"Love Your Enemies" : Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost & Second Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Cor.  1:21-2:4; Luke 6:31-36

 One of the great challenges that many of us face is learning to see that being an Orthodox Christians may not be reduced to confessing certain beliefs about God, no matter how true those beliefs are.  Our faith may not be reduced to conscientious participation in the worship of the Church or keeping our own rule of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, or other spiritual disciplines.  Our faith may not be reduced to following a code of moral behavior or distinguishing clearly between actions that are good or evil.  These endeavors are all virtuous in and of themselves and we must not neglect or diminish them in any way, but our calling is much higher, for it is nothing less than to embody the mercy of God from the very depths of our being. That sublime vocation goes well beyond the demands of being a conventionally religious or moral person, for it requires nothing less than becoming “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Remember what the Lord said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  (Matt. 5:8)

 The laws of the Old Testament were necessary to make clear to the Hebrew people how they were to act as those in a covenantal relation with God.  Jesus Christ is not simply an especially insightful rabbi or prophet on such matters, but truly the God-Man in Whom the ancient promises, laws, and prophecies are fulfilled and extended even to Gentiles like us who respond to Him with humble faith.  He is a Person in Whose life we share as living members of His Body, the Church.  The Church is the bride of Christ and we must live as those in a “one flesh” union with Him in every aspect of our existence. In Him, we become truly sons and daughters of the Most High, for His eternal life becomes ours.   

 It is only in this context that we can understand our Lord’s teaching in today’s gospel reading:  “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  In this passage from the gospel according to St. Luke, Christ does not rest content with calling His followers to limit their vengeance to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” even though that Old Testament principle had placed needed restrain on vengeance. (Matt. 5:38) He did not affirm the common attitude of the time, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” an attitude that unfortunately remains with us today in so many ways, including religion, politics, and ethnicity.   (Matt. 5:43) Instead, the Savior called His followers to be in communion with Him from the depths of their hearts to the point that we embody the divine mercy, loving our enemies like God, Who cares even for “the ungrateful and selfish.”  Let us be clear:  That means that God cares even for people like me and you.

             To become a person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His love even to people we do not like and who do not like us is obviously not a matter of being conventionally religious or moral.  To love our enemies as He loves us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of God.  It is not enough to be kind to our friends and allies, to those we think will return our good will, or to those with whom we have some characteristic in common. It is not enough simply to restrain ourselves from abusing our enemies verbally or otherwise or even to go through the motions of being decent toward them.  No, the God-Man calls and enables us to become brilliant with the gracious divine energies to the point that we convey His merciful love to everyone from the depths of our souls. 

            If we approach this sublime calling merely as a reminder to obey a religious law, we will either fall into despair or delusion about our ability to fulfill it.  The vocation to become like God in mercy and holiness is something we cannot accomplish by willpower or behavior modification alone, even as we cannot raise ourselves up from the grave.  And if we think that we have already fulfilled this calling, then we show only that we have become blinded by spiritual pride to the point that we do not see ourselves clearly at all.  The fact that we seem inevitably to fall short of loving our neighbors, and especially our enemies, as ourselves indicates that we have a truly eternal vocation that we should never think that we have completed.  The struggle that we all have in treating other people, especially those who have wronged or offended us, as we would like to be treated, reveals that we have not yet embraced fully the Lord’s gracious healing of our souls.  St. Silouan the Athonite saw the love of enemies as a clear sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  He taught that when the soul “grows humble, the Lord gives her His grace, and then she prays for her enemies as for herself, and sheds scalding tears for the whole world.”   These words reveal our need for ongoing repentance as we turn away from fueling the passions that make it so appealing to fixate on the wrongs of others and open our hearts in humility to receive the Lord’s gracious healing.  The more that we are aware of our own dependence upon His mercy as “the chief of sinners,” the less inclination we will have to misdirect our attention and energy to holding grudges and condemning our neighbors.

        In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul writes candidly to the confused Christians of Corinth that he knows he has caused them pain by correcting their many abuses of the faith as mostly Gentile converts who kept falling back into the ways of paganism and fell short of manifesting the unity of the Body of Christ in holiness. He did not pain them out of malice or a desire to dominate them, “For I wrote you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.”  In any sphere of life, it is so easy to fall prey to the temptation of thinking that whoever is disagreeing with us or criticizing us is simply trying make our lives difficult or show that they are in a superior position. So often, we are tempted to respond to them in kind, which usually tempts them to get back at us in a never-ending cycle of resentment. We so easily jump to the conclusion that this or that person is simply an enemy when our judgment is clouded by our own passions.  Paul’s statement should remind us that love for neighbor can certainly require telling people what they do not want to hear.  The healing of broken relationships can require confronting uncomfortable truths about ourselves and others.  It is rarely an easy or comfortable process when imperfect people come face to face with how they have wounded one another. It is only by finding healing for the soul as we unite ourselves evermore fully to Christ that we will gain the spiritual clarity to discern what it means to speak and act mercifully in such situations and not according to our passions.  

If we are truly in Christ, we must struggle to do what we can each day to treat those we are most inclined to disregard and condemn as we would like them to treat us.  We must take every opportunity to convey the mercy we have received from Christ to our neighbors, especially those we consider our enemies.  When we fail to do so, we must use our weakness to fuel our humility before the Lord and our sense of unworthiness to judge anyone else.  We must pray, fast, give to the needy, and mindfully reject the nonsense in our own minds, and in all factions of our culture today, that would encourage us to treat anyone as anything less than a living icon of God.  As hard as it is to accept, whether we are sharing in the life of Christ is most clearly revealed in how we treat those we find it hardest to love.  This is not a matter of being conventionally religious or moral, but of whether we are acquiring the purity of heart necessary to see God, especially as He is present to us each day of our lives in those we are least inclined to see as beloved neighbors.  That is the ultimate test of whether we are becoming radiant with the gracious divine mercy of the Lord as His sons and daughters.

 

 

Letting Down our Empty Nets in Humble Obedience: Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost and the First Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 16:13-24; Luke 5:1-11

           Many people today lack perseverance.  We have become so accustomed to instantaneous communication and access to entertainment and information on devices that we carry in our pockets or wear on our wrists that many quickly now lose interest in anything that does not bring immediate results.  Then they move on to something else.  No wonder so many people report being lonely and not having sustaining long-term friendships.  Relationships with other people require patience and commitment, though we all make mistakes in them.  The same is true of our relationship with the Lord.  Sharing in His life is not a one-time event, a quick fix to a problem, or an opportunity to show that we are perfect, but an eternal journey that all of us have just begun and for which we all need infinite mercy.        

Perhaps many years of frustration as professional fishermen played a role in preparing Peter, James, and John to begin their long and difficult journeys as the Lord’s disciples.  They knew that they could not make fish swim into their nets.  They had surely fished all night and caught nothing more times than they could count and this was another one of those times.  They knew from experience to wash their nets, go home, and try again tomorrow.  But the Lord said, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”  Peter obeyed with a tone of frustration, saying: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!  But at Your word I will let down the nets.”  Then they caught so many fish that their nets broke and their boats began to sink.  This amazing scene helped Peter catch a glimpse of where he stood before Christ, for he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  The Savior responded, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.” Then Peter, James, and John left their boats and nets behind as they began their long and difficult journey as His disciples.

After leaving behind their fishing nets, the apostles had to keep letting down the nets of their souls time and time again in obedience, despite their lack of perfect faith.  Christ was certainly frustrated with their lack of understanding many times, even to the point of saying “’Get behind me, Satan!’” to Peter. (Mk. 8:33) Those to whom He taught plainly the mysteries of the Kingdom (Mk. 4:1) understood the Savior so poorly that they abandoned Him at His arrest and crucifixion and originally doubted the news of His resurrection.  He never abandoned them, however, and fulfilled the promise that they would draw others into the nets of the Kingdom by sending upon them the Holy Spirit, Who enabled them to manifest Christ’s ministry with power beyond any merely human ability.

If we want to pursue the Christian life with integrity, then we must follow the example of the disciples in struggling to persist in obeying our Lord’s command.  We must “let down our nets” in obedience each day of our lives. That is not something to be tried once and then abandoned if we do not get the results that we want from our efforts.  That is not something to refuse to do because it would be easier in the moment to do something else instead.  That is not something to be abandoned because there are so many direct paths to pleasure, popularity, and power in this world that we could take.  To “let down our nets” is to make obedience to the Lord’s commands a settled habit in our lives, a stable dimension of our character.  It is an absolute necessity if we are going to gain the spiritual strength to persist in following Christ into the blessedness of His kingdom.

            We must be prepared, however, for our faltering steps of obedience to open the eyes of our souls to the truth about where we stand in relation to the Lord.  After letting down his nets and catching that great haul of fish, Peter gained the spiritual clarity to know his unworthiness: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  His reaction should remind us of how the Prophet Isaiah responded to his vision of the heavenly temple: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Is. 6:5) When we attempt even the smallest act of obedience, we open our darkened souls to behold the brilliant light of Christ at least a bit.  The darkness in our hearts will then become all the more evident to us. At that point, we have to choose between enduring the tension of facing the uncomfortable truth about our souls or making ourselves blind to it by refusing to take up the ongoing struggle of obedience. 

 The only way to embrace Christ’s healing is to follow the example of Isaiah and Peter in humbling recognizing that we are sinners in need of the Lord’s mercy.  Theirs is the same spirit conveyed in the word received by St. Silouan the Athonite: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  For the next fifteen years, he did precisely that, confronting and experiencing the brokenness and sickness of his soul that separated him from sharing fully in the life of Christ. It was only through years of faithful persistence in doing so that he found healing for his passions.  Silouan refused to stop letting down his nets, and that is how he fulfilled St. Paul’s teaching in today’s epistle lesson: “Brethren, be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, and be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.”

 In order to follow the examples of these great saints, we must take up the struggle of obedience to the Savior, Who said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (Jn, 14:15) He spoke those words to disciples who would soon deny and abandon Him, not to people with an unbroken record of spiritual perfection.  Like the disciples did, we wander from the path of obedience with some regularity and often fall flat on our faces due to our weakness before the besetting sins that have become almost second nature to us.  Instead of allowing our pride and impatience to lead us to abandon the difficult way to the Kingdom, we must redirect the energy of our passions to fuel our persistent pursuit of obedience, no matter how imperfect it is.  Instead of despairing that there is no hope for the likes of us, we must humbly accept the truth that our failures reveal about our present spiritual state as we let down our nets time and time again for a catch.  We cannot heal our souls any more than the disciples could make fish swim into their nets, but we can put ourselves in the only place where we can receive the healing mercy of Christ.  That is the place of humility, which we cultivate a bit more fully every time that we see how far short we have fallen in keeping His commandments and call out from our hearts: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

 Despite their imperfect faith and obedience, the disciples gained the spiritual strength to draw people into the nets of the Kingdom.  They did so not by earning a reward for impeccable behavior, but by continuing to stumble along the path of discipleship and returning to it when  they strayed from it.  That is how they learned to see themselves clearly and came to acquire the humility necessary to receive the Lord’s gracious healing mercy.  As Peter once said in response to Christ asking whether the disciples would stop following Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life?” (Jn. 6:68)   Perhaps they had learned from experience that, apart from Him, their nets would always be empty. If we want to learn the same lesson, then we must persist in letting down our nets in obedience, especially when we are as frustrated as those who fished all night and caught nothing.  That is how we too may open our darkened hearts to become radiant with the healing light of Christ.

 

 

Homily for the Sunday After the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 2:16-20; Mark 8:34-9:1

 

            As we continue to celebrate the Elevation of the Holy Cross, we must remain on guard against the temptation of viewing our Lord’s Cross as merely a religious symbol that requires nothing of us. Through His Self-Offering on the Cross, Christ has conquered death and brought salvation to the world.  But in order for us to share personally in His eternal life, we must take up our own crosses, deny ourselves, and follow Him.  If we refuse to do that, then we will show that we are ashamed of our Lord and want no part in Him or His Kingdom. We will show that we prefer to continue in the old way of death rather than to enter by His grace into the heavenly reign.  

            Peter was in precisely such a state when he tried to explain to Christ that dying on the Cross had nothing to do with being the Messiah.  That is when the Lord famously said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”  That is the context for today’s gospel passage as Christ teaches that following Him is not a way to gain anything at all according to the standards of this world, but a calling to offer ourselves without reservation, no matter the cost.  Our vocation is to lose our lives in this world for Christ and His Gospel in order to share in His victory over death.   

            The calling to take up our crosses stands in stark contrast to the persistent temptation to try to use religion to exalt ourselves.  Across the centuries to the present day, some have tried to use the Cross to gain earthly power by identifying some version of an earthly kingdom with our Lord’s heavenly reign.  Others have tried to use the Cross as a way to justify their own religious or moral superiority over their family members, friends, or neighbors.  The problem is not so much in the particulars of how anyone has used the Cross as in the very idea of using it, of making it an instrument for serving our passions in achieving anything at all in this world.  Quite to the contrary, our Lord’s Cross calls us to turn away from addiction to gratifying our self-centered desires as we offer ourselves in union with His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.     

In our epistle reading from Galatians, Saint Paul opposes fellow Jewish Christians who relied too much on their own ability to obey the Old Testament law and would have required the same of Gentile converts.  Refusing to trust in his own ability to obey religious rules, he writes that, “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.”  Paul took up his cross by enduring many struggles and difficulties out of faithfulness to the Lord, ultimately dying for him as a martyr.   He wrote to the Colossians that “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church.” (Col. 1:24)

There is obviously nothing deficient in our Lord’s great Self-Offering.  All that is lacking is our taking up our own crosses in obedience to the Lord’s calling to deny ourselves and follow Him. Because of our own passions and the brokenness of our world of corruption, the struggle for faithfulness inevitably requires suffering, but not as though pain were somehow pleasing to God in and of itself.  Such suffering results from the inevitable tension we experience in embracing the struggle to offer ourselves fully to Christ. Truly taking up our crosses means fighting the difficult battle of confronting our own personal brokenness each day as we reject thoughts, feelings, and habits that would keep us focused on serving ourselves and the false gods of this world.  

  Christ prayed the night before His crucifixion, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) He ascended the Cross in free obedience, and no one forces us to take up our crosses either.  Many problems and pains come upon us without our asking for them in this life, even to the point of death, and it is so easy to refuse to suffer in a spiritually health way. As Job’s wife suggested, we can “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) in response to losses, obstacles, and disappointments.  We can refuse to offer our wounds to Christ for healing by ignoring them or convincing ourselves that we are still better off spiritually than the people we like to condemn.  Of course, doing so will simply fuel our passions, blind us with spiritual pride, and corrupt our relationships with others.   No one can keep us from refusing to take up our crosses, as freedom is an intrinsic dimension of being in God’s image.    

Only we can unite ourselves to Christ in His Great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world. Regardless of the circumstances, we have the freedom to refuse to fall into despair, for any instance of struggle, pain, disappointment, or suffering provides an opportunity to purify the desires of our hearts as we learn to entrust ourselves more fully to the Lord.  Difficulties by their nature present challenges to which we may respond in a Christlike way or according to our passions.  He offered up Himself fully upon the Cross and refused to respond in kind to those who hated and rejected Him.  Likewise, we may unite ourselves to Him in every dimension and circumstance of our lives, including those in which we are sorely tempted not to respond as He did. Illness, broken relationships with others, worries about the future, regrets about the past, crushed hopes, and even the worst losses imaginable all present opportunities to grow in “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Saint Paul wrote that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”  (Gal. 5:22-24)

Our self-centered and distorted desires usually rear their ugly heads quickly when we face trying circumstances.  If you are like me, you sometimes react like Jonah when the vine that gave him shade was eaten by a worm.  That was a very small thing, but Jonah became so angry that he literally wished he would die. (Jonah 4:5-11)   Other times we face circumstances so grave that they rattle us to the depths of our souls and we must struggle mightily not to fall into despair about life itself.  Whether in matters small or great, there is no lack of opportunity to take up our crosses as we struggle to find healing for our souls. 

Doing so usually does not require anything particularly dramatic or extraordinary.  It is normally a matter of focusing on the basic disciplines of the Christian life, such as refusing to accept sinful thoughts into our hearts, forgiving those who have wronged us, and trusting that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:39) The more that we open our souls to the Lord’s healing strength through prayer, repentance, and serving our neighbors, the less time and energy we will have for stirring up and embracing the impassioned thoughts that lead to sinful actions.  The less that we worry obsessively or run our mouths thoughtlessly, the more we will be able to pray to God from our hearts to grant what is best for us, our loved ones, and our world.  We must follow the Apostle’s teaching, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7) This is the path for gaining the strength to take up our crosses, deny ourselves, and follow Christ. 

In order to take up our crosses, we must choose to embrace the struggle of dying to our vain illusions about ourselves, other people, and our world.  Our hope is not in spiritual or moral perfection acquired merely by our own willpower, but in the gracious mercy of the One Who offered up Himself for our salvation purely out of love.  Through the Cross, He has brought life in the midst of death, light in the midst of darkness, and joy in the midst of despair.  We will receive His healing as we persistently offer ourselves to Him in humble faith, no matter what challenges and pains life brings us.  That is how we may die to the corrupting power of sin and enter into the blessedness of His Kingdom, which remains not of this world.  The only way to truly elevate the Holy Cross is by denying ourselves and taking up our own crosses to follow the Savior each day of our lives.  

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday Before the Elevation of the Holy Cross and for the Nativity of the Theotokos in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 6:11-18; John 3:13-17

The temptation to make faithfulness to Jesus Christ merely a matter of outward obedience to a set of laws goes back to the first century and is still with us today.  The problem with legalism is that, as admirable as a life lived according to even the best code of conduct may be, it cannot heal our souls by making us “a new creation” as participants in the eternal life of the God-Man. Today’s celebration of the Nativity of the Theotokos and the upcoming feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross both remind us that only the Savior Who vanquished Hades is able to make us “partakers of the divine nature” as heirs by faith to His fulfillment of the promises to Abraham. 

The Savior’s grandparents Saints Joachim and Anna had despaired of fulfilling their role in the ongoing life of the Hebrew people due to their childlessness well into old age.  God heard their prayers, however, and miraculously blessed them to conceive a daughter, whom they offered to the Lord by taking her to live in the Temple as a three-year old. That is where she grew up in purity and prayer as she prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord, the Theotokos who would contain the Son of God in her womb as His Virgin Mother.  Her parents had learned through decades of bitter disappointment not to rely on what they could accomplish merely by their own abilities, but instead to trust in the Lord’s mercy to bless them as He had blessed Abraham and Sarah. He did so with a daughter who would give birth to the Messiah.  By His grace, they fulfilled their role in the life of Israel in ways well beyond all expectations.

In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul argues against fellow Christians of Jewish heritage who thought that Gentile converts had to be circumcised in obedience to the Old Testament law before becoming Christians.  He rejected that practice, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  As St. Paul taught, “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3: 26-29) By conquering death through His Cross and resurrection, the Savior has opened the gates of Paradise to all who respond to Him with faith.  As He said to Nicodemus in today’s gospel reading, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

Our Lord was lifted up upon the Cross because even the strictest obedience to the Old Testament law could never have made us “a new creation.” The cycle of birth and the grave had reigned ever since the corruption of our first parents both for those who had the law and for those who did not. The path out of slavery to corruption was not through our ability to obey rules, but in being healed by the gracious mercy of God, Who blessed an elderly, righteous Jewish couple with a long-awaited daughter named Mary.   She, in turn, received the unique blessing of becoming the Virgin Mother of the New Adam, Who would set right all that the first Adam had gotten wrong.  The Theotokos is the New Eve through whom Life came into the world.  Her birth foreshadows the coming of the Savior in whom we are born again for the life the Kingdom.

In Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus, a legalistic Pharisee, He spoke not of law, but of the life into which we enter by faith, saying that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  He refers here to an event described in Numbers 21:8-9, when the Hebrews were saved from deadly snake bites when they looked at the bronze snake held up by Moses in the desert.  Christ does not describe Moses here in connection with the Ten Commandments, but instead as foretelling His victory over death through the Cross. Against those who trusted in their ability to obey laws, St. Paul wrote, “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”  Through His Cross, Christ has liberated us from obsession with self-justification so that we may become “a new creation,” being born again into the eternal life that He has brought to the world.

In order to find the healing of our souls in Him, we must take up our crosses.  Joachim and Anna bore the heavy cross of childlessness for decades.  When God miraculously blessed them with the conception and birth of Mary, they offered her to grow up in the Temple.  After decades of disappointment, they knew that God’s blessing was not their private possession, but a calling for them to offer even the greatest desire of their hearts to Him.  Their daughter bore the unbelievably heavy cross of seeing her Son lifted up for the salvation of the world.  As St. Symeon prophetically told her, “a sword will pierce your own soul also.”  (Luke 2:35)

As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we reap the blessings of the faithful obedience of Joachim and Anna and of their daughter the Theotokos.  We must now take up our own crosses as we unite ourselves more fully to Christ in His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.  It is only by dying to the old ways of death that remain with us that we will be able to live as His “new creation,” free from obsession with self-justification as a way of coping with slavery to the fear of death.  We will condemn only ourselves if we celebrate the faithfulness of the Theotokos and her parents while not following their holy examples.  They were not self-righteous legalists, but humbly entrusted themselves to God in ways that required deep faith and personal sacrifice.  We must do the same as we refuse to view the Cross as merely an artifact of ancient religious history or an empty symbol that we distort into a means of gaining power of any kind in this world.  

We will remain enslaved to the corruption of the first Adam and Eve if we refuse to endure the daily struggle of crucifying the disordered desires and unholy habits that keep us wedded to the misery and despair from which Christ came to set us free.  The birth of the New Eve foreshadows our salvation in the New Adam through His Cross.  “For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  Let us celebrate the Nativity of the Theotokos, then, by freely taking up our crosses as we turn away from all that distracts us from entering into the great joy of the fulfillment of the ancient promises to Abraham to which we are heirs by faith.   “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  That is precisely who our Lord, the New Adam, calls us to become as those transfigured by His grace.