Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Last evening, as well as this morning and now at vespers, we heard all of the Gospel accounts of the suffering and death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We heard how He brought Himself as an undefiled and innocent sacrifice for our sins. Christ ransomed us from sinful and demonic slavery by a precious price, by His own blood, His own life. Beginning with His passionate prayer in the garden of Gethsemane until His last tortured breath on the Cross, He exhibited all of the most wonderful characteristics of human nature: long-suffering, meekness, humility, love for both friend and foe, care for a parent, the ability to pray even in the most intolerable circumstances.

Although today our attention is focused on Christ and His passion on the Cross, in the background of the Gospel accounts we see the closest friends of the Saviour and their reactions to the dreadful events. If in these days the Lord Jesus Christ showed what is most good in a person, His friends, the apostle, showed the brittleness and weakness of the human spirit. They were, naturally, afraid, they scattered and hid, and one of them even denied his Teacher.

Despite the faint-heartedness and shortcomings of these men, Christ does not turn away from them, doesn’t leave them, but on the contrary, after His Resurrection he gathers them together, restores them to the calling of disciples and apostles, calls them His brothers, and sends them to preach on all the ends of the world. These chosen by God, weak mean, as the Apostle Paul calls them in today’s Epistle excerpt, in their simpleness or foolishness confounded the wise and mighty of this world.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, today, when we are standing as if before the tomb of our Saviour and realizing our own spiritual brittleness, let’s not fall in spirit, for the Lord came to earth, became a man and suffered on the Cross, all for the sake of us weak and sinful people. Since Christ, the most perfect of all men, is ready to forgive each and every weak person and to call him His brother, let us also forgive the sins and wrongs of our neighbours, so as to reflect in ourselves, as much as possible, the crucified Lord.

priest Alexis