September 13th, 2026: Sermon on the Cross

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to you forever.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen. You may wonder, it's

a very busy time of the year. It's not strange

that the Church also tries to pack all kinds

of things in. Commemorate the Resurrection as

we always do on Sunday. We commemorate an event

that happened in the year 335, still important

for us. That is the founding and dedication of

the consecration of the church in Jerusalem of

the Holy Resurrection. Commissioned and built

and paid for by St. Constantine and his mother

Helen. They sang some hymns over here about that.

And today is also the Sunday... before the feast

day of the elevation exaltation of the holy cross

next sunday will be the sunday after the elevation

of the holy cross so the church packs all this

in for us and you hear these gospels and it can

be confusing why do we hear this account of a

lawyer religious scribe an authority coming up

to jesus to Try and trick him to get Jesus to

say something. This is after Palm Sunday. This

is just before Holy Week, this account. And he

asks about the greatest commandment. You've heard

all of that. This is this last gospel of three

that is preparing us for this feast day. Two

weeks ago, Father, we read the gospel of the

vineyard and the vineyard workers who killed

the heir, threw him out, and condemned themselves.

Father preached a wonderful sermon on that. And

last week we heard about the wedding feast in

which all are called, but many simply did not

want to come. They put other things in front

of them. And this week, Jesus is reaching out.

To try for the last time. To bring these Pharisees

and Sadducees. Who are only interested in tricking

him. And humiliating him. Marginalizing him.

And eventually plotting to kill him. So overall

this stands the Holy Cross. So it's because of

that. That I want to. borrow a sermon from Archimandrite

Maximus Constance, a former monk of the monastery

in Mount Athos of Simonopetra, who was recalled

to the, he's American, he was recalled to the

United States to teach. And so I ask your forgiveness,

I'm not going to give my own sermon, mostly,

but his. And he said this, through the cross,

the cross of Christ, which is going to be brought

out this evening for our veneration, we are strengthened.

How? How are we strengthened and why? Why can

it be? We're strengthened so that we can figure

out the truth amidst all the challenges and the

struggles that lie before each one of us and

make progress on our spiritual journey. And through

the cross, we receive. Joy. How? Just as we say

every Sunday at Matins, Saturday night at the

service that we had last night, the vigil, behold,

through the cross, joy has come into all the

world. Through the cross, specifically, joy has

come into all the world. And through this joy,

we can know, we can experience the presence of

God. In every moment of our life, no matter how

difficult those moments may be, you heard St.

Paul's list of all the things that were against

him. And yet, the light of Christ was shining.

And even though he feels like he's just a clay

pot, a shard of nothing, just a mud and dirt,

the excellency of God is there. Not of him, but

of God. How to acquire this joy? Christ has his

cross, and we have ours. But we join our cross

to his. We place our cross on his, so that our

cross becomes an extension of his cross. And

this is why St. John Chrysostom says, the whole

world has become a kind of Golgotha, a place

where each and every one of us is nailed to a

cross with Christ in our suffering. crucified

in our midst, and all of us crucified on either

side of him. Now some of us, like the one thief,

are in terrible pain. And we revile and we curse,

not only those who are crucified around us, but

even Christ himself, being angry at him for our

fate, blaming him for our broken bones. for the

wounds that we bear, calling him to account for

every misfortune, every difficulty and every

affliction that we have. But it also happens

that in the midst of our pain, we see our faults.

Like the other thief on his right hand, we realize

that we indeed are suffering justly. For we are

receiving what we deserve for our crimes, but

this man has done nothing wrong. And that's when

we turn to Christ and we say, remember me when

you come in your kingdom. And the man who had

no business in heaven becomes on that very day,

in that very moment, the first to enter paradise.

St. Maximus, the confessor, it's depicted on

the wall right over there, offers us a profound

meditation on these two men, the two thieves,

who in a sense are one man, or who are all men

and all women. This is who we are at different

times as we struggle, stumbling under the weight

of our cross. Which of the two people we will

be depends on how we respond to the cross. If

on the one hand, we fail to recognize the presence

of the word of God in our midst, who in his love

for mankind, blamelessly is suffering with us.

Well then, like the one thief, we will revile

him, we will curse him, we will repudiate his

judgments, like the Israelites of old, as referenced

in today's gospel in Numbers, with the serpent.

rejecting what God had, rejecting what Moses

had, and then becoming sick and dying because

of the snakes. And we will blame God for our

suffering and for the cross unto which we have

been nailed. Because we did not recognize the

word of God and did not recognize and ask forgiveness

for our faults, we will be sent away estranged

from the kingdom, receiving no promise, wanting

no promise, From the word of God. That one day

we might attain. As for the other thief. The

holy fathers of the Greek church. Never called

him the good thief. But instead. I mean he got

caught after all. But instead the grateful thief.

Because he is grateful. To suffer ill treatment

with the word of God. Who blamelessly suffers

ill treatment for his sake. For his sake. And

so he endures his suffering with gratitude. He

sees the word of God there with him, and he acknowledges

his responsibility for all that he has done.

And he asks that when the light of the kingdom

shines forth, all the pain and suffering imposed

upon him by circumstances might, on account of

his gratitude, be reckoned as virtues. that he

had freely chosen. Of course, there are many

crosses in life, many crucifixions, and we need

to know that we are not to blame for them. Your

cross can be an illness, a disability, an injustice

that you suffered, a false accusation, the pain

of being betrayed. Your cross can be the parent

who didn't love you, the loss of a spouse, the

betrayal of a spouse, the sickness of a child.

A cross is the place you end up when things fall

apart, when your dreams die, when your career

collapses, when your marriage ends. A cross is

where you are when you don't know where you are.

A cross is what you're doing when you don't know

what you're doing. It can be the loss of all

that you have and all that you are. Above all,

your cross is also the little sins that we commit

every day without thinking and the chronic habitual

sins that we have been committing our entire

life. And those things happen to us either because

of the circumstances of our birth or because

of the things around us, things which we were

exposed to, perhaps our parents, the stresses

and pressures that we suffered as children or

out of insecurity, ignorance, fear, the absence

of love, and so many other things could be the

cause. But whatever the cause is, whatever the

cause is, The cross that you carry was given

to you through God's plan of salvation. The cross

that you carry was given to you out of God's

plan of salvation. And it is through that cross

that God will save you. Who or what would we

be without our struggles? This is why they say

that the devil tries to destroy us through our

virtues. Well, God tries to save us. through

our passions and our failures. God allows us

so we can see our weakness and inability and

run from refuge to his grace and strength and

only boast in one thing, the cross. For we are

just clay vessels that the light of Christ may

shine in us. There's a profound mystery here,

a mystery which God enters into the darkness

of our souls, into the pain and suffering of

our cross. and makes it his own. We often think

that God is coming, is going to come into our

life by means of some pleasant, mystical experience

that will require little or no change on our

part. But God is more likely, as you know, to

enter our lives through a crisis, like a serious

illness, the experience of loss, failure, affliction

of some kind, because These are signs, not of

God's absence, but of his presence. God comes

to us in the dark cloud, in the eye of the storm,

in the midst of our pain and suffering. He comes

to us, in other words, through the cross. And

this is because affliction alone can tear us

away from our isolated individual existence.

and transform us into something whole and open

to God. But the mystery is even deeper than this,

even more wondrous, even more divine. The crisis

that engulfs me, said Elder Emilio Nos of Mount

Athos, the pain that I feel is a kind of birth

pain. For it's the initial movement of my soul

to be united to God. And my longing for God is

met by God's longing for me. For it is God who

is seeking me in and through my sufferings. In

and through my pain. So that in the end, the

cross is not so much the agony of man struggling

to find God, but the agony, truly. of God struggling

to find me. If we can see Christ in whatever

our cross is, then the cross changes from an

instrument of death into one of life, which is

why St. Paul boasts in it, to the path of victory

in God's grace in me, which is why he says he

boasts in his infirmities. This is why we call

the cross the life -giving cross, the tree of

life, And what was the source of pain and death

becomes the source of joy and life and healing.

Because the one on the cross is the source of

life himself, our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not

be then like the thief who rejects the cross,

who blames God for his problems and spoke abusively

to Jesus Christ. Let us imitate the grateful

thief. And acknowledge gratitude in gratitude,

the justice and wisdom of God with each one of

us. Because we are never closer to Christ than

when we are on the cross in our moments of difficulty.

Let us speak to him then. And let us ask him

then to remember us so that we too may hear him

say, today you will be with me in paradise. Amen.