Great and Holy Friday: The Cross

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• Conciliarity
• Confession
• Eucharist
• Evangelism
• Fasting
• Forgiveness
• Giving
• Hell
• Holy Friday
• Holy Saturday
• OCA
• Pascha
• Practices
• Prayer
• Resurrection
• Salvation
• Sin
• Standing
• The Cross
• The Theotokos
• Worship

Fr. Alexander Schmemann
April 2008

From the light of Holy Thursday we enter into the darkness of Friday, the day of Christ's Passion, Death and Burial. In the early Church this day was called "Pascha of the Cross," for it is indeed the beginning of that Passover or Passage whose whole meaning will be gradually revealed to us, first, in the wonderful quiet of the Great and Blessed Sabbath, and, then, in the joy of the Resurrection day.

But, first, the Darkness. If only we could realize that on Good Friday darkness is not merely symbolical and commemorative. So often we watch the beautiful and solemn sadness of these services in the spirit of self-righteousness and self-justification. Two thousand years ago bad men killed Christ, but today we -- the good Christian people -- erect sumptuous Tombs in our Churches -- is this not the sign of our goodness? Yet, Good Friday deals not with past alone. It is the day of Sin, the day of Evil, the day on which the Church invites us to realize their awful reality and power in "this world." For Sin and Evil have not disappeared, but, on the contrary, still constitute the basic law of the world and of our life. And we who call ourselves Christians, do we not so often make ours that logic of evil which led the Jewish Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, the Roman soldiers and the whole crowd to hate, torture and kill Christ? On what side, with whom would we have been, had we lived in Jerusalem under Pilate? This is the question addressed to us in every word of Holy Friday services. It is, indeed, the day of this world, its real and not symbolical, condemnation and the real and not ritual, judgment on our life... It is the revelation of the true nature of the world which preferred then, and still prefers, darkness to light, evil to good, death to life. Having condemned Christ to death, "this world" has condemned itself to death and inasmuch as we accept its spirit, its sin, its betrayal of God -- we are also condemned... Such is the first and dreadfully realistic meaning of Good Friday -- a condemnation to death...

But this day of Evil, of its ultimate manifestation and triumph, is also the day of Redemption. The death of Christ is revealed to us as the saving death for us and for our salvation.

It is a saving Death because it is the full, perfect and supreme Sacrifice. Christ gives His Death to His Father and He gives His Death to us. To His Father because, as we shall see, there is no other way to destroy death, to save men from it and it is the will of the Father that men be saved from death. To us because in very truth Christ dies instead of us. Death is the natural fruit of sin, an immanent punishment. Man chose to be alienated from God, but having no life in himself and by himself, he dies. Yet there is no sin and, therefore, no death in Christ. He accepts to die only by love for us. He wants to assume and to share our human condition to the end. He accepts the punishment of our nature, as He assumed the whole burden of human predicament. He dies because He has truly identified Himself with us, has indeed taken upon Himself the tragedy of man's life. His death is the ultimate revelation of His compassion and love. And because His dying is love, compassion and cosuffering, in His death the very nature of death is changed. From punishment it becomes the radiant act of love and forgiveness, the end of alienation and solitude. Condemnation is transformed into forgiveness...

And, finally, His death is a saving death because it destroys the very source of death: evil. By accepting it in love, by giving Himself to His murderers and permitting their apparent victory, Christ reveals that, in reality, this victory is the total and decisive defeat of Evil. To be victorious Evil must annihilate the Good, must prove itself to be the ultimate truth about life, discredit the Good and, in one word, show its own superiority. But throughout the whole Passion it is Christ and He alone who triumphs. The Evil can do nothing against Him, for it cannot make Christ accept Evil as truth. Hypocrisy is revealed as Hypocrisy, Murder as Murder, Fear as Fear, and as Christ silently moves towards the Cross and the End, as the human tragedy reaches its climax, His triumph, His victory over the Evil, His glorification become more and more obvious. And at each step this victory is acknowledged, confessed, proclaimed -- by the wife of Pilate, by Joseph, by the crucified thief, by the centurion. And as He dies on the Cross having accepted the ultimate horror of death: absolute solitude (My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me!?), nothing remains but to confess that "truly this was the Son of God!..." And, thus, it is this Death, this Love, this obedience, this fulness of Life that destroy what made Death the universal destiny. "And the graves were opened..." (Matthew 27:52) Already the rays of resurrection appear.

Such is the double mystery of Holy Friday, and its services reveal it and make us participate in it. On the one hand, there is the constant emphasis on the Passion of Christ as the sin of all sins, the crime of all crimes. Throughout Matins during which the twelve Passion readings make us follow step by step the sufferings of Christ, at the Hours (which replace the Divine Liturgy: for the interdiction to celebrate Eucharist on this day means that the sacrament of Christ's Presence does not belong to "this world" of sin and darkness, but is the sacrament of the "world to come") and finally, at Vespers, the service of Christ's burial the hymns and readings are full of solemn accusations of those, who willingly and freely decided to kill Christ, justifying this murder by their religion, their political loyalty, their practical considerations and their professional obedience.

But, on the other hand, the sacrifice of love which prepares the final victory is also present from the very beginning. From the first Gospel reading (John 13:31) which begins with the solemn announcement of Christ: "Now is the Son of Man glorified and in Him God is glorified" to the stichera at the end of Vespers -- there is the increase of light, the slow growth of hope and certitude that "death will trample down death..."

When Thou, the Redeemer of all,
hast been laid for all in the new tomb,
Hades, the respecter of none, saw Thee and crouched in fear.
The bars broke, the gates were shattered,
the graves were opened, the dead arose.
Then Adam, thankfully rejoicing, cried out to Thee:
Glory to Thy condescension, O Merciful Master.

And when, at the end of Vespers, we place in the center of the Church the image of Christ in the tomb, when this long day comes to its end, we know that we are at the end of the long history of salvation and redemption. The Seventh Day, the day of rest, the blessed Sabbath comes and with it -- the revelation of the Life-giving Tomb.

(This article was taken from the DRE publication Holy Week: A Liturgical Explanation from the Orthodox Church in America.)

“O Most Strange Wonder”

TOPICAL INDEX

• Conciliarity
• Confession
• Eucharist
• Evangelism
• Fasting
• Forgiveness
• Giving
• Hell
• Holy Friday
• Holy Saturday
• OCA
• Pascha
• Practices
• Prayer
• Resurrection
• Salvation
• Sin
• Standing
• The Cross
• The Theotokos
• Worship

Fr. Christopher Foley

September 2006

O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians
over their adversaries, and by virtue of Thy Cross,
preserve Thy habitation.

(Troparion Tone 1)

This is the first line from one of the stanzas of the Praises sung at Vigil of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This sums up the totality of the message of the cross. It is the convergence of many things. Over the centuries the Cross has been the center of our Christian faith, and, unfortunately has also been sorely misunderstood by some. What is this Cross that we sing hymns to on this blessed feast? What is this Cross that St. Paul preaches and says is the power of God? Why would the Church commemorate the finding of this Cross by Sts. Constantine and Helen and sing hymns to a device of torture, an inanimate object?

What the Cross Is Not

What does it mean when we pray for the Lord to "grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries?" There has been a tendency in modern times to disregard any allusions to the cross having to do with smashing enemies. Unfortunately, if we take all of these out of our hymnody and worship we miss an important element of the cross - the cross of our Lord has the power to crush sin, death, and the Devil. This is what we mean when we sing hymns about destroying our enemies by the cross. Everything is to be understood in a Christo-centric way. When we think of the Psalms of David, we can also apply this same way of reading. Though David may have been writing about real experiences of enemies trying to hunt him down and where he prays for deliverance from those enemies, we now read them in the Church as God delivering us from our enemies that wage war against our souls and bodies - the passions - pride, lust, greed, and all manner of evil. This is what we mean when we pray for deliverance over our adversaries and the preservation of our life, or habitation.

Nor is the cross some sort of talisman or good luck charm that we use as some sort of magic to bring us blessings, wealth, deliverance, or power. The cross is always tied to a personal encounter with the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, as well as our co-crucifixion with Him. As St. Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ, . It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Christ Himself says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mk. 8:34). There is no Christianity without the cross, and no cross without voluntary suffering. Christ bids us to come and die: die to our sins and be killed, or co-crucified, with Him. It is here that we participate in His death and are resurrected to true life in Him. It is through our baptism that we die to our sins and are raised to newness of life. This is actualized in our real life on this earth in the Church. The power of the cross lies in the revelation of the God-man, Christ, suffering and transforming this into life. Death has lost its power.

What the Cross Is 

The cross of our Lord is so central to our salvation. It is on this tree of shame that the God-man willingly and voluntarily went to His passion and death for our sakes. He reversed everything that mankind had messed up. It is the reversal of the sin of Adam. We continue in this sin because we choose to miss the mark of the image and likeness of God every day. When Adam partook of the fruit of the tree, man died. The wood of the cross is often compared to the tree in the garden of Eden. "The tree has been healed by the Tree." Now in Christ, the heavenly fruit who hung on another Tree, has made it possible our salvation. This is seen in the hymns from this feast:

O most strange wonder!
The cross which carried the most high as a
cluster of grapes full of life
is seen today exalted high above the earth.
Through the cross we are all drawn to God
and death has been forever swallowed up.
O undefiled wood, through thee we enjoy the
immortal fruit of Eden as we glorify Christ.

The cross is always linked to Christ, the one who triumphed over death and weakness in order to save the world. It is here that God is revealed in His glory. In icons of the crucifixion the plaque above Christ reads: the King of Glory. We hymn, glorify, praise, and venerate the cross at this feast for what was accomplished and revealed on this life-bearing wood. We pronounce with boldness the Gospel - through death, resurrection - through suffering, life. This is
the preaching of the Holy Apostles that has been preserved through the Holy Spirit in the life and worship of the Church. We actualize this in our own lives.

Thanks be to God who has deemed to save us and reveal Himself to us! "But now the cross is exalted! Today the power is realized in us” (from Litya Stichera at Vespers)!

Various quotes to dwell on with this feast:

"For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God!" I Corinthians 1:18 

"But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." I Corinthians 1:23,24

"When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM." John 8:28

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." John 3:14,15

"And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly." Mark 8:31, 32a

"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before it shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth... Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." Isaiah 53:7,10

"O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24:25-27

"Thus if you wish to see the mystery of the Lord look at Abel who is likewise slain, at Isaac who is likewise tied up, at Joseph who is likewise traded, at Moses who is likewise exposed, at David who is likewise hunted down, at the prophets who likewise suffer for the sake of Christ." St. Melito of Sardis

"St. Gregory of Nyssa argued that the Passion of Christ is not 'evidence of his weakness,' but evidence of 'the surpassing act of power, by which this was possible,' so that 'it is necessary to honor the God revealed through the Cross just as the Father is honored.' So far is the Passion from being a mark of weakness, for St. Gregory, that 'the God revealed through the Cross' is not only honored, but honored equally with the Father." Fr. John Behr.

Titles for the Cross from the Hymns of the Feast:

• banner of godliness

• gate of paradise

• protection of the faithful

• might of the Church

• enemy of demons

• invincible weapon of peace

• sign of true joy

• help and strength of the faithful

• power of the righteous

• majesty of priests

• shepherd's rod

• guide to the blind

• physician of the sick

• resurrection of the dead

• hope of Christians

• guide to the lost

• haven of the bestormed

• confirmation of the universe

• guardian of the whole earth

• beauty of the Church

• strength of kings

• support of the faithful

• glory of angels

• wonder of demons

• life-giving tree

• strange wonder

• undefiled wood

• Divine ladder

• life-creating wood

• redemption of Adam

• confirmation of sufferers

• glory of the faithful

• protection of the righteous

• salvation of all the saints

• Divine footstool

• blessed tree

• healing tree

• driver away of demons