3. Как добрая жизнь – исправная, есть крестоношение спасительное

Celebrating the Exaltation of the honorable and life-giving cross, we piously worship this great banner of our salvation. Malice, ignorance and wickedness hid him in the ground and covered him with all sorts of rubbish and uncleanness, but faith and piety found him and presented him to the honor of the entire Christian world. We confess the mercy of God, revealed in this act of His favor towards us, and with our hearts lifted up in grief we glorify the Lord. But, brothers, while we are so disposed to the triumph of the Church, let us not forget ourselves. The Cross of the Lord is the glory of the entire Christian race; the glory of each of us is in our crosses. Through the Cross of the Lord the salvation of the whole world was accomplished; the salvation of each of us is received from the Cross of the Lord by each one’s own cross. For this reason the Lord says: whoever wants to be saved, let him “take up his cross and come after Me” (Mark 8:34). To take up a cross means to have it erected on oneself. So, if anyone wants to carry the cross for salvation, let him keep it erect. For just as the cross of the Lord was thrown into a ditch and littered with rubbish, so our own crosses can be thrown down with contempt and littered with negligence. And then such an attitude towards the cross will bring us not salvation, but destruction, although it may seem to others that he is thereby saving his soul. Let us turn, brothers, to ourselves and see in what position our cross is? Is it erected, or is it cast down and trampled on with carelessness? - At this point, you ask everyone: what is our cross and what is it made of? Our cross is made up of everything that worries and burdens our spirit and that torments our heart on our right path to the Lord, all the days of our life. 1) These are, first of all, the weaknesses of our nature and the bad directions of its strengths: narrow-mindedness of mind and immaturity of considerations, lack of energy in the will and its immobility in the deeds of duty, lethargy of feelings and their penchant for undue things, and, moreover, the fiends of our selfhood - hordes of passions and all kinds of lust of the flesh. – The awakened spirit sees all this in itself, is burdened by it and carries it on itself, like a criminal who has a smoldering corpse tied to his shoulders as punishment. This is the cross of fallen humanity, or one end of our cross! 2) The second end of our cross consists of all the labors and troubles of life. We seek contentment, good relations with everyone and a favorable course of our affairs. But in all these aspects of our life, sad, and sometimes disastrous, disorder occurs almost every minute. Wanting to avoid troubles, we fight against resistance, and we stretch our belly, it’s like someone walking among thorns and briars - every now and then there are snags and scratches! - This is the cross of life. 3) The third horn of the cross is made up of labors to fulfill the tasks that are obligatory for us. Each of us has our own responsibilities. Each duty has its own range of tasks in which it is fulfilled. Every task requires labor and patience in bringing it from beginning to end - in the spirit, order and completeness that constitute its essence - with overcoming all the obstacles inevitably associated with it. It turns out that every task that is obligatory for us is a burden, and all of them together do not constitute an easy yoke of duty, which we bear and must bear until the grave. – Let’s call this a cross of service to the Lord, society and our neighbors. There is no one in the world who would not be covered with these crosses, or with one of his three-part crosses. But some carry this cross for salvation, while others carry it to their own destruction. The Lord, laying the cross on us, wants us to work our salvation through it - and if someone, trying to overthrow the cross, is wounded by it to death, the fault lies in his unreasonableness and inattention to the protective instructions of the goodness of God that saves us. Precisely, the Lord wants us, struggling with ourselves, to gain experience in judging good and evil and to become purified, so that, patiently bearing the hardships of life, we humbly bow to God’s mercy and be granted mercy, so that, fulfilling our duty and overcoming all difficulties, we worthily acquire the crown of righteousness. So, when we enter into these good intentions of God, we hold ourselves in precisely this attitude towards our cross; then we carry him savingly; otherwise, our cross is not for our salvation, but for our destruction. Man fell and took into himself the seeds of imperfections, passions and wrong movements of the flesh. But his spirit, pursuing its high purpose, remained intact within him. His job is to fight the instilled evil. - He himself is powerless; but the Lord gave us saving institutions in St. to help us. faith of Christ. Whoever, enlightened by faith and receiving saving powers in the sacraments, fights passions and lusts through internal and external exploits, so that, having killed them, he ascends to original purity: he saves the cross of fallen humanity. Whoever, on the contrary, gives himself over to passions and lusts, is wounded by their poisonousness and perishes. One should crucify the passionate person within oneself, but they crucify themselves on him. The truth about Christ Jesus is to “put off the old man, which is corrupting in the lusts of deceit, and put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and likeness of the truth” (Eph. 4:22, 24), - and they, turning the truth of God into a lie, “walk in vanity of mind and give themselves over to the work of all uncleanness.” in covetousness" (Eph. 4:17, 19). A person would live in paradise without need and troubles - freely and in all abundance; but he lost paradise and fell into narrowness, one might say, so obligatory that those who choose latitude go to destruction. How much work and sweat is needed to have food, clothing, shelter, security from outsiders, peace with everyone, even with a favorable course of affairs? And what does a person experience when he is burdened by poverty, failures, troubles and sorrows?! The closeness of life is an inseparable companion of our life, which the Lord assigned to us for our ancestral crime. We have turned out to be unworthy of the benefits of paradise, and we are condemned to bear the burden of earthly life, in order to extract from our hearts sighs for paradise and with humility to bow the truth of God to mercy. It’s cramped, but it’s in your power to extract salvation from this cramped space. Work conscientiously, live in moderation, share in a friendly manner, avoid misappropriation of others, endure complacently, and moreover, in repentance and devotion to God, bear this everyday cross as a well-deserved punishment and a measure of correction - and it will serve you for salvation. Laziness, theft of all kinds, luxury, getting lost in vanity, oblivion of punishment, and even more so, murmuring and blasphemous despair, without removing this cross, take away its saving power - and are the reason that it suppresses a person and erases him under its weight. We have fallen into the worst - both internally and externally; but the creatures and their meaning have not lost. God created a right-minded man, for rightness and purity of actions. And after the fall, the Wise One recognizes true man as such, saying: “Fear God, and keep His commandments, as every man does” (Eccl. 12:13). And the Apostle in Christ Jesus contemplates man created “for good works, that he might walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). The field of good deeds is everyone’s position. Father or mother, children, brothers, sisters, servant, warrior, scribe, judge, virgins and youths, married and widowed, buyer and seller, boss and subordinate, teacher and student, clergy and parishioners - all are subject to commandments. Do not go overseas to meet with the things that are obligatory for you. Near is a verb. Your every move is subject to law. Watch your step and step to the right. - It seems that this is a yoke, binding and burdensome, but the Lord arranged it this way so that not a single step of ours would be in vain, and so that, having worked, we could receive the crown of righteousness, which God has prepared for those who love Him. – Patiently continue to perform the tasks that are obligatory for you, – i.e. and conduct every business conscientiously from beginning to end, and devote your entire life to fidelity to duty, knowing that the Lawmaker sees you and, as a good and faithful servant, will lead you into His joy. - Thus they bear the cross of duty for salvation; but those who neglect the work entrusted to them will perish with the workers of iniquity. I will now shorten everything: God’s intention in covering us with crosses is such that, struggling with passions and lusts through internal and external exploits and complacently enduring the cramps of life, we patiently remain in the fulfillment of our duty, each in our own circle, and thus become worthy of entering into eternal peace. If this is how we carry our cross; then it was erected with us. If we deviate from this, then it is thrown down and trampled under our feet. Or, no, that’s not what I said, where will you throw the cross? He stuck to us like skin to our flesh. Whether we like it or not, the cross is all on us, and we are under the cross. It is up to us only to be saved with this cross or to die under it. – Let us choose the best and, having taken up our cross, let us complacently follow in the footsteps of the Lord, thanking His great mercy towards us, shown by the imposition of the cross. – For like a plaster on wounds, like food for the hungry, like the key to freedom for a prisoner, so our cross is for us. And such for us is precisely the cross that is placed on us. Each one has his own cross, and each one has only his cross for salvation. Do not envy another, considering his cross easier. For no one can know the weight of the cross except the bearer. It is certain that whatever you take, none will be of any use to you except yours. Remember that legend, how one crusader kept pestering the Lord in his prayers, asking Him to change the cross, which seemed very heavy to him. The Lord, appearing to him in a dream, offered him many crosses, allowing him to choose which one he wanted. But no matter what he placed upon himself, it all somehow fell on him. Only the last one happened; but it was the one that was entrusted to him by the Lord. Reassured by this, he no longer hesitated to bear his cross complacently. “So it is better for all of us to submit to God’s orders.” It is not the cross that must be chosen, but the way to use it. Take what is entrusted and carry it according to God’s instructions. “The Lord knows better than us what breadth of duty to determine for us, and what burdens of everyday life to place on us, and what struggles and what temptations to lead us into.” Submit and walk meekly under your cross, caring about one thing: may this cross-bearing be for the glory of God and your salvation. Amen. On the day of the Exaltation of the honorable and life-giving cross of the Lord. You might be interested in: