In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In today’s Gospel, we hear that a village of Samaritans refused to receive the Lord, “because his face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.”
This is easy to understand on a historical, or literal, level. The Samaritans were Israelites who, during the Babylonian Captivity, had been left behind in the land. They intermarried with their Gentile neighbors and invented—or, perhaps in some cases, preserved—customs that were different from the Jews who returned to Israel in the days of the righteous Zerubbabel and the holy prophet Ezra. In particular, we might recall the words of the Samaritan woman to the Lord: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Whereas the Jews had their religious focus on the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans’ place for temple worship was on Mount Gerizim, and indeed, the Samaritans worship there to this day.
Therefore, since the Lord was going to Jerusalem for the Passover, the Samaritans regarded him as an outsider and heretic and refused to receive him.
Going deeper into the text, however, and exploring its spiritual dimension, we recognize that we are often just like those Samaritans. In what way?
The Lord, in setting his face for Jerusalem, is going to be crucified. And he calls us, his disciples, to take up our cross and follow him all the way to Golgotha.
But so often, we shun that fate; we avoid our cross. We don’t want to go to Jerusalem. We would prefer to shut ourselves up in the comfort of our homes and let the Lord pass us by.
The Lord shows us that the pathway to true and everlasting life, to the resurrection of the just—that path is cruciform. We must crucify the old man, with his passions and lusts and sins, in order to receive and experience the ineffable delight of life with God.
This is not an arbitrary arrangement on God’s part—as if he decrees, by fiat, that we must give up something to get something. Not at all. Rather, as the Lord says, a man cannot serve two masters. If we give our heart over to sin, if we occupy ourselves with passing things and spend all our time and energy on them, then we have shut God out of our lives. The choice is ours; the Lord has given us free will.
And the Lord has also given us time. We recall once again today’s Gospel: when the Samaritan villagers refused to receive the Lord, the holy apostles James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven, just as it rained on Sodom and Gomorrah of old. But the Lord forbade them, saying that he had come to save men’s lives and not to destroy them.
So it is throughout this age: since the days of the flood, when God hung his bow in the clouds to show he would never again send down a deluge as in the days of Noah, this time has been given to us for repentance. Our evil piles up high, going up over our heads, but God forebears.
Death will and must come, but as long as we have breath, we have time to rededicate everything—our entire life—unto Christ our God through repentance. To the end, he gives us the chance to take up the cross and follow. He gives us the chance to come out of our homes and to welcome him, and to join him on his journey—a journey to Golgotha, yes, but also beyond, to the empty tomb, to the Resurrection, to the enthronement on the right hand of the Father.
Experiencing the merciful patience of the Lord, we have a foretaste of the joy of his Resurrection. And knowing that this is indeed but a foretaste of the surpassing sweetness which delights the saints forever, we no longer need to cower inside, making our homes in the village of this world and this life. We know that our true home is the life to come.
Thus, we take up our cross with joy. Each of us has his own cross, because each of us has his own favorite sins, his own struggles with the passions. But all of must learn to set aside our ego and our desire for pleasure in order to live for our Lord and for our neighbor.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. And there is another like it: love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love, in the language of the Scriptures, is not a warm and fuzzy feeling: it is to will the good of the other, to act for the good of the other, to give of the self, to empty oneself, for the sake of the other. God is love, and God is revealed to us as a crucified man; love, therefore, is cruciform and crucified. Our ego and selfish desires must be fixed to the cross with the nails of true and Christ-like love.
But once again, this crucifixion is not a punishment: it is the path to joy. As the ego perishes, the love of God flourishes. As our fallen desires wither, our ability to do good—true good, not self-indulgent and false benefactions—our ability to do true good increases.
We surrender earthly pleasures, and we receive eternal delight. We mortify our passions, and we receive true love. We crucify our ego, and we receive the Risen Christ into our hearts and into our lives, now and forever. As we sing in the dark of the Paschal morning:
“Let us purify our senses, and we shall see Christ, shining in the light of the Resurrection.”
To him who emptied himself and was crucified for our salvation, and who calls us to follow him on the path to true life and everlasting joy, Christ our true God, be all honor and worship, together with his Father and his All-holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.