Sermon on the 3rd Sunday of Great Lent [2012]

My Beloved,

Our joy is one crucified! For that the joy lies beyond the death for sin. For our life is the glory of God, that makes us to live the imperishable joy.

And today’s Gospel [Mark 8, 34-38; 9, 1] talks about the following of Christ as about an assumption of the Cross, namely of sufferings of all kinds.

Therefore our joy is one crucified: because we get to enjoy only endured the cross. And our own existence is our cross.

The motive for that, we must not to desire suffering…but to accept that all life is a gift of God.

For that not only suffering is exhausting but and happiness. We die and from much joy not only of solitude.

So that, to accept life as it is…means to want to see the things in their relations profound with God.

What teaches me God, if I look at people on the street? Let me see, what I learn from this book? What happens, if I stand and look carefully?

And we come to see that any understanding is painful because any understanding is a fact of life. And until martyrdom and a disfiguring death, we must go through bearing the rigors of the day.

And nervousness, tooth pain, sounds crazy, anxiety and lack of fulfillment make part of cross of our life.

But and sins make part of our cross. Their consequences and repentance as a result of sin are the cross. Everything we do to be full of grace is part of the cross.

But the cross, above all, is love for God (v. 34). For that the staying with God means a deep dissociation of bad, of sin…

A dissociation of evil which means a flow of grace.

In the 38th verse, the Lord talks about shame…About the fact of you ashamed to speak what is right. And all here, He shows adultery as an emblem of corrupt social life.

Therefore the lies, the dissimulation, the tergiversation of the truth’s finding are stultifications of the cross.

And the adultery begins in the heart…and has many forms…all means distance of someone…for someone…

The interior distance to God means sin. For that the sin is a fall out of love…and not an indifferent violation of law.

And therefore the world is depraved and sinful: for that does not anything to get out of this decadent state.

The last verse [9, 1] talks about our life’s purpose: the sight of God. For if we do not have the vision of God in this life, if we do not know Him from here…to whom are we going?

Therefore the cross is a seer of God, for that this leads us to Him.

And being placed in the middle of lent this Sunday, it tells us that theology is ascetic because it’s everyday life.

We are going to the Lord’s Cross…but we are living our own cross…

And without this ascetic bearing of the cross, for us His Passions are a show and not a personal transfiguration.

Only that in Church’s liturgical trajectory, the personal cross is the key to the understanding of His Passions.

By fasting and prayer, prostrations and tears, we do not things that do not change us. But, contrariwise: every act of our repentance is a healing, is a beautifying of our being.

Therefore this fast is like a cleaning of spring. Through it we make cleaning into us.

A cleaning so important that are no terms of comparison. For that comes joy once with it…and this joy is imperishable. Amen.