March 18, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
The Sunday of the Holy Cross, March 18, 2012
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Kontakion (Tone 7)
Now the flaming sword no longer guards the gates of Eden;
It has mysteriously been quenched by the wood of the Cross!
The sting of death and the victory of hell have been vanquished;
For You, O my Savior, have come and cried to those in hell:
"Enter again into paradise."
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, the third Sunday of Great Lent, is called the Sunday of the Holy Cross because there is a special
veneration of the Cross which occurs on this day, preparing us for the Crucifixion on Holy and Great Friday.
The holy Cross stands in the middle of the church to remind us also to continue our Lenten struggle of fasting
and growth and change, in our lives, reminding us also of this verse from Scripture: “He who does not take up
his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:38)
As you know, every Sunday of Lent has its own theme. The major and over overarching message of this Sunday
is, according to Scripture, our belief as Orthodox Christians, that “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (I
Cor. 1:24) is to be found in the Cross of the Lord. Therefore I make bold to say that even if there were no other
differences to speak of, this central dogma sets us clearly apart from Jews and Muslims and other non-
non
Christians, and even from certain so-called
called Christian groups that do not treasure the Cross, as well as from sects
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March 18, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
like the Mormons, who openly see the Cross as an emblem of shame. (So much for the modern fascination with
ecumenism, for what can we possibly have in common with those who reject the Holy Cross and its power!)
But unlike some Western Christians—
—I’m thinking here particularly of Roman Catholics, who seem to primarily
emphasize the Cross as an emblem of passion and suffering
suffering—we
we Orthodox gaze upon the Cross as a reminder of
the joy of salvation and the fact that the Lord consciously and serenely chose to “rest” upon the wood of the
Cross by His own will. Of course, we Orthodox do not at all deny that our Lord Jesus Christ did indeed suffer
most terribly in the flesh on the Tree of the Cross, but the theme for us on this day, according to the Holy Fathers
of the Church, is not the torture His
is body underwent, but that the Cross has now become the life-giving
life Tree of
Life which was planted in paradise, and as such it is therefore planted right in the very middle of the Lenten
pilgrimage—for
for we are now half way through the Fast
Fast--to remind us off how Adam lost Paradise through
disobedience and not fasting from the Forbidden Fruit, and how we, on the other hand, may regain it through
obedience, fasting, and Christ’s glorious Cross.
At the beginning of this sermon I quoted this verse from the Gos
Gospel
pel of St. Matthew: “He who does not take up
his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me.” These are the Lord’s own words, His instruction to us. They are
not to be taken lightly, believe me. Simply put, this means that unless we take up our own personal
person cross—the
afflictions and difficulties in our daily lives, whatever they may be
be—we are not His disciples and are not worthy
of Him, for the Kingdom of Heaven opens only to the Cross and to those who are bearing a Cross.
During the sacred season of the Great Fast we are asked, in the words of Scripture, to “crucify the flesh with its
passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24), and because we have been doing this, the precious and life-giving
life Cross
is now placed before us to refresh our souls and encourage uuss who may otherwise feel weighed down and
oppressed by Lent. The holy Cross makes us think of the Lord’s passion and the incredible example He showed
us by enduring this suffering for our sake
sake—and
and this should encourage us to bear up under our own
comparatively
vely light sufferings and be comforted. In other words, to a certain degree, we too must experience
what the Lord underwent during His passion, for the Cross reminds us that through pain and suffering we shall
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March 18, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
see not only the resurrection of Christ on Pas
Pascha,
cha, but our own resurrection from sin and from the dead at the end
of the ages.
On this day we are also remember that at the foot of the Cross on Calvary there stood Mary, the Mother of Jesus,
with the Holy Women of Jerusalem, and St. John the Beloved. And
nd St. John’s Gospel testifies that “When Jesus
therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold
thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his
own home.” (John 19:25-27) At this moment, we believe, Jesus Christ gave His all
all-pure
pure Mother to all of us
believers as our own true Mother in the Faith and as such is she indeed seen and venerated by all true
Faith—and
Orthodox Christians to this very day.
Normally, traditional Orthodox Christians do not make prostrations on Sunday, because Sunday, being the Day
of Resurrection, is a day of joy and exultation, not a day of repentance and sorrow, which is what prostrations
signify. But on the Sunday of the Precious Cross we do indeed make prostrations before the Holy Cross
displayed for our veneration. We do this, however, not in repentance, but in worship of the risen Lord and, as
we raise ourselves up from the prostration, we recall the Resurrection of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, let us also remember that the Cross, far from being a sign of shame, is for us a sign of
victory, of victory over death, Satan, and hell. Those who do not venerate the Cross clearly do not believe that
Christ has won and iss winning such a victory for us. When we hear about Muslim mullahs and imams screaming
from their pulpits that they will “tear down” our crosses
crosses—we
we know very well what this means! And when we
see so-called
called Christian churches without crosses on their stee
steeples
ples or in their sanctuaries, we know what that
means, too, don’t we? And we should tremble that such people reject the saving power and message of the
Cross, for they shall be judged for it.
But as Orthodox Christians we not only venerate the Cross on th
this
is Sunday or on Great and Holy Friday, or a
couple of other occasions, but also on every Wednesday and Friday of the year, in the special hymns for those
days, when we sing the troparion for the Cross, because on Wednesday Christ was betrayed and sold by Judas,
J
thus beginning the sacred days of His Passion, and on Friday He was crucified. Furthermore, in the matins
service for most Sundays, the choir reads and sings the special canons or hymns to the Cross and Resurrection.
Lastly, devout and pious Orthodox believers make the Sign of the Cross many, many times during their daily
lives and for every imaginable circumstance, and not just during times of prayer. In this way we invoke the
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March 18, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
saving power of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection by symbolically cov
covering
ering ourselves once again with the
shed blood of the spotless Lamb on the Cross.
As we sing in the “Akathist to the Spiritual Ladder, the Precious Cross”:
O thou thrice-blessed and all-worshipped
worshipped Cross of Christ, all we the faithful venerate and magnify thee,
t being
joyous at thy divine Exaltation. But as the trophy and unconquered weapon that thou art, by thy Grace, protect,
cover, and shelter those who cry to thee: Rejoice, O Tree most blessed!
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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