By Johannes Karavidopoulos,
Professor Emeritus of the New Testament at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Professor Emeritus of the New Testament at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
In the middle of the period of Great Lent, our Church, on the Third Sunday of the Fast, presents the Cross of Christ so that the faithful may venerate it and thus continue, strengthened, the spiritual struggle that will bring them to Great Week and Pascha. On this day, the passage with the following words is read that Christ addressed to His disciples as soon as He announced to them His imminent death on the cross:
"Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” And He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God coming with power” (Mark 8:34-9:1).
These words are very important and weighty for those who want to be disciples of Jesus. Since Jesus has to face not glory but the cross and passion, the fate of His disciples cannot be different, if they want to be His disciples in essence, not just in name; disciples, of course, in the broadest sense of the term, i.e. of the Christian who faithfully and consciously follows the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is no compulsion in the teaching of Christ. One can freely decide on the way of the cross after first considering the difficulties and resolutely assuming their responsibilities: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Denying ourselves and taking up the cross on our shoulders are the basic conditions for following Christ. I deny myself means: I abandon the legal and just demands, the normal and justified desires that my ego has in life, I deny the security of a well-intentioned life, in order to surrender to the uncertainty and insecurity that, according to the world’s standards, entails following Christ on the path of His passion. The empirical man, as we all know, seeks order and security, the avoidance of the thought of death, the prolongation of his life by all means. However, with a strange argument for human logic, Christ teaches that life is gained only when it is lost. The sacrifice of life leads to life par excellence. Christ uses in these phrases the word “soul” in the double sense of life, biological life and eternal life which is a gift from God. Whoever wants real life must sacrifice the easy life of the world.
These words presuppose or foresee conditions of persecution in the face of which it is possible for someone to be afraid and deny their faith, resulting in the loss of real life. However, these words do not lose their weight even when there is no persecution. It is of course self-evident that, when one comes to terms with the forces of life in the world and becomes comfortable within the security of organized society, one does not face the issue of persecution or suffering or sacrifice of one's life.
But in what cases can one speak today of the cross and of martyrdom? Are these perhaps heroic realities of the Church's past? Consistent Christianity is not only a historical past, but can also be a living present. When in a world of fallen values you can believe in the values of faith, when in the midst of the usual lie you side with the truth, when everyone does everything to satisfy themselves and you deny it, when everyone compromises to secure themselves and you do not betray your principles at the risk of being harmed and losing your position, when others rationally explain everything with an inner worldly prism, while your own heart is warmed by the hope of the resurrection, then you are a true disciple of Jesus, who follows Him on the difficult path of sacrifice.
However, all these things that seem impossible for the normal person, become realities within the area of God's grace that regenerates and transforms man into a "new creation".
A message, therefore, of voluntary self-denial is addressed to us in today's Gospel reading, self-denial not for any other reason but for Christ and the gospel. The heroes of faith and the saints of our Church are not only figures of the distant past; they can also become living realities in our time.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
