Sermon on the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross [2011]

Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord,

today’s Gospel [Mark 8, 34-38; 9, 1] is not about imaginary fears like the electronic chips or the Antichrist, and is not dealing with Masonry or postmodern ideology but…with the inner following of Christ.

Because in this sunday, Church speaks to us about the spiritual life as the inner crucifixion of the passions and our desires for to fill us with the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.

And no other collateral problem, as those above, is more important that the mystical life, divine in Christ, our Lord. For he that is rooted in mystical and liturgical life of the Church is not afraid of any real or imagined problems that haunts our contemporaries.

But the mystical life in Christ is based on the willingness to deny of ourselves [v. 9]. And all in the same verse, the 9th, the acceptance of the cross is the assuming of all His commandments and of a spiritual mind, to live in holiness.

And the spiritual life is a struggle with fear, with extremes, with passions of all kinds, with the secular way of thinking and living.

Only that the liturgical life, full of the theological readings and the prayer of the heart, forgiveness and the ascetic is what gives us the important answers that escape us from the hilarious, unorthodox fear.

And the demonic fear is an unorthodox one. Because the demonic care for the present and the future is what keeps us away from the peace and spiritual beauty of our liturgical services.

And „whosoever will save his life shall lose it” [Mark 8, 35, acc. KJV], because he seeks an escape/ a salvation after his mind. And those who make from secondary problems or non-problems the agenda of the orthodox life confuse what should be with what is useless.

Because Orthodoxy has a single agenda: the holy life in Christ. And who fully enjoys in his struggles, he has no real fear. For the real fear is incompatible with the real joy, because the joy of holiness casts out from us the fear.

Therefore the Lord says: „whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it”[Ibidem]. Because the loss from this verse means to deny any thought, feeling, facts, concepts that are not compatible with evangelical, patristic, dogmatic, canonical, liturgical thought and with all experience of the Church.

Why should I be afraid of the barcodes? Why should we see them as the 666, when the 666 could be something else? And who entire at his mind is interested about these things and about Antichrist…if he continually prays to Christ?

But this symptomatology of the fear is found in those without stable foundation in the Church. Because the authentic orthodoxies dealing with the liturgical and ascetic life, which is continuous, with the real and great problem of cleaning their passions, and in this state are shattered any fear, which insinuates itself that the most important in the world.

For he who lives for Christ and for His Gospel gives up from him, step by step, all that is improper with the holiness. And one like this is who does „not taste of death” [Mark 9, 1, acc. KJV], who will not taste the eternal death, because, still here, he tasted the uncreated life of God.

How can we resist the Antichrist…without being filled with the life of Christ? And who else is interested about what are doing the occult and demonic institutions, if we live in Christ and if our death, for us, is a gain?

 But the bad fear is always ideological and telluric. And who did not get rid of it and speaks in the middle of it does nothing more than to convey a distorted perspective of the life and the expectations that has the Orthodox Church.

We expect „life of the age that will come”, namely „a new heaven and a new earth” [Revelation 21, 1, acc. KJV], both transfigured through the glory of our Holy Trinity.

We expect, therefore, something unsaidly beautiful and not a planetary catastrophe. And the beauty of the new world springs from our Churchs, from us, from each of us, because that beauty is the uncreated grace of God.

And if we trampled the fears of all kinds, we fill us with the glory of God, the everlasting beauty. And this beauty, the beauty of God’s glory, is what will save and transfigure all creation.

But the Cross is the one who beautifies the world, because assuming it fills us with the beauty of salvation. And be but, we fill ourselves with all of His glory, which we know the mercy and His goodness for always. Amen!