Archbishop Ioannis message to believers: There is no Christianity without cross and sacrifice

2026-03-15 11:46:00, Aktualitet CNA

Orthodox believers celebrate the third Sunday of Great Lent, known as the Exaltation of the Cross. During the divine liturgy at the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, Archbishop John called for spiritual reflection and acceptance of sacrifice as the only path to resurrection.

Through a message addressed to the faithful, Archbishop Ioannis focused on the significance of the Cross in the midst of the Lenten period.

According to him, the Cross is not only a symbol of suffering, but a source of comfort and hope for anyone who feels spiritually weary.

He criticized the modern tendency to seek a Christianity without sacrifices, emphasizing that the "healing" of the soul comes only through the denial of the ego and negative passions such as envy and pride.

The Archbishop called on believers to seek success in the eyes of God and not in the wealth or fame of this world, as the loss of the soul is man's greatest loss.

Archbishop Joan's full speech

And as today's Synaxarion says, the Church raises the Cross precisely to remind us of the saving work of the Lord, of His suffering, and to have a kind of consolation and hope and courage. And the Synaxarion even describes it poetically, saying: just as a man who travels in the desert and finds a tree full of leaves and stops there to rest by drinking the water that is nearby, so the Church raises the Cross so that we may have a great hope.

But why does the Church say that through the Cross joy came into the world? People today do not love the Cross. Even Christians want a Christianity without the Cross, without suffering, without sacrifice, without effort. There cannot be a Christianity without the Cross. If we do not accept the Cross, we cannot be true Christians.

The cross may seem very difficult, but it is a cure. That is why the Lord in today's Gospel tells us a very important lesson for each of us. Even when we know the words, he reminds us of them again. He says these words: "Whoever wants to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."

What do these words mean for us today? The first is very important, because God does not force us, but says: "whoever wants" to do it. God respects the free will of every person. We were created by God free, free even to sin, although sin will destroy us. Yes, God created us as free beings, and this is the likeness and image of God that is in us. We are beings and persons free to really decide what we want to do.

And the second one says: "to deny himself." These words are often read by people, perhaps they read them but do not stop. Why does God tell us to deny ourselves? Because God gives the Cross as a cure and He knows that our self is deformed. A great saint of the Church interprets it this way: When Adam sinned, his self was corrupted and deformed and was no longer his own. And God asks us to deny ourselves in order to deny that pseudo-self that we have within us.

Because every person without exception, and I have said this several times, creates a pseudo-self. What he wants to be, or what he wants others to see in him, and it is not the true self. This is a self linked to pride. When people often care about what other people will say about them, there is a very great pride within us. And God asks us to remove this thing.

If we do not detach ourselves from the passions of the world and from all the pleasures that the world can give, we cannot accept the Cross. The Cross will become an extremely heavy burden for us. If we detach ourselves from them and deny this pseudo-self, the Cross will be a very great joy. That is why the troparion of the Church says: through the Cross joy came into the world.

How did joy come into the world through the Cross? Let us meditate on these words, for we often hear them and do not stop. The Cross was an instrument of death, a very terrible death. How did joy come into the world through the Cross? Because God through the Cross defeated death. And each of us through the Cross can defeat death, to die to all the passions that destroy it.

Many things that may seem alive to us are not alive. And many things that may seem dead are not dead but alive. The more we mortify the various passions that we have, the more the Cross becomes powerful within our soul.

The Lord tells us to deny ourselves and take up the Cross. To deny ourselves means to deny any kind of evil that we have in our soul: anger, resentment, envy, jealousy and everything else that destroys man. This is the pseudo-self. That is why the Lord asks us first to deny ourselves, to detach ourselves from any kind of desire that we have in this world that is distorted.

And if we detach ourselves from this, the Cross will begin to become light. As Saint John of Damascus says: "The Cross is mysterious. If we oppose it, it turns into an iron cross that crushes us and opens the gates of hell. If we accept it willingly as the Lord tells us, it turns into a golden cross that opens the gates of heaven."

Because the Cross is a medicine, and medicine is bitter, but healing is sweet. Therefore, the Cross is not an end in itself. The Cross is a means. Through the Cross comes joy, through the Cross death was defeated. Through the Cross the Lord defeated death and rose again. And this means is important for each of us.

The more we resist this treatment, the less we heal. You see what people do for physical treatments, they don't leave a doctor without going, they spend all their money just to get healed. For spiritual healing, people don't make great efforts. And if we don't make efforts for spiritual healing, then what's the point of being Christians?

That is why the Lord continues today's word with these words: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake and my gospel's will save it." What do these words mean for each of us? Look, for example, at how people view other people. Anyone who has wealth, anyone who has position, fame, and everything else, is called successful. Successful for what?

Only the person who is successful in the eyes of God, not in the eyes of men, is successful. We can accumulate endless things, but we have not earned them, but we have lost them. Here are people who do all kinds of things with corruption, with theft to accumulate wealth, and they think they have earned it. Many people around them even envy them, seeing how rich they are, how many beautiful cars they have, how much power they have, and everything else. In fact, they are lost.

Because if you are not rich in God, you are not rich. It is a pseudo-wealth. They are things that tomorrow the day after tomorrow we will all leave. The one who is rich in God is precisely the one who seems to have lost it. Therefore the Lord says that whoever will gain his life according to the world will lose it, and whoever will lose it for the Gospel and for the Lord will gain it.

And this second one is very important for each of us. We certainly do many things from the teaching of God, but the teaching of God is a little broader. He also says about "my Gospel", which means we must be preachers of the Gospel of God to open the good news everywhere, to tell everyone that there is a cure, and this cure is the Cross, and not to be pushed after the desires of the world, collecting and accumulating that one day everyone will leave - some sooner and some later.

If we gain God, we have gained everything. If we gain the whole world and lose our soul, then what will fall to you, says the Lord? What will you give in exchange for your soul? And Lent is a time when we should take these words seriously. We hear them every year, sometimes two or three times a year, and yet we forget them.

If we do not take the medicine seriously, we will not be cured. Every person knows that in physical illness, how meticulously he follows the cure to be cured. Let it be the most bitter medicine, he will still drink it to be cured. But for the salvation and healing of the soul, why are we so slow to accept it, or do we not use it at all?

Of course, every treatment is bitter, but we need to be healed. Because Christianity believes that people are a fallen being, they have fallen from what God created them to be. And to rise, they must heal their souls. And to heal the soul, we need treatment. And God came and took the treatment without needing it. If it is very bitter for us that we need it because we are sick, how much stronger it was for God himself who did not need it, but he still took it to give us an example and to show us the way to salvation.

That is why this Sunday is so very important. By honoring the Cross, we honor the profound mystery of Christianity, for through the Cross joy came into the world. Amen!/ CNA