Below are three of Fr. Abbot's homilies: for the Feast of the Birth of the Mother of God, the Sunday Before the Holy Cross, and the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 2007.

I'm celebrating my mother's birthday twice in the space of a couple weeks. At the end of August I celebrated my earthly mother's birthday, and today I'm celebrating my heavenly Mother's birthday. As much as I love my own mother, today's celebration is more important. It doesn't matter which of the two mothers I know better or with whom I have had more immediate experience. The Mother that has my primary allegiance is the one who has made possible my eternal salvation—by saying yes to God's will for the incarnation of his Son, the Savior of the world.

Whatever relates to our salvation must always have the primacy in our lives. If our loved ones are dying, for example, it is charitable to try to make them as physically comfortable as possible. But it is a great and culpable lack of charity if we don't first make sure that their souls are prepared to be comforted for all eternity. Of utmost importance is their repentance and reception of the sacraments before they go to the judgment seat of God. So what pertains to Heaven is more important that what pertains to Earth.

Similarly, if people give their children every material advantage for a successful life in this world, but neglect to instruct them in that which will lead them to salvation, they have done them the greatest of disservices. Again, what pertains to Heaven is most important. That's why I'm preaching in honor my heavenly Mother instead of my earthly one!

Historically, we don't know very much about the birth of Our Lady. There are some early Christian documents that tell the story of the longing of her parents, Sts Joachim and Anne, for a child—for they were sterile and getting old—and we can read some other details that may or may not be historically accurate. But those details aren't important for the profound significance of this feast. The simple fact that a child was born to a barren couple in response to their heartfelt prayers—a child who was chosen from all eternity to give birth to God made man, so that Paradise could be re-opened to receive redeemed mankind, is staggering in its implications.

One thing I noticed about this holy event is that, even though the story follows similar biblical stories of specially chosen children born of aged or barren parents, there's a striking difference here—Mary is a girl!

All of the other previous miraculous births that were significant in salvation history were boys: Isaac, Samson, St John the Baptizer—all first-born sons with special destinies. Yet this daughter outdoes them all! Next to Christ, she is the most important and significant child ever to be born in this world. And her significance is precisely due to Christ, because He is her Son. Little attention is paid to the childhood of Mary—except for her entrance into the Temple, which theologically points to her motherhood anyway—because all her meaning and glory is in her divine motherhood and perfect faithfulness to God: today we celebrate the birth of the Mother. Today St Anne gives birth to the "Birthgiver of God." In prophecy (Micah 5:2), the Mother of the Messiah is called simply "she who is to give birth," as if her whole identity is expressed by this sacred act; her whole being exists in reference to the One she brings into the world.

The epistle reading for this feast (Phil 2:5-11) is a hymn to Christ's kenosis, his self-emptying for the sake of the Incarnation as well as the Cross, and also of his exaltation for his unswerving obedience to his Father's will, which resulted in our salvation. Mary didn't descend from Heaven as Christ did when He was conceived and born on Earth, but Mary is still a gift from Heaven. The main reason, of course, is that she was the chosen vessel of the incarnation of the Son of God, but she is also a gift because of the example of the imitation of Christ, the discipleship and loving surrender to God's will that we are all called to follow.

God Himself did all the work of the Incarnation. The Holy Spirit came upon the pure Maiden of Nazareth, and the Power of the Most High overshadowed her. Thus the Son of God was conceived as man in her womb. But the Lord didn't do this—and wouldn't do it—without Mary's consent, and therein lies her greatness. God always respects our free will, even if things would go much more smoothly in this world if we were all determined and pre-set by God to automatically do his will. This is because love can only be offered and received in freedom, and what He wants to do is give us his love and receive our love—so that we may one day enter into the eternal celebration of love and joy in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, in the terms of today's Gospel (Lk 10:38-42; 11:27-28), Mary was born into this world in order to hear the word of God and keep it. All the rest of us are too, for this is a teaching Jesus gave for all his disciples. Yet there is still a crucial difference. If you or I refuse to keep the word of God, one soul is lost—precious though that is to the Heart of God. But if Our Lady did not hear the word and keep it, all souls would be lost, for the Redeemer could not have come! (We may speculate that if Mary refused God would have shopped around for someone else, but that is only speculation. All we know for sure is that He asked only her and she said yes—for which we should be eternally grateful to her.)

So again, in terms of the Gospel, the Mother of God is called blessed primarily because she heard the word of God and kept it, and not because hers was the womb that bore Christ and the breasts that nursed Him. Yet her case is unique here as well. For Mary, hearing the word of God and keeping it meant precisely that she would bear the Son of God in her womb and nurse Him as an infant. Still, her self-sacrificing consent to God's will did not, and could not, stop there. Her whole life had to be oriented to both hearing the word and putting it into practice, right up to the Cross and Resurrection, and until the day of her death. In a sense, this is the contemplative and active life lived as one.

In the Eastern tradition, the "active life" does not refer to specific apostolic works or ministries such as teaching, running hospitals, missionary work, etc. It simply means the assiduous practice of virtue in all circumstances. The contemplative life is the mystical life, prayer and contemplation. This means that all are called to both the active and contemplative lives—indeed, the two cannot be separated, for if one does not manifest virtue in practical situations, it is clear that his so-called contemplative life is phony and fruitless. So, from the Eastern perspective, cloistered monks and nuns must be both active and contemplative, and those with demanding external ministries must also be both active and contemplative.

Let us look briefly at the tropar for today's feast, to get a little insight into how the Church views it. "Your birth, O Godbearer, has filled all the world with joy"—it filled only two elderly parents with joy at its historical moment, but today it fills millions of believers with joy. The text explains why: "For from you rose the Sun of Justice, Christ our God." This is a little bit of poetry using an Old Testament image of God, from the prophet Malachi: "Lo, the day is coming… when all the proud and all the evildoers… will be set on fire… But for you who revere My name, there will arise the Sun of Justice, with healing in his wings" (Mal. 3:19-20). So Christ is the one who will judge the wicked but bring healing and salvation to those who receive Him. No one could be saved without Him, but believers now have access to Paradise, since Our Lady has received Christ from the Father and given Him to the world as our Savior. The text continues: "He cancelled the curse and replaced it with his blessing, thus confounding death by giving us eternal life." So, the healing, saving, Sun of Justice cancels the curse that banished us from Paradise, "confounding" death, which was our everlasting inheritance under the curse—for He came to give us eternal life.

For all this, let us give thanks to God and to our heavenly and most important Mother, for her birth into this world is a precious sign of God's love for us. Her faithfulness, her loving obedience and surrender, her purity of soul and body, her hearing the word of God and keeping it, constituted the immaculate horizon from which the Sun of Justice rose to save the world.

The mystery of the Cross is essential, indispensable, and at the heart of the Christian faith. That is the main reason why the Church takes such care to celebrate it thoroughly. Aside from the primary celebration of the Cross on Great and Holy Friday—along with every Wednesday and Friday throughout the liturgical year—the Church gives us three special days for reflection upon this saving mystery: The Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Feast itself, and the Sunday after the Exaltation. We begin this trilogy of celebrations today. The Church looks at this mystery from three distinct perspectives: the first is a kind of theological reflection on the mystery (John 3:13-17), the feast proclaims the Gospel of the crucifixion itself, and the Sunday after gives us the practical application of the mystery for our daily lives (Mk 8:34 — 9:1).

The central passage of the Gospel of the Sunday before the Cross, which can be understood as a central passage of the Gospels as a whole, is one which even those largely unfamiliar with the Scriptures have probably heard: "God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." What does it mean that God gave his only Son? The answer is given in both the preceding and following verses. "God sent the Son into the world…" This is the first element of his giving his Son. Sending the eternal Son into the world can mean only one thing: his incarnation. As the Son of God, pure spirit, He was always present in the world along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But He was "sent" as man into the world, that He might save it. How would He save it? This is answered in the preceding verse: "The Son of Man must be lifted up." As you probably know, "lifting up" is a euphemism for crucifixion, but it also signifies glorification. The death of Jesus Christ, the only acceptable sacrifice for the atonement of our sins, was both crucifixion and glorification.

But in what sense is a brutal and shameful execution a glorification? Again we return to the central passage of the Gospel: God so loved the world. Jesus' painful and bloody death is his glory because it is the manifestation of the Father's love, and of his own, for us sinners. His glory is in his love, and greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for his beloved. This is love in the extreme, love that knows no limits, that doesn't draw any lines—as one might say: "I will love to this extent of sacrifice, but no more." We do that all the time, limiting the sacrifices we are willing to offer. But not our Lord. Jesus had to die the worst of deaths in order to show us the best of his love. And He has said, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," as well as "Love one another as I have loved you."

I have been reading the Gospel of John lately, so when I came to the third chapter I had opportunity to reflect on this passage. I thought about what it meant that God so loved the world. This was the world that He created and pronounced good. Yet this world was also the arena of the fall of man and of countless sins and evils ever since. As I prayed to the Father, I acknowledged that He made this world beautiful, but we have made it ugly by our sins, and I wept over what mankind has done to the "very good" creation of God.

Yet precisely because God loved what He had made—even though ruined by the evil of man—God sent his Son into this mess, a world that had become perverted and disfigured. God sent Him to save it, to redeem and transform it—but the only way for Him to reconcile it to the Father was to take all of its evil upon Himself. That is another reason Jesus had to be lifted up on the Cross. In case we still don't know the horrible consequences of sin, we need to look upon Him whom we have pierced, we need to see that divine body torn with scourges, crowned with thorns, nailed to the Cross, mocked and blasphemed. There, that is was sin looks like; that is what it does. But Jesus turned the tables on the insatiable malice of mankind by turning their hateful, destructive act into an act of self-sacrificing love on his part, and so the ugliness of evil was transformed by the beauty of love and mercy. What seems at first glance to be a horrifying sight is in reality a vision of the most tender love and compassion. For this reason, Jesus has been publicly portrayed for many centuries in the very hour of his agony and shameful suffering, on countless crucifixes and icons, and many millions of faithful have venerated with love his bleeding body and the wounds by which we are healed.

This is how God so loved the world. It is not a love that comes and goes as feelings come and go. It is not a fair-weather love that holds back or complains when demands are made of it. It is a love that empties itself to the utmost for the beloved—for us who are not even worthy to be called God's beloved because of our ceaseless offenses against his love and holiness.

In this Gospel, Jesus gives us only one condition for bearing the fruit of eternal happiness through God's love—believing in Him. In verse 17, Jesus said He was sent to save the world and not condemn it. But in verse 18, He says in effect that He doesn't have to condemn it, because those who do not believe are already self-condemned. The presence of Jesus is not a judging presence, but a revealing one. He reveals what is already in us. If we believe, we are shown to be saved; if we refuse to believe, we are shown to have condemned ourselves. Jesus is the One before whom, as Simeon prophesied, the thoughts of human hearts are revealed.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Just believe and be saved. Well, it's not so easy, for at least two reasons, both of which relate to the full meaning of "believe." Faith in Christ is not a sort of theoretical assent, and acknowledgement that yes, He is the Son of God and died for our sins. Faith affects every aspect of our daily life, and if we look closely, we may discover that in some practical ways, we don't really believe at all. We have to believe in the promises of Christ when we suffer from other people or are faced with the difficult demands of the life of a disciple. We cannot design our lives according to what is most comfortable or agreeable to us—if we still wish to maintain that we believe in Christ. We have to believe in Christ in the face of the horrifying and relentless evils and sufferings in the world and God's apparent silence or inability to do anything about it. We have to believe He is with us when our own inner life is plunged into darkness or confusion or pain or sorrow. We have to believe that He loves other people just as much as He loves us—otherwise we are believing in an idol and not in the true God.

The second reason faith is difficult is because its full expression is much more than a simple act of faith, even an apparently genuine one. To believe in Christ is to hear the word of God and keep it. Later in this third chapter of John, there is a clear parallel between faith and obedience, making them synonymous. You can't have faith without obedience and still call yourself a believer. The Gospel says: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life"—you would expect the contrary clause to say "he who does not believe does not have life"—but in fact it says, "he who does not obey the Son shall not see life." That makes it crystal clear that he who doesn't obey cannot at the same time truly believe; in that case his "faith" would only be self-deception. Otherwise, Christ would be contradicting Himself. Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, writes: "He who withdraws from obedience withdraws from grace." Let's hear the whole passage from the Gospel: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him" (3:36).

So let us believe in the Son of God—truly believe, which means follow Him in loving obedience and trust—for God so loved the world that He sent his Son to save us, sent Him to die for us on the Cross, sent Him to bring us home to Heaven, for that is why we were created. Only with true and living faith, that is, faith put into practice, shall we not perish, but rather have eternal life.

"We preach Christ crucified," declares the Apostle Paul in the epistle for this feast, "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Divine power, divine wisdom, manifested in the crucifixion of Jesus. This is the "word of the Cross," as Paul said, which is "folly to those who are perishing," but the power of God "to us who are being saved." On this solemn feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross, we preach Christ crucified, we preach the word of the Cross.

What can we say about this "word of the Cross"? We all know something of the theology of the Cross, the atonement for our sins through the self-emptying sacrifice of the Son of God. But before we theologize too much, let us simply look at the Gospel to get the word of the Cross from the evangelist who was an eyewitness. Let us learn from what he saw and heard.

In the passion account in the Gospel of John, Pontius Pilate plays a pivotal role, moreso than in the other Gospels. There is a fairly extensive dialogue between Jesus and Pilate that we do not find elsewhere. This has to do with true kingship, true power, and truth itself.

But let's back up just a little. The first word of the Cross is the complete innocence of Jesus, the unblemished lamb offered in sacrifice for our sins. Pilate asked the chief priests what crime Jesus was being charged with. They couldn't produce one, so they answered evasively: "If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over."

Pilate declares on three separate occasions: "I find no crime in Him." But Pilate was a coward. He wouldn't stand up for the truth, because truth was a fluid concept for him; it could be invoked, ignored, or manipulated, depending on the expediency of the moment. Jesus had told him that He came into the world to bear witness to the truth, and then Pilate uttered his famously concise manifesto of relativism: "What is truth?" Pilate will prove that he is not interested in justice, but only in avoiding a confrontation with the mob.

So, after the first time Pilate said he found no crime in Jesus, he had Him scourged. Pilate says, in effect: I declare Him innocent, and therefore I will have Him tortured. After the second time Pilate declared his innocence, he may have had a qualm of conscience. He was afraid that Jesus might be the Son of God after all, so he took Him aside and questioned him further, but ended by asserting his own supposed authority to crucify or release Him. Finally, after publicly declaring Jesus innocent for the third time, he handed Him over to be crucified. If this happens to the green wood, Jesus would say to the weeping women, what will happen to the dry? If the innocent are unjustly condemned, how much worse will things go for the guilty?

Pilate did something else that was less unjust, but it still is not to his credit, for he was but an unwitting instrument of God: He proclaimed the kingship of Jesus. (This is something like Caiaphas prophesying that Jesus would die for the people. The evangelist said he did not say this on his own, but as high priest he prophesied unwittingly.) The kingship of Jesus is another word of the Cross. Not only is Jesus the innocent Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world through his passion and death, He is also the King of Glory who is universally exalted for this atoning sacrifice.

Six times Pilate declares Jesus King. First, in their private conversation he acknowledges it: "So then, you are a king." Later he turns to the crowd and says: "Will you have me release for you the King of the Jews?" After Jesus was scourged and crowned with thorns, Pilate presented Him, saying: "Behold your King!" He asked them, "Shall I crucify your King"? Then Pilate ordered an inscription to be posted on Jesus' Cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Finally, he reiterated this proclamation when the chief priests objected to it. He curtly said, "What I have written, I have written."

Another word of the Cross is the fulfillment of Scripture, of the Old Testament prophecies. They divided his garments and cast lots for his robe. He thirsted and they gave him vinegar to drink. They broke none of his bones, but looked upon Him whom they had pierced. Jesus is the Messiah, the Suffering Servant of God, by whose wounds we are healed. He carried our sorrows and afflictions, He bore our punishment, He made himself an offering for sin, and upon Him God laid the iniquity of us all. He poured out his soul to death and was numbered among evildoers, yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for transgressors.

When He knew that his sacrifice was accomplished and accepted by the Father, He bowed his head and said: "It is finished." As He said in his high-priestly prayer, which was fulfilled on the Cross, "I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work which You gave me to do." It is finished, and all that remains is for the world to gain eternal life through faith in the only true God and in Jesus Christ, whom He has sent.

This is the central word of the Cross. Jesus did what He was sent to do. He revealed the Father, He preached the truth about God and man, He gave us, as St Basil says, "precepts of salvation," that we might know how to live according to the will of God. But the essence of what Jesus was sent to do is revealed on the Cross. He was to manifest the love of God to the point of total sacrifice, and He was to do this for the sake of sinners, reconciling us to the Father so that we might enjoy the abundant life He came to give. When Jesus knew that He had loved us fully and completely from the heart, when He knew that the reconciliation of sinners had taken place in his own tortured flesh, when He knew that in offering Himself to the Father on our behalf He was taking our sins away, when He saw from afar the flaming swords of the cherubim withdrawing from the gates of Paradise—now opened—He bowed his head and said, "It is finished."

St John ends his account by assuring us that it is an eyewitness testimony, and that this testimony is true. It bears the seal of divine revelation.

"What is truth?" asked Pilate. The word of the Cross is truth. It is the power of God for us who are being saved. People are perishing, however, because they think this word is foolishness. They reject their only hope of salvation, of entering through the gate of Paradise, which is opened only with the key of the Life-giving Cross.

But today, we who preach and believe in Christ crucified, who accept the word of the Cross and find in it the wisdom and power of God, exalt the Cross and celebrate our liberation from the power of sin and of the "second death". We raise the cross in our liturgical service, direct it toward the four corners of the Earth, and continuously implore the Lord's mercy for this world which He has created—and redeemed at the price of his own blood.

Finally, then, the word of the Cross is divine mercy. Many people tend to think of the Cross as a burden, something we have to haul around like a ball and chain, something that restricts us in the free exercise of self-indulgence, something that hangs over us like a threat of punishment. It may very well be all that if you are among those who are perishing, those who think the word of the Cross is folly. But the mystery of the Cross is essentially the mystery of mercy, of the God who so loved the world that He gave his only Son to suffer and die on the Cross to take away our sins and bring us to everlasting life. The Cross is our refuge, our hope, the only light when all is darkness, the only anchor when we've lost our moorings, the only way to get out of the mire of sin that we're always getting stuck in.

Let us, then, not limit our experience of the mystery of the Cross to our liturgical celebration, but let us welcome that self-sacrificing love of Jesus into every aspect of our daily lives, and let us seek from Him the grace to love as He loves, to walk the demanding but life-giving way of the Cross, which is indispensable for our salvation and eternal happiness. Let us not only preach Christ crucified but embrace and follow Him wholeheartedly, and thus to be lifted up to the joy of the heavenly Kingdom—where we will behold our King, not humiliated and condemned, but radiant with the glory of his everlasting love.

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