Why does God need a person to renounce himself, his own personality? Why would He need facelessness? But He calls us to renounce not personality, but selfhood. Personality as something unique is revealed when we enter into relationship with others, while selfhood, being closed in on one’s own interests, makes us indistinguishable from one another. In pride we are all the same!

Jesus’ words about the cross are astonishing. Today we read into them our idea of certain inconveniences of life. But in Jesus’ time this word could not have had such a meaning: the cross was a terrible and shameful execution, and nothing else. Therefore Christ’s words could only mean a call to consent to suffering, death, and shame. And for what is all this self-denial? Simply this: “If anyone wants to come after Me”...

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Where the Russian text has “go,” the Greek text uses “ἐλθεῖν,” the aorist infinitive of “ἔρχομαι”—to go, to come. The literal meaning, then, is: whoever wishes to come after Me. This is not about simply walking somewhere behind Him, but about following Him to a definite goal. One can walk without any special effort or commitment, but if you want to follow Him all the way to the goal, then the conditions He sets come into force. These are Christ's own words about what we are to do.

Deny yourself. We can renounce only wealth that we possess or could potentially possess. It is impossible to renounce the process by which icebergs form in Antarctica. But the icebergs themselves—yes: what do I need them for? To renounce something means to give up claiming authority over it. It is impossible to renounce being a living human being. But it is possible to give up control over that person's life—your own life. To deny yourself means accepting as right and good not the aims and circumstances in life that please you, but those that God chooses to give you. For most of us this means first of all consenting to remain unnoticed and refusing to be guided by our own vanity or that of others.

Take up your cross. In the Gospel, the cross always names what happens when the divine comes into contact with this sinful world. When we sense hostility, we usually either run away or respond in kind—and often do both at once. Christ does neither. He accepts pain and suffering as the inevitable companions of love and innocence in a world stricken by sin. It follows, incidentally, that if you want to take up your cross, merely agreeing to do so is not enough. You too must acquire love for others and innocence; that is, you must stop doing evil and begin doing good.

And follow Me. Contrary to common opinion, eternal life cannot begin after death. It either begins here already or does not begin at all. Following Jesus can begin only in this life; otherwise it will be too late. For us human beings, the chief thing in this following is to seek God's guidance, to seek the rule of the Holy Spirit.

We all went to school, and some of us even work there. We all know the logical sequence: give the right answer, get a top mark from the teacher and have your mother replace a visit to the dentist with a trip to the zoo. So after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the words “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona” sound entirely natural to us. But then: “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” Even the thought of this frightens the disciples, and so Peter says, “This shall not be unto Thee!”

Confessing Jesus as the Son of God opens the way to our reward, but this reward is of a special kind: the opportunity to behold and experience the depth of God's mercy—a frightening depth. It is the opportunity to touch the hidden and ineffable nature of God's love: He gave His only-begotten Son so that the world might be saved through Him. In this depth there is an answer to every murmuring question we may ask, but we must accept Jesus as the Son of God and dare to hear His words.

For human beings this depth of mercy is always incomprehensible. The divine nature is impassible; the Almighty cannot suffer—such is the cry of Peter and the Jews, of Greek philosophers and Hellenized Christian theologians. The incarnate Son of God suffered for us in the flesh, and in horror we either say, like the Jews, that He is only flesh, or, like the Greeks, argue ourselves hoarse that He suffered in the flesh, only in the flesh, while the divine in Him remained impassible. But He Himself says: “Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together” (Hos. 11:8)—and therefore “He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things.”