Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord as well as the day of the martyric death of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, one of the most beloved saints of the 20th century.

During the Divine Liturgy we once again heard an excerpt from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. Today we are offered a comparison of human life – the former sinful life, without Christ, and the present, Christian life. This comparison is reasonably simple and understandable. The principal ideas are as follows: man, or more accurately each of us, before our conversion to Christ was enslaved to sin, and all of our members (i. e. all the parts of our person, both the soul and the body and all their separate elements) worked for this sin. This slavery leads to death. Now, when we have believed in Christ, we must become servants of God and righteousness and, as we did earlier in regard to sin, serve Him with all our members. This service leads to holiness and eternal life.

Today let’s take note of two places in this excerpt that emphasize the kind and mild pastoral approach of the Apostle Paul and, of course, the source of this mildness – the bottomless depth of the philanthropy of the Creator. At the beginning of the reading we heard the following words: “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.” These words are followed by the admonition to do good and holy deeds, in like manner to how we earlier did sinful deeds. It would seem that a person who has believed in Christ should completely serve God. God gave His only Son to accept death on the Cross for the sake of our salvation. Logically it would follow that we should be ready to give ourselves up, even our life, for the sake of Christ. But the apostle does not demand this, but commands only that we serve Him like we earlier served sin. This he says because of the infirmities of mankind. We are incapable of ‘repaying’ God for what He has done for us; therefore what is required from us is only that which we are capable of providing. Since in former times we served sin, let’s now serve, in like manner and with the same amount of zeal, the Lord.

The second interesting place that we can note is the closing verse: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life…” Here, like everywhere else, there is a comparison, but it seems somehow uneven, at first glance not very harmonious, unclear, and not very understandable. Perhaps it would have been better to write something like this: “For the wages of sin is death; but of righteousness is eternal life…” Of course it’s not by chance that St. Paul wrote the way he did. He wrote this way to emphasize that which we talked about earlier. God is so great and the work of our salvation is so deep and so full of the love of God for mankind that we, with our infirm human strength, cannot reach Him. Therefore, God gifts us our salvation free of any charge.

Although these lines were written to the newly-converted Christians who had a past sinful life, they also apply fully to us, to people who have as a rule been baptized as infants. When we sin and stray from the path leading to the Lord, we return or find ourselves in that shameful sin- filled life. In such moments we, through repentance, need to return to a righteous life, become servants of truth, labour with all our soul and body for the sake of righteousness, and, once again, have hope in God’s mercy.

priest Alexis