Sermon on the Redemptive Feat of Our Savior on the Lord’s Sufferings for the Human Race

St. Philaret of New York (+1985)

 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

You and I just heard the account of the sufferings of our Savior as is related by the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew. The podvig of Christ. His suffering prior to the Cross on Golgotha is a Great Mystery. Never will man be able to not only not grasp but even scrutinize or penetrate the depth of this mystery for, when the Lord was carrying out this great feat of His, He endured something that an ordinary person in general would not have the ability to bear. How excruciating was that which He was experiencing, which He bore, we see from the Garden of Gethsemane when His sufferings were approaching. He, Who had come to earth with the purpose of saving mankind, seemingly in horror steps back from this feat and prays to the heavenly Father that “if possible may this cup pass me by” for that is how horrible it was!

Earlier on, after His entry into Jerusalem, we heard how from His lips burst forth the cry, en­treaty, “Father deliver Me from this hour” but He immediately added, “but it was for this that I came” for this terrible hour of suffering. The holy fathers tell us, and in particular the most blessed Metropolitan Anthony loved to emphasize this, that this redemptive feat is comprised, so to speak, of two parts. It is comprised of or has two parts. The first part of it was in the Garden of Geth­semane and this feat brought the strength of our Savior to such exhaustion that He was covered in bloody sweat and in order that He not become ex­hausted and completely weakened in His human nature, the Heavenly Father sent Him an angel who strengthened Him. Vladika Anthony indi­cated that this was the podvig of His compassion­ate, pastoral love. In His omniscience as Almighty God for Whom is revealed that which we call the past, present and future, beholding all of this, He accepted into His Divine Soul, wishing to redeem us from sin, he accepted each one of us with all of our sins, infirmities, sufferings, disrepairs. The Lord accepted each one of us into His soul, suf­fered through, so to speak, endured pain for the sake of each one and this is why He is the Lamb of God, Who took upon Himself the sins of the world, for His endless love, having received man into Himself, into His soul. It made these sins Its own, as if It had committed them. This was not just some formal definition of words. It was not something superficial. This was exactly the inter­nal receiving by Him of our sinful nature, of our sins upon Himself. This is why He kept falling on the way to Golgotha; He kept falling under His Cross, collapsing because on this Cross He carried precisely these sins of the whole world in order to nail them down and destroy them on the Cross.

And after this feat of pastoral love, when he had mourned, so to speak, over each one of us, our falls into sin, our unfaithfulness, after this He as­cends the Cross and there brings Himself at last in sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and is slaughtered as an unblemished Lamb.

But often one hears the question, why such a ter­rible sacrifice? So, the human race fell under the rule of the devil, but God is almighty; for His omnipotence it would have been easy to simply free people from the rule of the devil and simply chase him away? The holy fathers indicate to us that the Lord is supremely just and He extends His justice onto all things created by Him, even not excluding His enemy, the devil. The issue is, the holy fathers say, that man left God of his own free will by accepting the temptation in Paradise and freely crossed over from God to the rule of satan. Had the enemy taken possession of man by force, it would have been another matter. We know from the Gospel how tersely the Lord dealt with evil spirits when they forcefully, unlawfully took control of a person. He would say, “be silent and depart from him.” This is what the Lord said. But this is not the case here; man freely submit­ted to satan and, the holy fathers say, at the Dread Judgment, if the Lord had simply by His almighty power snatched, so to speak, a person from satan, then the devil would say to Him, “You are not just — they are mine, not Yours — they willingly came over to me.”

And so He accomplishes His feat of love. He comes to earth, gives people His marvelous teaching, gives an example by His wondrous life of which there was never nor could there ever be an equal, shines like the sun before people by this Word of light, teaching and by His life. He worked mira­cles, did works of kindness, never pushed away a single repentant sinner from Himself, for it is pre­cisely through repentance that a person freely comes over from the power of the devil and comes under His loving protection. But in order to do this, ap­ply this to each person, He carries out that feat, lets Himself be crucified on the Cross, takes upon Himself the sins of all mankind and mankind, freed through this from sin, now has a complete possibility to freely come over from the devil to God, to his Creator. And now satan can say noth­ing to Him at the Dread Judgment, say the holy fathers; he will not be able to accuse God of injus­tice, for He has called upon the free will of man and did not coerce him to follow Him.

Remember how the Gospel says, “If any one would follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me;” in other words, if you want to follow Him, if you want to come over from the mastership of the devil to His benevo­lent mastership, take up your cross and follow Him. This is why the path of a Christian must always be the bearing of the cross in one form or another. But especially in these times, beloved, a person should not be seeking a particular cross for himself. Life here has become such that every Christian who wishes to be faithful to his Savior, who wishes to live indeed in a Christian way, ac­cording to the teaching of the Church, submit­ting to the Church as to one’s directress and wise mother, one’s manager, if a person desires to live this way, then unwittingly he will be a cross-bear­er, and what a cross-bearer! for the world has gone so mad, has departed from all Christian principles to such a degree in its life, that a Christian must truly be a cross-bearer, literally on every step. And we must all remember this.

We just heard at the end of this Gospel account the sad story of Apostle Peter, who thrice swore and made oath that he does not know this man, that is, the Lord and Savior. He swore and made oath, while just a few hours earlier, at the Mysti­cal Supper, he swore that he would follow Him even unto death. This is not said now in order to judge the great apostle. We know who Apostle Peter became subsequently, a preëminent apostle, the apostle of the apostles, so to speak, but this was permitted by God as a hard, sorrowful lesson in humility. He said confidently at the Mystical Supper that even if everyone would be offended because of Him, he alone would never fall into this temptation. And not one of the apostles de­nied the Savior, but Apostle Peter denied Him.

This example of human frailty should always be before our eyes, teaching us never to rely on our own capabilities. If we truly want to be faithful to our Lord, want to be cross-bearers, then we must constantly remember that without His help we will in no way be able to accomplish this. With­out God’s help, without the help of our Savior, Who Himself said “Without me ye can do noth­ing.” Without His help, I repeat, we stand to have only good intentions but it is not given to us to accomplish anything. Therefore, every time your conscience calls upon you to be a cross-bearer, to faithfulness to the Savior in the face of this un­faithful world, first and foremost ask Him for strength and fortitude so that He would give you good cheer, courage and strength to be faithful to Him as He Himself says in the Apocalypse, “be faithful even unto death.” Amen.

 

Source: Living Orthodoxy, Vol. XXXV, No. 2; Mar - Apr 2015, #206, pp. 11-13.