NOTES for Mar 15:19-21

In the Gospel account of the Savior's crucifixion, the description of the triumph experienced by all who hated Jesus during His earthly life makes a special impression. Those who loved Him can only grieve and weep. Of course, this is only an apparent triumph; it simply throws into sharper relief what will happen very soon, three days later, when everything falls into place. But those three days still have to pass; they have to be lived through, and not even Jesus' closest disciples expected the Resurrection. Those days were all the harder because the triumph of the forces of evil was not some convention or staged scene; it was as real as Jesus' death on the cross itself. In essence, here at the foot of the cross, two realities, two worlds, came into contact with each other: the great world of God, and the small, limited little world of those who stand against God, separated from Him. But to those who find themselves in that little world, it always appears to be the only reality. And in that reality it is evil that triumphs, and it triumphs as truly as that little world itself is real. Physically, the great world of God and the little world of those who oppose God can exist in the same space and at the same time; those who belong to them can see one another and speak with one another. Spiritually, however, they are two different worlds, and on the day of the Last Judgment the distinction between them, formerly visible only to a few, becomes obvious to everyone: the great world of God becomes the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks, and the little world of those who oppose God becomes the outer darkness of the Gospel parable. In the outer darkness death triumphs; in the Kingdom, life. And the victory of darkness, which appears so real in the little world, turns out on the day of the Resurrection to be its real and complete defeat in the great world of God. Each person decides for himself which of these worlds to live in, just as those who stood at the foot of the cross on the day of the Savior's death made their own decision.

Today's reading may help us, to some degree, make sense of the sharpest question facing a person: how does almighty God allow the existence of suffering and evil, especially when it is always the purest and most innocent people who suffer? Today we are given a glimpse of how God relates to evil in the world. We read how the Lord Himself passes through the very thick of human suffering. He descends from heaven in order to share with humanity all the darkness, all the horror of its loneliness and pain. Jesus is abandoned by His disciples; He passes through the soldiers' mockery, the shameful procession to the place of execution, and the agonizing crucifixion on the cross. In order to drink to the end all the bitterness of human torment, He refuses to drink the wine with myrrh that would dull the pain.

The King of all the earth, the Son of God, is "numbered with the transgressors." He does not come down from the cross, so that He may pass through the most terrible thing: "My God! Why have You forsaken Me?" He passes through the darkness of God-forsakenness belonging to fallen humanity. After this He, like each of us, sinks into the cold of death. The veil in the temple, which separated God from people, was torn: the Son of God had walked the human path to the end. The few disciples who remained buried Him like any mortal man.

Such is God's answer to the existence of suffering on earth. He does not merely sympathize; He suffers with us completely, with us and for us.

Here is also our answer: Christians, each in his own measure, take part in the sufferings of Christ, suffer with the world, and in this way take part in Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and through this also in His Resurrection.

Christ's death on the cross seems mysterious to many. It truly is mysterious, and if it does not seem that way to us today, it is only because the Gospel accounts have become familiar to us. So familiar that we no longer think about their mystery, taking everything described in them as common knowledge and self-evident. In reality, Jesus' death is an utterly incredible event. Not death on a cross - that can be explained by the sinfulness of fallen humanity - but the fact that death became reality for Him at all.

The matter is not only that He is the God-man: God's fullness in Him could be hidden, could become unconscious even for Him, and only He knows what He experienced at that moment. The state of God-forsakenness is familiar to us, and even in a certain sense habitual, and our nature corrupted by sin has adapted to such an abnormal existence for itself. But nothing of the kind can be said of Him: He was born and grew up conscious within Himself of God's fullness, and to lose it was for Him a trial we simply cannot imagine. The matter also lies in the fact that, for human nature in general - and for transformed human nature, such as the Savior's human nature is, especially - death is an unnatural phenomenon. To us it seems natural, and in a certain sense it truly is natural for us, but only in the sense in which, for example, the presence in an addict's body of the drug that is killing him is "natural." For normal human nature, death is something unnatural, and for transformed nature it is directly impossible.

How then could the Savior die, even from the point of view of His own humanity? Death obviously could not have become reality for Him in any way unless... unless He Himself, absolutely voluntarily, fulfilling the Father's will, consented and resolved to enter it. To come into contact with it. To make it voluntarily, for Himself and for His own existence, just as real as it is real for us apart from our will. To do this for our sake - because otherwise even the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that He brought us would have remained incompatible with our fallen nature. God's fullness had to be brought into the world not simply in human nature; it had to enter the world clothed in mortal human nature, absolutely identical to our own in our present condition.

The only difference was that our mortality turned out to be the involuntary consequence of a sin committed by free choice, while His mortality was a temporary condition He voluntarily accepted upon Himself, unconnected with any sin. In this sense Jesus' death was truly absolutely voluntary: without any compulsion or necessity, He agreed to enter a condition entirely unnatural to Him and absolutely foreign to Him. Here He was moved not by necessity or inevitability, but by love - for the Father and for those whom He wants to save.

On Good Friday, on a Good Friday that is not distant from us but closer than ever, although we were not yet alive then, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh spoke these words from the pulpit. '<...> The Mother stood by the Cross; Her Son, betrayed, reviled, cast out, beaten, torn, tormented, was dying on the Cross. And She was dying with Him… Many, surely, looked at Christ; many, surely, felt shame and fear and did not look into His Mother's face. And now we turn to Her, saying: Mother, I am guilty—among others, yes—of Your Son's death; I am guilty—intercede for me. Save us through Your prayer, through Your protection, because if You forgive, no one will condemn or destroy us… But if You do not forgive, Your word will be stronger than any word spoken in our defense… <...> Let us stand before the judgment of our conscience, awakened by Her grief, and bring a repentant, contrite heart. Let us bring Christ our prayer that He may give us strength to awaken, come to our senses, come alive, become human, make our life deep and broad, capable of holding the Lord's love and presence. And with this love let us go out into life to create life, to fashion and build a world, deep and spacious, that would be like a garment clothing the Lord's presence, shining with all the light, all the joy of paradise. This is our calling; this is what we must accomplish by breaking ourselves, giving ourselves, dying if need be—and it is needed!—because to love is to die to oneself, to cease valuing oneself and instead value the other, whether God or a human being; to live for another, laying aside concern for oneself. Let us die as much as we can, let us strive with all our strength to die, so that we may live by love and live for God and for others.' So close to us is that Friday on which the Metropolitan spoke these words, as are all the Good Fridays that have been and will be. 'I am guilty.' I was not alive then, but I am guilty. We cannot regard this day as a symbolic commemoration of events that once took place. No. For the Body and Blood of which we partake are not a symbol, but the very Body and the very Blood. Here I am, and I am guilty here and now. It is frightening when people begin to greet one another for Easter in advance—this really happens, and happens often! Today I know nothing of Easter; I know only one thing: whether woman or man, I am guilty, for He died, and I did nothing to prevent it.