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From beginning to end the lenten and paschal services of this special
season in the Church’s life call us to return to God our Father. The
theme of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) runs through
the entire season. The simple fact is that we have ruined our lives
and our world. We have polluted the air, the water and the earth
beneath our feet. The birds and the fish, the plants and the animals,
grieve because of human evil. We have abandoned communion with God and
have gone off on our own, following our own ideas, enacting our own
plans. And the result? Through our reckless wasting of the gifts given
us by God, we have stripped ourselves of our original and fundamental
dignity, glory, wisdom, beauty and strength: we have lost our legacy
as God’s children. And the whole cosmos suffers with us in our
affliction.
People feel unhappy and they don’t know why. They feel that
something is wrong, but they can’t put their finger on what. They
feel uneasy, confused, frustrated, alienated and estranged – and
they can’t explain it. They have everything and yet they want more;
and when they get it, they are still empty and dissatisfied. They want
fulfillment and it never seems to come. Everything is fine and yet
everything is wrong. Here in America, this is almost a national
disease. It is covered over by frantic activity and endless running
around; it is buried in activities and events; it is drowned out by
television programs and football games. But when the movement stops
and the dial is turned off and everything is quiet…..then the dread
sets in, the meaninglessness of it all, the boredom and the fear. Why
is this so? Because, as the Church tells us, we are really not at
home. We are in exile. We are alienated and estranged from our true
country. We are not with God our Father in the land of the living. We
are spiritually sick and some of us are already dead.
“Our hearts are made for God,” St. Augustine said more than 1500
years ago, “and we will be forever restless until we rest in him.”
Our lives are made for God and we will be unsatisfied, unfulfilled and
frustrated until we find our home with Him. Nothing in this fallen
world can, of itself, bring us the peace that we seek. God alone can
do that because He alone is our home. And we are His. The lenten and
paschal season is given to us by the Church as the time for the our
conscious return to our true home in God, the God who has – in His
amazing love for us – forgiven us and embraced us in the crucifixion
of Christ Jesus our Lord and granted us the possibility of eternal
life in His rising from the dead.
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(adapted from Father Thomas Hopko’s book, The Lenten Spring)
THE
VICTORY OF SUFFERING LOVE
The incarnation, the birth of Christ in
Bethlehem celebrated at Christmas, is already an act of salvation. The
Word of God, in taking human flesh and taking up our broken humanity
into Himself, restores us. Christ saves us by experiencing from
within, as one of us, all that we suffer both outwardly and inwardly
through living in a sinful world. But in a fallen and sinful world,
His love had to reach out yet further. Because of the tragic presence
of sin and evil, the work of our restoration by Christ was to prove
infinitely more costly. A sacrificial act of healing was required, a
sacrifice such as only a suffering and crucified God could offer.
The incarnation is an act of
identification and sharing: God saves us by identifying Himself with
us, by knowing our human experience from the inside. The Cross
signifies, in the most stark and uncompromising manner, that this act
of sharing is carried to its utmost limits. Jesus Christ, our
companion, shares not only in the fullness of human life but also in
the fullness of human death. “Surely he has borne our grief and
carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) – all our grief, all our
sorrows. Such is the message of the Cross to each one of us. However
far I have to travel through the valley of the shadow of death, I am
never alone. I have a companion. And this companion is not only a man
as I am, but also true God from true God. At the moment of Christ’s
deepest humiliation on the Cross, looking upon Christ crucified, I see
not only a suffering man, but suffering God.
Christ’s death upon the Cross is not a
failure which was somehow put right afterwards by His resurrection. In
itself, the death upon the Cross is a victory. The victory of what?
There can be only one answer: the victory of suffering love. “Love
is as strong as death….many waters cannot quench love” (Song of
Songs 8:6-7). The Cross shows us a love that is as strong as death, a
love that is even stronger. And so Christ’s death upon the Cross is
truly, as the Liturgy of St. Basil describes it, a “life-creating
death.”
The crucifixion is itself a victory! But
on great and holy Friday, the victory is hidden, whereas on Easter
morning it is made manifest. Christ rises from the dead and by His
rising delivers us from anxiety and terror: the victory of the Cross
is confirmed, love is shown openly to be stronger than hatred and evil
and life to be stronger than death. God Himself has died and risen
from the dead and so there is no more death: even death has been
filled with God. Because Christ is risen, we need no longer be afraid
of any dark or evil force in the universe. As we proclaim each year at
the Paschal Resurrection service in the words St. John Chrysostom:
“Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free!
Christ is risen and the angels rejoice!”
- Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
from his book, The
Orthodox Way
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