What do we see when we survey the Holy Cross? Does it strike terror, or does it inspire hope? Do we cringe before its death-dealing force, or do we feel its life-giving balm flow over us like myrrh?

As we say at the Hermitage each Lent, we journey to the door of a tomb — yes, His tomb, but also our own — our tomb, which is the Cross: His Cross which redeems us but also our own where we must come to the intersection of exacting justice and fitting mercy. The consequential decisions we face all throughout our life, therefore, are always about the Cross.

The Son of God hung on the Great Compass of the world upon a hill guiding us, and everyone, ever after. Upon it we see the four cardinal points (in Greek): "A" "D" "A" "M". For the Cross guides the universal journey of mankind towards the only destination which might be called Life: the New Adam, Who has ransomed the Old. That is, we see ourselves upon a cross and the One Who has interceded and replaced us.

Here is the great tableau set before us forever: our Savior, arms outstretched, embracing all the world, every soul who has died and every soul yet to be born. On either side of Him are our crosses: on His right is the "cross fulfilled," embraced by the thief who has deemed it fitting and just, whose contrite heart is broken before God, adoring Him. On His left is the "cross denied," despised by the thief whose moment of accusation and judgment has yielded only bitter resentment and insolence.

Isn't this what happens in the moment of our accusation? Either we are resentful, or we own the truth of it: "Yes, I have done this. May the Lord have mercy on me."

Here we see the Cross in its aspect of a Door, the final door — opening to Divine life or to eternal death. How shall it open for us? Will our hearts be contrite and broken in humility, receiving its life-giving balm? Or will we resent judgment and death and finally God, receiving, therefore, its death-dealing power? This choice, either humility or resentment, constantly hovers before us. At every moment we may follow the lowly path or the haughty path. By the time we reach our deaths, the forty days which follow will only prove what is already true. That is, what we have chosen all along will be in the end our choice eternally.

The Orthodox Church observes several feasts of the Cross each year including Holy Week. On September 14 the Precious and Life-giving Cross is Exalted and Elevated to commemorate its discovery, along with the two crosses of the thieves, by the Empress Helena around the year 326. Today, the Third Sunday in Lent, we Adore the Life-giving Cross, inviting us on a retreat to meditate on its nature and meaning.

These feasts have special significance to refugees from the Western Church. For no subject surfaces so clearly the profound differences between East and West as this one does. Indeed, it was the Great Schism which marked the West's departure from the thousand-year-old understanding of the Cross and of salvation, itself.

Over the years, the Hermitage has offered spiritual conferences on Anselmo, the Italian monk, who imported his theory of "blood sacrifice" into England where he was installed as Primate of the Roman Catholic Church there (1033). We have offered spiritual conferences on the original understanding of the Greek Fathers, who have meditated on our salvation as arising from the Divine Life of the God-man, not so much his death. We have offered spiritual conferences on the meaning of all this in terms of worship space, with a Western cruciform church erected for passive spectators seated opposite a kind of high gallows (i.e., High Altar) and an Eastern Temple where a great cloud of witnesses gathers. Small wonder that we have dwelt upon this subject above all others. For no subject will lead us more truly to our longed-for union with the original Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and to the deepest and most holy teachings of the Master and His Apostles.

Our spiritual conference today is anchored in the book, Orthodox Christianity: Doctrine and Teaching of the Orthodox Church, a definitive five-volume work prepared by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, a Permanent Member of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate. This landmark work has become a cornerstone of the Hermitage's library. Through this work let us ponder the teachings of the Church concerning the Cross and our salvation.

I say "ponder," for Met. Hilarion (reflecting the sensibilities of St Gregory the Theologian) writes that "the mystery of the redemption is not an object for the construction of theological theories" (Orthodox Christianity, II.313). It is a matter for the soul, not an intricate puzzle for the mind. Considering the Church's dogma of the redemption, Met. Hilarion singles out the word λυτρωσισ (lytrosis). The Western Bible translation usually is "redemption," but the pure meaning of the word is "release," "setting free," "ransom."

In several of our spiritual conferences, we have reflected on the meaning of ransom for our salvation through first-century ideals for friendship, deemed by Antiquity to be the highest form of love. The early Apostles thought of themselves as being spiritual kin to the ancient world's ideal for exalted friendship, Damon and Pythias — two friends laying down their lives for each other. Damon secured the release of his friend Pythias by laying down his life. Pythias secured the release of Damon by laying down his life. And the ransom that set them both free was this most noble act of love, which so moved the Tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius, that he could not bear to see either man executed.

St Luke noted in his Acts of the Apostles that the goodly brotherhood of Jesus' disciples sailed under the banner of the heavenly youths of Syracuse (διοσκουροις), which had been carved into the prow of their ship (Acts 28:11). After all, was not this the Master's great injunction?

Met. Alfeyev writes Jesus' universal ransom is linked to

As Damon and Pythias received a plenary blessing, enshrined in the highest ideals of the Graeco-Roman world, so Jesus' noble and Divine self-offering is glorified in the eyes of the Father, placing a blessing over all mankind forever:

The opposing view, picked up zealously by the Reformers of the sixteenth century and then by frontier Evangelicals of the nineteenth century, is that God the Father, requiring satisfaction for an unpayable bond, demanded the blood of His Own Son. Is this notion not hideous and grotesque to every heart who hears of it? We know of Father God's mercy, kindness, and love (the Hebrew chesed):

We have seen the Father's rejection of human sacrifice. As Gregory affirms:

As we have shared in many spiritual conferences, our salvation, which is effected the moment God's Incarnate Person touches the earth (viz. Athanasius, De Incarnatione), lies in our birthright as God's children and at our Lord's own invitation to join Him in Divine Life (Jn 17:21).

Yes, Met. Hilarion points out,

We might pause here to consider the cult of death practiced in the Western Catholic Church, the so-called Sacrifice of the Mass: to build a High Altar, so we can execute Jesus over and over and over again.

Our salvation lies in our participation in Divine Life, which is fed and nourished at every communion, where we really and truly break bread with the Lord of Life. And He taught us another kind of unity, which is no less important: to take up our own crosses — our cross of self-sacrifice, the cross on which our worldly selves will be sacrificed for the sake of all goodness, the cross on which we will offer our highest selves, laying down our life for our friends, our family, our children, and our God. Do we not live at a time when people refuse to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children? ..... producing the needy and troubled children we now see wandering around us.

Then what are we to say about the death of our Lord and Savior? Doe His death redeem us? Jesus brings us to Heaven with His love, His Life and living example, and His all-important acceptance of our birthright to be family: "Here are My mother and My brothers!" He exclaims in Mk 3:34.

As "the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross," (Heb 12:2) Jesus used His death to end the quid-pro-quo faith life of blood-for-salvation. (Understanding this unlocks the otherwise enigmatic scene of Jesus' rage and violence directed to men selling sacrificial animals in the Temple.) As we read in last Sunday's Epistle lesson,

Who can gauge the cosmic mystery of the God-man offering His human life? Which of us can say we are able to grasp its power or significance? As Met. Hilarion comments,

The devil could not grasp the Lord of Life with the dark claws of death. Nor could his dark mind grasp this act of agape, of self-sacrificing love. "What?!" the evil one would think. "Almighty God give His life for these lowly humans? Absurd!"

For lowliness is not His element. His mind is the world of self-love, self-promotion, and self-gratification. The Divine life and mind are distant from him, alien ..... or should I say, he is alienated from God, from others, and even from himself in his eternal narcissistic restlessness?

The cross that speaks to him is the cross of the insolent thief. This he understands. "Is not the thief simply looking out for himself? Is this not every man's inclination ....if we are to speak honestly? If he is not for himself, then who shall be for him? This is the way of the world! Anyway, if you do not claim your piece of the pie, someone else will."

All true, we answer. This is the way of the unredeemed world, whose inner compass is the cross of the insolent thief. But this compass cannot find the Kingdom of Heaven, and cannot see the New Adam.

Today, let us look with unflinching honesty within ourselves. Which inner compass is ours? Whichever one it is — the cross of self-absorption, self-image, and self-promotion or the cross of self-denial, sincere honesty, and self-sacrifice — it is the inner compass that leads us day by day .... minute by minute. The territory it brings us into will shape us and form us. Over years and decades, this is who and what we will become .... and we cannot be unformed or reshaped in a twinkling.

It is not true that the our Judge will sweep everyone into Heaven on account of his famous mercy, violating His own sense of justice and repealing the laws of human nature that He created. It is not true that God will make everyone good violating His elemental gift of human freedom. Formation is the work of a lifetime proceeding precisely from this freedom, this freedom to choose. What is the time required to finish this work of formation? It is the span of a human life, for this is life's purpose and the reason for life's span. When we see the young and virtuous die, we remember that "Enoch walked with God and was no more" (Gen 5:24). Death is not a penalty.

As the Son of God, the Eternal Word of the Father, emptied Himself of power and glory in order to enter the narrow straits of our humanity, so He instructs us to empty ourselves of worldly power and vainglory that we might be conformed to the narrow cross. This is the secret of the way of perfection: intentional poverty, chaste life, and obedience to God. This is the lowly way. As we read through the Psalter ....

"He will beautify the humble with salvation." And what is the beauty of salvation? It is holiness. Comely holiness. It is a life truly lived in the family Image, which was set upon us from our conception, indeed, from the foundations of the world. It is our choice, each of us, to claim Divine Life and to be done with a worldly calculus. This is salvation: the Life of the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth.

And His death? His death is to bestow a great gift to humble men and women seeking deliverance from the thickets of the world. It is the path out. It is the Gate of Heaven .... the undiscovered secret garden in the midst of an impenetrable wood.

Who among us loving God does not long to be done with this gritty, selfish, and depraved culture? Does not Jesus say this over and over and over again. We heard it in today's reading: "O adulterous and sinful generation!" And when we have reached this point in our formation, we will understand death as He does: a glorious day, our true birthday, our final and everlasting freedom. This is the Cross: the Door to Life and to real and unending joy.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.