Spiritual Contemplations for those who serve the Lord |
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.'” (Matthew 16:24). The third person pronoun ‘his’ reveals the experiential depth in the cross and how it varies from one person to another because each soul’s desires are differ and diverse. These desires, whether known or hidden, normally tend to recoil from God’s commandments in order to secure to the soul fake happiness; thus contradicting every truth in order to justify the resisting pride that opposes the truth. So, whoever “carries his cross” or in other words whoever “accepts willingly and wholesomely what is not acceptable here and now” will cross over from death to resurrection. For, the cross exists here and now and has to be carried at this moment with unconditional love and the self has to be crucified now in order to live in the power of the Resurrection and the perpetual joy which remains unaffected by external circumstances. For, the Christ who has revealed to us the amazing secrets of the cross and Resurrection has granted us to love the suffering therein and to decide willfully, just as He did, to die considering everything a gift from Him, being inspired by His love that pain incorporates a wonderful joy. This joy is the key to the blissful eternity. For, where there exists a “yes” to pain and death, there exists life and where there is “acceptance” of the darkness of the grave, there will be an ushering into the King’s courts. Where there is full fellowship with the mystery of the cross, genuine happiness will be found that belongs to the Resurrection. For Christ did not retreat from the cross because He embraced pain and death in order to reveal to us the light and joy hidden in them through His resurrection from the dead. How Can Death be Joyous? Love is much stronger than all that is against it. Through His love, Christ has made of death the first step towards joy and life. Through Christ death has digressed from its root and has no longer any connection with its previous hideous concept . One of the saints would call death “My brother Death”. Towards the end of his life, while waiting death, Seraphim Sarovsky said, “It is the great joy that approaches me.” We often witness some believers in their cascades seeming as if they were in a glamorous wedding. This is because the new man raised from the dead has realized when to embrace death with love and when to love while accepting in himself the sentence of his death. The saints know very well the meaning of the tradition expression “the joyful death” because in reality they have trained themselves for death by dying to the self all their life. St. Hezikus says concerning the remembrance of death, “let us remember death unceasingly because this remembrance will stop all futile pain, protect my soul, grant me the continuous prayer, keep my body alert and make me hate sin. The truth of the matter is that every virtue springs from this remembrance. Let us, therefore, guard it as much as we can.” This perpetual practice of death is in itself a practice of living life in its fullness because it is the exercise of resurrection here on earth. For as Graf Dürckheim, a current wise man says, "he who does not live with death all the days does not live at all.” Also, “The one who really lives is the one who knows how to die.” Death, therefore is only scary and an instigator of depression to those who are still captivated in the jail of the self tied with earthly ties; for God the benevolent has allowed for death to take place. Therefore death cannot be evil. Just as God did not scorn the larva while in its cocoon; but promised to make her into a beautiful butterfly; so through death He procured us resurrection and a better life. Let the Resurrection then be the window through which we look out onto all things. Only then will we discover the true secret for our life because it will be a resurrected life where joy will be around us; and we will live in a sea of love that drifts us towards heaven and “crossing over” will be our perpetual youth in this world. Let us chant always “The Christ is risen from the dead. With death, He trampled over death and granted life everlasting to those in the graves.”
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