, and I quote: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” concluded St Paul.

St Paul wants to help each of us as baptised Christians join him in this experience of being “crucified with Christ.” In the Book of Romans, chapter 6, St Paul reminds us, and I quote: “Do you know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?….If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin…. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” concluded St Paul. This is a great gift: when Christ died on the Cross, it was to empower each of us to become dead to sin in our lives.

This gift from Christ on the Cross to each of us of becoming dead to sin continues throughout our Christian lives. However, as St John Chrysostom preached; and I quote: “Being dead to sin means not obeying it any more. Baptism has made us dead to sin once and for all, but we must strive to maintain this state of affairs, so that however many commands sin may give us, we no longer obey it but remain unmoved by it, as a corpse does…” concluded St John.

The Gospel today from the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, verse 34, is very helpful in understanding how we can best relate to Jesus Christ dying on the Cross. Jesus Christ tells a large crowd including His apostles, and I quote: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Pause for a moment and consider what Christ is saying to us here. He is NOT asking us—man or woman, boy or girl—to take up HIS cross—the sufferings and cross of Christ. He is asking us to take up whatever crosses—whatever challenges, whatever sufferings—come our way in our own lives.

Now, we are not divine creatures like Jesus Christ. We are human, but we can reach toward the divine through the life and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. A 19th century Russian Orthodox saint, Theophan the Recluse, has written of how, and I quote: “In order to reach up high [to God] one must have a ladder. One does not throw away a ladder after climbing it once, because one will need it again. Our praise [of God] should begin each time with songs [of praise] that have been given to us—and then fall silent when the [Holy] Spirit begins to sing praises,” reflected St Theophan.

He then offered us this prayer to Christ from an earlier saint, John the Elder. I close with his prayer:

“You who are hidden and concealed within me [O Christ], reveal within me Your hidden mystery;

manifest to me Your beauty that is within me,

O You who have built me as a temple for You to dwell in,

cause the cloud of Your glory to overshadow inside Your temple,

so that the Ministers of Your sanctuary may cry out, in love for you, ‘holy,’ as an utterance which burns in fire and spirit,

in a sharp stirring which is [mixed] with wonder and astonishment, activated as a living movement by the power of Your being.

O Christ, the ocean of our forgiveness,

allow me to wash off in you the dirt I am clothed in,

so that I may [shine brightly clothed in] Your holy light.

May I be covered with the cloud of Your hidden glory,

full of secret mysteries.

May the things which divert me from gazing upon Your beauty

not be visible to me.

May wonder at Your glory captivate me continually,

may my mind become unable to set in motion worldly impulses.

May nothing ever separate me from Your love….”

[from The Path of Prayer: Four Sermons on Prayer by St Theophan the Recluse (Praxis Institute Press, 1992), pp. 37, 49-50]

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.              Father Emmanuel Kahn