The Shape of Your Salvation

Welcome to Hill Country Homilies. Weekly homilies from Holy Nunciation

Orthodox Church in Liberty Hill, Texas. Holy Annunciation is an

old calendar Orthodox church sharing the faith of the Apostles

and the love of Christ with all who seek His truth. Now,

let's listen to this week's homily, Name.

The Father and so I'm the Holy Spirit Lord to

Jesus Christ has a seat if you like, Beloved in Christ.

We gather today on the third Sunday of great Land,

this blessed season of repentance and spiritual struggle, to contemplate

one of the most challenging but transformative teachings of our

Lord Jesus Christ. From today's Gospel reading, we have heard

his solemn call, whosoever will come after me, let him

deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

This is no gentle suggestion, is no optional aspiration. It's

not limited to the particularly devout. This is the fundamental

requirement of Christian discipleship. Yet in our modern world, saturated

with comfort and ease and self importance, this cause often

appears not merely difficult, but even confusing as we struggle

to understand the words of Christ. Maybe it even appears

impossible when we do understand. But yet, as we will see,

Christ does not ask of us what he does not

first accomplish in himself, and he does not leave us

to bear our burdens alone. So as we begin to

think about what Christ is asking of us when he says,

deny yourself and take up your cross and follow him,

let us remember this first vital point. Your cross may

not be my cross, and my cross may look nothing

at all like your cross. The mystery of the cross

is deeply personal, but universally shared. Every soul bears a

unique cross. The widow wrestling with loneliness carries a different

burden than the merchant tempted by avarice. The young person

battling the passions of the flesh faces trials that are

very much unlike a parent who watches their children drift

away from the faith. The monk in his cell struggles

differently than the laborer in the marketplace. And yet, while

our crosses are distinct in particular to each of us,

we share a common calling. Each of us must bear

our own, and this fundamental truth should teach us a

profound humility and our relationship with one another. How dare

we presume to judge our brother and sister, unaware of

the interior of battles being waged in silence. The person

who might seem harsh you could be enduring chronic pain.

Or the work acquaintance who seems withdrawn may be grieving

a loss we know nothing about. We have no idea

what cross our brothers bury. In truth, this is why

during went we pray, as instructed by Saint Evron, the

syrian O Lord and master of my life, grant me

to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother.

But if we are all called to carry these different crosses,

there must be some commonality that binds us all this command,

and there is. Each cross has one thing in common,

and that is Christ. In each and every cross that

we are called to carry, we carry it for Christ,

as did Simon of Syreen, who helped our Lord carry

his cross to Golgatha. Because each of our cross is

if we fail to carry them, if we choose instead

to separate ourselves from God through indulgence and sin, through

satisfaction of self, will we wound Christ afresh. Yet we

also carry our Christs, not just for Christ, but through

Christ by His love. Both at his urging, as we

heard in the Gospel, but also by his grace. Blessed

Augustine illuminates this mystery with profound wisdom when he writes,

how hard and painful does this appear? The Lord has

required that whoever will come after him deny himself. But

what he commands is neither hard nor painful when he

himself helps us in such ways, so the very thing

he requires may be accomplished. For whatever seems hard, and

what's enjoyed, Love makes easy here the comfort. In these words,

it is love, the divine agape, love that poured itself

out upon the cross, that transforms the impossible into the bearable,

and the unbearable into the salvi effiic. Similarly, cesareus or

less taught us. Love of self was the ruin of

the first man. If he had not preferred himself in

the wrong order, he would have been willing to be

subject to God, and he would have preferred God to self.

Our crosses, then, are not punishments. They're being inflicted upon

us by a vengeful God. A lot of people think

that they see somebody suffering tearing their cross, and they think,

you know, God is punishing that person. But this is

not what the cross does. Rather, the cross are these

sacred instruments of our salvation, the very means by which

we learn to order our love rightly, to prefer God

to ourselves, the eternal to the worldly, and the soul

to the body. So, if brothers and sisters we are

to carry our cross, how do we do it? This

is one thing to tell them do it. It's another

to tell somebody how to do it. And there's not

much in the scripture about that except that first part,

deny yourself. It's a pretty good instruction. To take up

the cross means to bear whatever is troublesome or burdensome

in this life, and in bearing it faithfully, to follow

Christ in the way of the Cross. When we truly

follow him according to his teaching and his precepts, when

we truly attempt to live as he lived and taught

us to live, we will inevitably encounter resistance from those

around us. Many will contradict us and stand in our way.

Some will deride us for our faith. Others will actively

persecute us, and not just from outside the church, where

we see it. The lot from pagans or unbelievers who

reject the gospel. But even those who visibly wear the

title of Christian oppose many of us who choose to

fitlock faithfully in Christ's way, criticizing judging that which they

don't understand. You may have heard it if you talk

to someone who's outside the church about the fast. Oh

that's legalism, you know. Oh, that sounds like the Jewish law. No,

they just don't understand what we are being asked to

do or why we do it. Yet they have words

to say. We're called not to yield to their falsehood

or to despair at their lack of understanding. The calls

us to a elegate balance, a spiritual wisdom that the

Church fathers have long understood. Tolerate sinners, but don't yield

to them. We must not allow apparent prosperity of the

wicked to seduce us and to compromise with the truth.

In our modern world, we see this in many many ways.

We have a culture that tells us compromise our sexual

morality because it's too hard to ask people to be chased.

We have a culture that tells us that wealth and

worldly status is the most important thing on this earth,

even at the expense of our souls, and the subtle,

not so subtle these days suggestion we can serve both

God and Mammon, that is, both Christ and the false

values of the world. All of these we will see

and hear over and over and over, and they are

utterly false. The loneliness that comes from standing firm and

the faith when our Christian neighbors and challenge not just

our practice, practice, but our very belief pressures us towards

unfaithfulness and worldliness. That's the intent, and the daily struggle

against the demons of pride, envy, greed, and self righteousness

that assault us from within provide a ready excuse for

people to just put down the cross and please man. Yet,

in these trialses, precisely at this point where we were

called to remember the encouraging words of Saint Cesirius, you

will do well to despise all things for the sake

of Christ, in order that you may be fit for

his companionship. Our crosses are the price of following the

King of kings, and the reward for burying them faithfully

is communion with Him. And we must understand if we

do not carry our cross, if we choose not to

carry our cross. Our cross will carry us, but not

in the right direction. If we refuse to carry our

cross consciously, intentionally, with a willing surrender to God's providential will,

our cross will carry us in a manner far more

destructive and spiritually periless than if we had embraced it willingly.

Saint Augustine observed with spiritual insight when I noticed that

you were being slowed down in your divine purpose by

your preoccupation with domestic kills, I felt that you were

being carried and dragged along by your cross, rather than

you are carrying it. What else does the cross mean

than the mortality of this flesh. When we do not

actively and willingly carry our cross, we are first passively

but then actively dragged by it, enslaved by it. Our

unexamined sufferings become masters over us rather than servants of

our spiritual transformation. Our unresolved griefs become festering wounds that

poison our souls and turn us away from God. We

choose the muck of the mud over the life and

the light of Christ. Clem and Alexandria warned of the

great spiritual peril that follows from neglecting our calling of

carrying that cross. Those who neglect good works may fail

to grasp just how much the good work of God

has benefited them. Hence they're less capable of praying so

as to receive good things from God, and even when

they receive them, they are likely unaware of what's been

given them. This is a trategy of spiritual blindness and

ingratitude which follows from giving or putting down the cross

and giving in to the way of the world. Our

crosses become for us burdens and obstacles and instruments of

our destruction instead of transformative encounters to our salvation. So,

my brothers and sisters of Christ, the time for half measures,

for spiritual complacency, for divided arts between the things of

God and the things of the world. As time has passed,

our Lord calls us. Our Lord calls us to a

decisive commitment to pick up that cross and to turn

in our whole person towards him. Will we deny ourselves

and take up the cross with faith love? Because that's

one of the things you hear today. A lot of

people prostance orthodox all like that. You know, save you

take up your cross and follow Christ. Take up your cross,

but they leave that first part off. Deny yourself, take

up your cross, and follow Christ. Because if you don't

do the first, you won't finish the second. You won't

be carrying that cross. That cross will be carrying you

across a finish line that you don't want to be

carried across. Remember, your cross is the shape of your salvation,

is the instrument by which we are conformed to the

image of Christ. It's the narrow way that leads to life.

It's the path to resurrection and eternal glory. So as

we continue in this holy season of great land, let

us here again with renewed commitment that called our Savior Christ,

whoever will come after me, let him deny himself, take

up his cross and follow me, for in doing so,

in losing ourselves for his sake, we discover that we

do not lose our lives, rather we find them. So

may our merciful Lord grant us the courage and searching

self examination, the fortitude of taking action, of first picking

up and then carrying that cross, and finally the sustenance

through his grace and energies to win the struggle to

carry that cross to the finish and so doing to

claim that great prize which Christ has already won for

us and the name of the Father and the Son

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Amen, thanks for listening to Hill Country homilies. For more information,

visit Holy Annunciation Orthodox Church at www dot Denunciation, tx

dot com, and please join us again next week