(Mark 10, 32-45)
As you feel the love of God, you ought to respond possitevely to His love
The Lord goes up to Jerusalem in order to suffer. And all of us who, in one way or another, show that we are of Christ, must understand that there is no other road except that we be crucified with him in order to rise with him. However, one constantly realizes that we, who are supposed to be following the Lord, instead seek other things. Ultimately, each man seeks for his own will to be done. We don’t seek Christ with the sense that we will suffer with him. This is not our longing, nor our deepest desire. We don’t want to understand that this is the utmost: to follow Christ to his passion and to his resurrection, and not to put a thousand different things that we seek and desire above this. Grace is this: to pass with Christ from his passion, from his cross, and to suffer with Christ. All other roads, however good and beautiful they are imagined to be, do not lead to resurrection, to salvation.
Our God calls us to imitate the Lord and to suffer, to go through the death of the old man and the death of sin, so that we may rise with Christ in the new ‘in Christ’ life. Just as the Lord sacrificed his human life because of his infinite love for each man, likewise each man, as he feels this love, ought to be moved to respond possitevely to His love and to sacrifice the old man along with its many wills and desires.
Holy Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications.
Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos
