The Mystery of the Redemption of Evil in a Sermon by Orthodox priest, Fr. Sergey Bulgkov on 14 September 1924. The sermon was written during the Russian theologian’s exile in Prague, before his definitive move to Paris in July 1925. Sergey Bulgakov’s reflections on the Cross are all the more significant when one considers the not only personal, but also collective drama that he and his people were experiencing in the Russian Orthodox Church in the nineteen twenties’.
This feast of The Exaltation of the Holy Cross is both sweet and terrible and hard, and the Church has set the day of its celebration in a deep place. The Cross crosses the sinful depths of our hearts, illuminating and unmasking them. It is opposed by our self-love”.
Fr. Sergey Bulgakov’ Homily on The Power of the Cross
Does it not matter how we look at the true, life-giving tree of the Lord’s Cross, are we not tree worshippers who pray to a tree as to a living being, as an intelligent essence?
Do we pray to a tree, even if it is thrice blessed that we pray, or to the divine power and mystery of the Cross manifested to us in that tree?
Indeed the veneration of the tree of the Cross of Christ is inseparable for us from the veneration of the Cross which remains in heaven, a divine and unfathomable power.
From the image of the Tree of the Cross our minds are led in a holy way to the prototype of the Cross, united to which they are indivisibly united, just as His divine and human natures are indivisibly and separately united in Christ.
The heavenly Lord of the Cross shines on earth in the tree of the Cross, the instrument of our salvation.
When the world was created, the seed of the tree of the cross was sown in it – the cedar, the larch, the cypress.
On that day, when the earth was commanded to produce every plant, the trees of the cross were created.
But this wooden cross is the sign of the eternal cross, the revelation of the mystery of the cross.
The sign of the cross is traced all over the world, in fact it is, according to the hymn of the Church, “a four-pointed power”, linked to the four points of the world, such as height, depth and breadth; and it is inscribed in the human form, by stretching out the arms like a cross.
Moses and Joshua praying with outstretched arms foreshadow the cross of the Crucified One.
The shape of the body seems to recall the wood of the cross, in fact it is a cross with its center in the heart.
But with the image of the Cross, the Creator has outlined His own image in the world and in man, indeed, according to the Church, the Cross is “the image of God, significant for the world”.
What does this sign say?
It communicates the love of God and above all the love of God for creation.
The world was created by the power of the Cross, in fact it is God’s love on the Cross for creation.
The world is saved by the Cross, by the love of the Cross, and the world is blessed by the Cross, it is enlightened by the power of the Cross.
But the deeper and the higher the mystery of the Cross penetrates.
In fact, it mysteriously contains the image of the Triune God, the Trinity in unity.
The Church teaches that the Cross “is the sign of the inaccessible Trinity, the tri-substantial Cross which bears the image of the tri-hypostatic Trinity”.
The Cross is the opening of the Holy Trinity and the power of the Cross is a divine power.
And when in prayer we invoke the unattainable, the invincible power of the true Cross Creator of Life, we are also praying to the divine power of the true Cross Creator of Life, then we are praying to the same life-giving Trinity, in true unity, in its substance and in one divine life.
The cross is God himself, open to the world, to the power and glory of God.
God is love and the Holy Cross is nothing other than the love of God.
The love of the Cross.
The power, the fire and the nature of love is in its becoming a cross, and love does not exist without being a cross.
The cross is the sacrifice of love, because love is sacrifice, self-giving, self-denial, voluntary exhaustion for the beloved.
Without sacrifice there is no acceptance, there is no encounter, there is no life in the other and for the other.
There is no other bliss of love than in self-abandonment, self-denial, which is rewarded by a corresponding action.
The cross is the reciprocity of love, but it is also reciprocity itself.
There is no “other” way of love, of its journey of wisdom than that of the cross.
The Blessed Trinity is the eternal becoming of the Cross, the sacrificial reciprocity of the three [Hypostasis], a single life generated by the voluntary self-giving, by the triple self-denial, by the annihilation in the divine ocean of the sacrifice of love.
The Cross in its three components bears the sign of the Most Holy Trinity.
Why is this so?
In the Cross, three contradictory lines intersect, they approach each other from three different points, but they become one in the heart of the Cross, at its intersection.
In the same way, in the Blessed Trinity the divine life of the Trinity is an eternal encounter, reciprocity in the self-giving and self-renunciation of each one in the other hypostases.
There are no limits or boundaries for love, nor are there any for sacrifice.
To annihilate oneself in order to live again in the other is the bliss of love.
True love, God eternally gives himself on the cross for his love.
The three points that define the lines of the cross are the images of the three divine hypostases that exist in themselves, and the point of their intersection is the one life of the three, the Trinity in unity in the reciprocity of the cross.
And the beatitude of divine love is the beatitude of the sacrifice of the Cross, and its power is that of the Cross.
And if the world is made by love, it is not by any other power, but by the power of the Cross. God’s love creates the world with a new exaltation of the Cross in the revelation of His love to the creature.
By creating in the world through his omnipotence, the Creator makes room in it for the freedom of the creature, diminishing himself, limiting his omnipotence for the benefit of the creature, annihilating himself for the creature.
The world is made through the cross of God’s love for creation.
But by making the world through the Cross, he will save the world from itself, from the destruction of his creature.
God so loved the world that for the salvation of the world He eternally gave His only Son to the Holy One of the Cross, calling Him to be reborn through death on the Cross and to the Resurrection.
God seeks in creation a friend [drug], another [drugoj] self with whom he can share the beatitude of love, to whom he can communicate the divine life and in his love that does not die for creation he does not stop in sacrificing it [scilicet l’amore], sacrificing himself for the creature.
The infinity of God’s sacrifice for the world and its salvation is beyond comprehension.
The Son humbles himself to the point of incarnation, taking the form of a servant and making himself obedient even to death on a cross.
The Father does not spare his only beloved Son, but it is he who gives him and sends him to the cross.
The Holy Spirit humbles Himself in the fallen and cruel world, resting in the Lord’s Anointed in Christ, dwelling in His Mother and realizing His Church.
Together with the sacrifice of the Son on the Cross is the sacrifice of the whole Holy Trinity – the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, who rests in Him and in His sorrowful Mother.
Destined by God for God’s sake for the world, the Cross was prefigured in the Old Testament by many signs and anticipations.
Then, at the second and glorious coming of the Son of God, the sign of the Cross will be victoriously shown in the heavens, and in the heavens of heaven the Holy Cross, the vision, of which was vouchsafed to St Andrew, will shine.
The demons tremble before the blessed sign of the cross.
The Cross is a blazing fire for them.
Why do they tremble before this fire of love?
They hate love, they are blinded by their self-love, they do not want the way of the Cross.
They are united in their legions by a common force of hatred, not of love.
The fire that rejoices and delights them becomes an unbearable flame for them.
The cross is a figurative sign of the name of Christ, which works miracles and awakens power, like the name of God revealed to Moses.
The cross is a celebration of the Holy Trinity, the sacred sign of God’s love that burns away non-love, evil and hatred.
This heavenly Cross has been revealed to us human beings in the Cross of Christ, in that blessed wood before whose image we bow and kiss in fear.
We seal ourselves with it as soldiers of Christ, we wear it on our rings and in our hearts.
Indeed, the Christian is truly a bearer of the cross.
The Christian lives in God and in this sense sharesin the love of Christ, of his Cross, of the weight and sweetness of the Cross.
To bow down before it and to rejoice in it does not seem to him to be an external commandment but an interior command: “ If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24-25).
The Christian lives in God and in this sense shares in the love of Christ, of his Cross, in the weight and sweetness of the Cross.
To bow down before it and to rejoice in it does not seem to him to be an external commandment but an interior command: “Whoever would come after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24-25).
And it is only through our initiation into the Cross that we can bow down before it.
Anyone who is afraid of the Cross and does not want it in the depths of his soul, approaches it falsely and deceives his conscience.
That is why this feast is sweet and also terrible and hard, and the Church has placed the day of its celebration in a profound divination.
The Cross shines on the sinful depths of our hearts, illuminating and revealing them. It fears it and is opposed by our sinful nature, our self-love.
Why deceive yourself?
The natural man is afraid of the cross.
And yet this fear is a necessary development, to cultivate the tree of the cross in our hearts, to lift it up and bow down before it.
You too, like Simon of Cyrene who was passing by, must put your own shoulder under the weight of Christ’s cross.
Each one must take up his own cross so as not to come down from it, and thus, by bringing about the elevation of the cross in himself, he approaches the universal elevation of the [holy] cross.
The commandment of the Cross, for each one his own, given by the Saviour, is not a burdensome annoyance, but an act of God’s great mercy towards humanity.
It is the celebration of God’s love for man, of his great respect.
God wants to associate his joy, his beatitude, his cross with His highest creation.
The original Adam, still in innocent ignorance of good and evil, was given to know the pain of the Cross through obedience to the divine command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grew in paradise (Gen 2:9).
This was a paradisiacal prefiguration of the beginning of the Cross: by renouncing his own will, by doing the will of the Heavenly Father, man crucifies himself on the tree and it becomes for him the tree of life, of full eternal happiness.
But because of the evil serpent, the masters were turned away from the Cross, they “came down” from it, having done their own will, having shown themselves to be disobedient.
And the tree became mortal to them, made them know sin and evil, and led to their expulsion from Paradise.
But on this tree of the Cross, from which the original Adam descended, the new Adam, the Lord, the Son of Man, the only begotten Son of God, climbed; He went up to the Cross to draw all to Himself (Jn 12:32).
In fact, there is no other way than the way of the Cross to the joy of Paradise.
And the old serpent tried to tempt Him, by saying to the Cross through the mouth of His servants “Come down from the Cross”!
But this new temptation was rejected, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil became again the tree of life, a life-giving garden, and the fruits that are tasted make one a partaker of immortality.
And in every man, for the time given him to live, the seed of the ancient Adam also lives,
He feels within himself the incessant whisper, accompanied by the congenital impotence and weakness: come down from the cross, do not torment yourself.
The world is the enemy of the Cross, it is enraged by the words of the Cross, love of the world is hatred of the Cross.
But love of God is also love for the Cross of the Lord, for how can the stubborn and rebellious heart love if not by piercing the Cross?
Your sweet wounds in my heart, O most sweet Jesus, and for Him there is nothing sweeter than these.