As St. Paul attested when he wrote that “we preach Christ crucified” (I Cor. 1:23), the Passion of our Lord has always stood at the center of the Church’s faith and life. But what has the Crucifixion done for us? The Scriptures and the Fathers speak of two benefits of the Crucifixion: (1) it changes what we are, and (2) Christ’s action serves as the model for our spiritual life.
St. Paul writes that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27), and he links our “putting on” of Christ with participation in His death: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” (Rom 6:3) Christ calls us to share in Him, and this sharing changes us. We enjoy a special communion with Him. As St. Macarios of Egypt says, “… now that God has reconciled mankind through the Cross and death of the Savior, He restores to the truly believing soul its enjoyment of spiritual light and mystery while it is still in the flesh, and once more enlightens its spiritual organs of perception with the divine light of grace. Later He will invest the body also with deathless and incorruptible glory.” By being joined to the incarnate and crucified Word of God, we receive the gift of divine grace in this world and the blessing of eternal life in the world to come.
If we look at our lives, however, we see all too little evidence of this grace. St. Macarios speaks above of “the truly believing soul.” The problem is that we are not always “truly believing”, in the sense that we do not always live according to the faith that is in us. We need to become what we already are. We do this by imitating Christ’s example, particularly as embodied in His Passion. Our Lord Himself speaks of this need when He says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). St. Paul says the same thing: “The death that He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:10-11).
How do we fulfill the Lord’s commandment to crucify ourselves? The Fathers give us more ways than we could set out here, because, taken together, they would constitute an outline of the whole Christian life. We can, however, give a few of the main ways.
One important way that we crucify ourselves lies in the way in which we face the difficulties and adversities of life. St. Macarios of Egypt writes, “We think afflictions are hard to bear, for we do not keep death for Christ’s sake before us or rivet our mind always on Christ. But if we want to share His inheritance we must be willing to share His sufferings with an equal zeal.” And St. Philotheos of Sinai adds, “Let us absorb His sufferings, so that by emulating Him we may endure our afflictions painlessly.” Indeed, placing our lives, with all their afflictions and sorrows, in Christ’s hands enables us to face our difficulties with His patience and endurance.
Christ endured crucifixion because of our sins, to
cleanse us of them and to free us from the enslaving power of sin. Remembering
this should teach us humility. St. Philotheos of Sinai notes that
“the detailed remembrance of our Lord’s Passion, the recollection of
what He suffered, greatly humbles and abashes our pride.” Recalling
that Christ suffered not just because of some abstract thing called
“sin”, but because of our own pride, our own hatred, our own
unreasoning anger, our own lust, our own idolatry of possessions can go a long
way to humbling us.
Finally, the example of Christ’s love and humility helps us to turn our backs on the sinful traits of our character. If we look honestly at ourselves we know that sin manifests itself daily, even hourly, in our thoughts, words, and actions. We must consider ourselves dead to those sins, as St. Paul says (Rom. 6:11), so that we can be alive to God. This is what taking up our cross means: Laying aside pride and selfishness and the host of other sins that grow from them. St. Maximos the Confessor puts it very starkly: “Stop pleasing yourself and you will not hate your brother; stop loving yourself and you will love God.” What does it mean to stop loving ourself? St. Maximos explains: “The man who still loves empty fame, or is attached to some material object, is naturally vexed with people on account of transitory things, or harbors rancor or hatred against them, or is a slave to shameful thoughts. Such things are quite foreign to the soul that loves God.” We must put to death pride, self-justification, the delusion of our own perfection, and our enslavement to external things. When we acknowledge the real sinfulness of our own soul, then it becomes easy for us to bear with and to forgive the weakness of our brothers and sisters. From this humility and love, in turn, grow pure and intimate communion with God.
The real question, then, is not “What has the crucifixion done for us?”, but “What have we done to make the crucifixion a part of our lives?” Christ’s grace which dwells in our hearts through His death and resurrection must be made manifest in our lives. As we approach the feast of our Lord’s death and Resurrection, let us truly “lay aside … the sin that clings so closely”, so that we too may be “seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
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