Third Sunday of the Great Lent

- of the Holy Cross -

"The cross is the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in the midst of Heaven"

His Grace Bishop Ioan Casian in his homily delivered at the end of Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral St. George in Saint Hubert spoke about the different meanings of the Cross, about the stages of following Christ and about askesis:

“Today's Sunday is central to the Great Lent. Fasting is the period in which man through effort, repentance and especially through humility, tries to return to the condition or state that God gave him in the beginning, that is, sinlessness. In the middle of Great Lent is the Sunday of the Holy Cross. In the midst of Heaven was placed the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and the tree of Life. The Cross is the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Here is the first commandment of fasting, of abstinence, of restraint which is given in Paradise, when man had not yet sinned. That is why we can talk about fasting as: staying away from evil, thinning from the matter of this world. Why? So that by opening the windows of our being - the eyes, the mind, the thought, our person - the grace of God can penetrate more easily and illuminate our entire inner house.

 If we want to reach the end of our journey which is the encounter with our risen Savior Jesus Christ the third day for us and our salvation on the night of Easter, this can only be done by passing through the Cross, which means looking through the eyes of Christ - God the reality of our daily experience. It means not only fasting but also askesis that includes both the bodily and spiritually aspect.

We are at the foot of the Cross, so we enter in the midst of Paradise and contemplate the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil which is the Cross. It opens the way to the kingdom of the Holy Trinity. This ascent is imagined by the next Sunday of St. John of the Ladder.”

Regarding the Epistle and the Gospel reading, the Romanian hierarch of Canada underlined:

“Of course, the Epistle to Hebrews is also important because it speaks of our priesthood as people in the Church. If we can do anything in the Church, we do it by virtue of the priesthood of Christ. From that sacrifice which He made as a man, remaining at the same time God, behold, the grace of the priesthood is bestowed upon us. We in the Church - clergy and believers enter the priesthood of Christ - the clergy by ordination and the faithful by Baptism each with different roles.

Here, on this Sunday of the Holy Cross, we are told that we need to take several steps if we want to become disciples of Christ. The Savior Christ says: Whoever wants to come after Me - the first stage, to deny himself - the second stage, to take up his cross and the third - to follow Me. There are at least three elements we can identify.

The first step is to empty oneself of self-love foreign to God. St. Caesar of Arles says that self-love was the failure of the first man in Paradise. If he had not loved himself in the wrong order, man would have been prepared to obey God, preferring Him to himself.

The second stage is to take up the cross, to take the work of Christ, to take it on. For the man who begins his life in the Church, the first Cross is the Cross of Baptism, which means to confess the faith.

The third stage is the following of Christ. To go on the road after emptying oneself and taking up the Cross means not to lose sight of Christ for a moment. He is the alpha and omega of our lives. He is the sign by which we understand that we are on the right path to the kingdom of heaven.

Fasting really means turning ourselves from the obscurity of sin, passions and weaknesses to the light of virtues, divine grace and blessing, to Christ.

Fasting is the period of askesis to which we are called to adhere by faith, so that the grace of God may work in such a way as to climb step by step the ladder toward Heaven imagined by the Ladder of St. John. We are in the period of spiritual effort, in which we try to return to that atmosphere of Heaven. Christ takes us on His Cross to carry us higher and higher. By faith we attach ourselves to this Cross so that we may be carried by Christ through it to the night of the Resurrection, the night of our salvation.”

HG Bishop Ioan Casian ended urging the faithful to continue with humble audacity this beautiful and difficult period.