Holy Week, hour by hour

Lazarus Saturday carries deep meanings for ritual enthusiasts and those who delight in connecting meanings and delving into the sea of Orthodox pearls. All we knew about the Sabbath and Sabbaths is that it is a symbol of rest and cessation from life's works. Thus the Old Testament made it a symbol of the end of earthly creation. But suddenly, and as a conclusion to an old and aged covenant, Lazarus Saturday comes to overturn the meaning of all Sabbaths, proclaiming a new beginning for movement and life, breaking the seals of silence and death, and storming the path connecting the grave and Hades. Thus the Church embraces Lazarus Saturday to make it a small Sunday and a small earthly resurrection for one of the children of the first Adam, paving the way for the great divine resurrection of Christ, the second Adam. Lazarus Saturday in Orthodoxy is the key to the mystery of Pascha, the mystery of transition from the old to the new, from the era of Sabbaths to the era of Sundays, from the era of death to the era of resurrection.

It is the first stage of the passage that our Savior underwent, for by raising Lazarus from the dead, Christ presented an image of the end before the beginning. Thus, He released into hearts the secret joy of victory over death, so that it would not be overwhelmed in the procession of the Cross. It was not by chance that Christ released Lazarus from the depths of the grave and raised him from the dead on the Sabbath day. Rather, He wanted to prepare, through Lazarus's Sabbath, for the Great Sabbath, so that His suffering, crucifixion, and burial would be filled with hope, and His resurrection a certainty like the dawn. Thus, the resurrection of Lazarus was and still is an argument for hope against death and a certainty of resurrection that we await on all levels, even if our bodies groaned and dissolved, melted, and vanished in water or among the dust particles.

Did Lazarus need two more weeks added to his life, or two months, or several more years? No. But the disciples, indeed we, and the whole world, were in dire need for Lazarus to rise from the dead so that everyone would believe in Christ, not only that He is able to rise, but also to raise others from the dead!

The story begins when Mary and Martha eagerly sent word to the Teacher: Hurry, for "he whom You love is sick."

The urgency here implies that the sisters' faith in the Lord stopped at the healing of the body: "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died."

This is why there was such eagerness and urgency from the sisters, lest he die and the opportunity be lost.

Despite this, we see Christ delaying, because He saw in Lazarus' death an opportunity for a higher faith: "So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. Then after this He said to the disciples, "Let us go..."" And on the way, He told them: "Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe."

The Lord here rejoices when the opportunity for faith increases before the disciples, when He restores a soul from the clutches of death.

But it is strange that a little later, Christ faces the two sisters and sees their weeping, and He too weeps from the excess of His compassion: "He was troubled in spirit, and was troubled...

Jesus wept." So the One whom we saw rejoicing at the increasing opportunities for faith for the disciples and the two sisters in the face of death, we find Him weeping when He stands among those who weep, as if joy and weeping in Christ are analogous to or dependent on what pleases and saddens us!

But with a small contemplation, we find that joy and weeping came in a different order for Christ than for the two sisters and the disciples. For with Christ, joy came first, then weeping, as He saw the resurrection before death. However, despite that, the joy of the foreknowledge of Lazarus rising from the dead did not prevent Him from shedding tears with those who wept before the tomb.

Thus Jesus appeared exceedingly great in His tenderness and compassion for the suffering, as He emptied Himself of His prophetic joy for what was to come, and wept as pity necessitated and affection demanded. As for the two sisters, since the vision of the resurrection had disappeared from the level of their faith, they wept bitterly, devoid of the joy of prophetic foresight for what was to come! And before the tomb stood the Lord of Life and Master of the Resurrection, and He called Lazarus, and he rose, and with him rose the hope of all humanity, all mankind, for the afterlife.

And He who called Lazarus by his name, and he rose from the dead with his hands and feet bound, will come and call humanity, every human being, to eternal resurrection, judgment, and life.

My Lord, I am the new Lazarus, I am the dead man. The bonds of sin wrap around my limbs, and I lie in the tomb of my desires. The light of life has faded from my eyes, and the darkness of falsehood has covered my mind. My tongue cleaves to my palate, and my lips have ceased to speak Your truth. My throat is choked with words of iniquity, and false witness has enveloped my chest. My heart has stopped beating with Your love, and its walls are swollen with hatred and enmity. My kidneys have hardened with the deposits of lust, and the poisons of pleasures have dissolved my entrails. My right hand is paralyzed from mercy, and my feet are stiffened from the path of peace. My face is hidden from You by the veil of my wickedness, and the stench of my limbs seeps over the swaddling clothes of my dignity. My Lord, if there is hope for the dead in weeping, then this is my hope. But Your weeping over Lazarus is enough for me; indeed, that is my reliance. O You whose eyes shed tears for a dead beloved, I have no Martha nor Mary; today, I am Your dead one, so weep for me.

I implore You by Your love and compassion, instruct Your angels to 'release him and let him go.'

+ This Gospel is the first reading to be read in Holy Week, as if the Church thereby wants to present to us, at the beginning of this week, an example of the love that this woman poured out on the feet of the Lord "for His burial" as the highest model of love that we must offer to Christ in light of His living sufferings for our sake. + St. John presents to us Martha and Mary: the first serves, and the second contemplates and loves. And the Church takes from Mary the life of contemplation and from Martha the life of service.

The book "The Garden of the Monks" combined the two by saying: "Mary was praised through Martha," for had it not been for Martha's complaint, Christ would not have praised Mary.

And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. Saint John, as an eyewitness, was struck by the beauty of the fragrance filling the entire house, and surely this was the Lord's own feeling. So Christ determined that just as Mary filled the house with the fragrance of her precious nard, He would fill the entire Church, to the end of ages, with the fragrance of love and the name of this woman who represented humanity of all generations, to generously offer Him her poverty as an act of love on the day of love.

Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor? Pardon me, dear reader, for we were soaring together in the sky of love and generosity, the sweet aroma of Christ, and the anointing of the Father on the head of the Son of Man; and suddenly and unexpectedly, we found ourselves falling into a muddy mire and wallowing in the swamp of foolishness.

Instead of the bright, gentle, humble face of the Lord for this praised sister, who was in the fullness of her happiness, joyfully anticipating that she had done something for the flock for which she had poured out her energies of love and money; an ugly, angry face quickly appears on the scene, angry at the extravagance of the work of love, and in his hatred, he saw that "it might have been sold!"

Everything with him could be sold, if not for three hundred then for thirty!! And St. John described him concerning his morals that "he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it." Indeed, whoever belittles the money of God finds it easy to sell Christ.

But what draws our attention is that Christ left the money box with him and did not mind that he stole from it as he wished, nor did He mind even selling Him: "What you do, do quickly." And the last word the Lord said to him when he came forward to betray Him: "Friend, why have you come?" Brothers, the Lord does not protect His disciples or servants from theft, or from hiding behind the poor's money box, but woe to them when their conscience awakens. And now the Gospel has placed this paradox before us, between a woman who loved with all her heart, giving all her money, and having a testimony from Christ, and a disciple from the twelve, greedy, a thief of God's money, a traitor who sold Christ for a paltry sum.

This paradox is not a coincidence, nor is it merely a story in the Gospel; rather, it is an existing division in the Church practiced by those who loved Christ with all their heart, and by those who rob Christ alive in money. "Indeed, it is for a day that suffices me, I have kept it." Mary began what Joseph and Nicodemus completed, for the former embalmed the body while alive with one pound of perfume, while the others embalmed Him dead with one hundred pounds. But the work of the former was mentioned by the mouth of Christ with gratitude, thanks, and eternal remembrance, while the work of the others was mentioned only by history.

" 'Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!'

'"Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!'"

Christ, as He approached the city, began to contemplate it; He saw what no one else saw and wept over it.

He found the axe placed on top of the tree, knowing that the appointed time had ended, and saw that the Vinedresser had begun to cut.

He began to address it, his eyes weeping: "Ah, 'If you had known, even you - especially in this your day - the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.'"

But what is the time of visitation? What is the relationship between the time of visitation and Christ's entry into Jerusalem? The word "visitation" (iftiqad) means God's care and provision, and it means the comprehensive view with which God looks upon things.

It is the same word as *Episkopos*, meaning bishop, one who oversees and visits from above. But also, the word "visitation" can also mean discipline.

For when God visited Job, it meant that He tested him with sorrows and pains.

And visitation also has the meaning of comfort, salvation, and joy, as we read that the Lord came down to visit His people in Egypt, and the salvation that followed.

Or that [NKJV Genesis 21:1: "And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had spoken."] and gave her fullness of joy, and life from within death.

We read about God's visitation to Hannah, which means "God is gracious" or "God shows compassion," after she was once barren.

Then we read about the final and eternal visitation to the people of Israel, and indeed to the whole world, in the prophecy of Zechariah concerning the One of whom it is said: "With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us; To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace."

But how does divine visitation happen now? God visits, but with great humility, saying: "Do not fear, daughter of Zion; Behold, your King is coming, Sitting on a donkey's colt."

So, the unfailing sign of this King is: Humility.

In the Old Testament, when God visited His people, He would descend to them in a majestic and terrifying manner, accompanied by thunder, smoke, and fire, and the people would tremble and defer the matter to Moses.

Today, however, Christ enters Jerusalem on a donkey, that is, in a manner of utmost humility and simplicity.

So, God's visitation to His people on Palm Sunday is in fact a picture of the divine visitation that will be repeated throughout the ages.

There was nothing in His procession that indicated He was more than a very humble, meek, simple, ordinary man. He was not accompanied by any unusual, extraordinary manifestations, nor did He rely on signs and miracles for boasting and showing off. Christ came, as the King of Peace, to give His people lasting peace, peace which surpasses all understanding. Therefore, it was necessary for Him to come in a humble form.

His peace is a peace of humility, which only the humble can comprehend, and it will not last except for the humble, and it will not be seen or revealed except to one who is at the level of receiving the King of Israel as He rides on a young donkey. In truth, the humility of Christ is a mystery, for when He comes to you, He speaks to you with humble words, He speaks to you in your tears and in the brokenness of your heart, He speaks to you in your prostration when you are aware of your sin, and here He gives you His peace, and you feel the coming of Christ with a fullness of joy, compassions, and peace that surpasses understanding. But, oh, what a great loss befalls man when he loses the concept of visitation and the image of humility. Christ weeps over this, saying to him: « I came to you in meekness and humility to speak to you as an equal, but you did not accept Me and did not know the time of your visitation, and what is your salvation and deliverance. » My beloved ones, it is fitting for us to reflect on those children who did not cease shouting and cheering throughout Christ's journey to Jerusalem.

These humble children felt Christ with their hearts and not with their minds, so they turned to Him with great fervor, filling the temple with shouts and praises.

Here, the humble is drawn to the humble. As the apostle says: "Associate with the humble."

So God, this greatest of the humble, always attracts the humble to Himself.

These children, without anyone's help, were able to gather themselves to be led by the Spirit, to be guided by humility, and to come out in an unparalleled choir of praise. There were two choirs: the children's choir, representing humility and purity, and then the disciples' choir, representing wisdom.

And now, I ask you: Which of the two choirs do you follow? I warn you: beware of going to the temple to be among the sellers of doves and among the tables of the money changers. I warn you, the whip will reach your back. Unfortunately, the rulers stumbled over Christ; they stumbled over the meek and humble One; they stumbled over the King of Peace.

Know that Christ does not differentiate between the great or the lowly, between an ecclesiastical rank and a common person.

Christ, when He entered Jerusalem, or when He enters the church today, He only seeks out and visits the humble. For the Lord's visitation has no ritual, it is not subject to a specific arrangement. So you, in your humility, and prostrate on the ground and in the mud, the hand of the Lord can reach out to you to visit you and raise you up, either with a word of comfort, or with a gift, or with true repentance...

God is never concerned with how difficult your situation is, or what your rank is; there is no difference with God. But, how does the day of visitation come? It comes in two ways: The first type: either a stab in the heart that awakens him from long laziness, negligence, neglect, and a lukewarm life that is inconsistent with the path of salvation and the kingdom.

And here, the person feels a severe prick, rebuke, and conviction, and is overcome by the judgment of his conscience, over the days he wasted, especially after he lived, tasted, and was enlightened.

And here the person condemns himself severely, thinking that the Lord will take revenge on him and punish him for both old and new sins. But then the gentle voice of the Lord comes to him, saying: "Fear not... I will strengthen you" [from Isaiah 41:10], I will restore you to your former days, I will remind you of My promise and My covenant, I will remind you of My choosing you and My words that made you follow Me.

You are not a son of condemnation, you are a son of My peace.

Arise, that I may kiss you. And here you feel a sweet repentance and unparalleled tears of gratitude. The person rises and makes a new covenant with the Lord.

He says to Him: I promise You, Lord, that I will devote myself to You, I will place myself under the feet of my brothers and sisters, I will live poor and humble until the last moment of my life, similar to Your entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey while You are the King of Heaven.

The second type: is for a person walking on the path, an ordinary, diligent, active person, whose sweat pours from his work here or there...

But inside him, a voice resonates in his depths, saying to the Lord: I want to love You more, but I don't know how.

He prays and says: Make me love You, Lord, even though I am unworthy of this love.

Teach me, O Lord, how to love You as I should.

I have left the world behind, and I want to follow You in truth; I have no desire but You... This person, Christ comes to him with a surgeon's scalpel, a mysterious, wondrous scalpel, and makes a wound in his heart - a strange, delicious wound - that makes him like a drunkard. He cannot sleep; the whole world cannot contain him. Fountains of unparalleled love erupt within him; sleep flees from him, and love continues to pour out from the wound in his heart, never closing. He cries out and says: I love You, O Lord.

But woe to us, and what a disappointment it would be if the wound were to close!

At Lazarus' tomb, Christ was revealed as "the Prince of life" and "the King eternal." Did He not conquer "The last enemy that will be destroyed is death"!! This was the culmination of all Christ's signs and deeds.

And what a culmination, bearing all the signs and qualifications of the Second Coming!! And now, after being anointed with spices as one dead and having risen - indeed, being the Resurrection and the Life itself - it is most fitting for Him to proclaim His peaceful kingdom and enter the city of Jerusalem, adorned with olive and palm branches. And what an entry, bearing all the signs of Him whose appearing and the manifestation of His eternal kingdom we await. Christ was born as the Son of David in Bethlehem, the city of David, and now He enters Jerusalem, the city of the King, as David's legitimate heir to his prophetic, peaceful kingdom. And though the voice of prophecy had declared that from beyond the Jordan, in "Galilee of the Gentiles," "Light has dawned," the prophetic voice returns to say in another place, addressing the people of Jerusalem, the queen of cities, calling her the daughter of Zion: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!"

"Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey." Throughout His life, Christ rejected all displays of glory and honor, and avoided marching in processions or appearing officially at festivals. But here, for the first and last time in His life, He Himself arranged a triumphal procession and a formal march to enter Jerusalem as King. This astonished many, and drew ridicule from the chief priests and Pharisees.

Yes, indeed, the time had truly come for the world to know that He is the Messiah, the King, the Redeemer, and the Deliverer! These olive branches, symbols of peace, point to the Messiah (Shilon), the "Man of Peace." And these palm branches signify the arches of His divine royal triumph. And these voices, "Hosanna in the Highest," point to divine salvation and redemption.

And with this procession, crowded with deep meanings and secrets, the temporal history of Israel ends, to begin the Kingdom of the Messiah, in which all prophecies are fulfilled, along with all expectations and hopes of all prophets and seers, from near and far. Perhaps in the acclamations uttered on that day and recorded for us by the evangelists, there is an explanation for all these fulfillments that were completed with the manifestation of the Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ on this occasion:

+ "Hosanna to the Son of David! 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!' Hosanna in the highest!"

+ "Blessed is the kingdom of our father David That comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!"

+ "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the LORD!"

"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" And the astonishing thing is that Christ approved of everything they were shouting until their shouts reached the heavens, contrary to all His previous stances in which He forbade any shouting for Him; rather, when the Pharisees demanded that He silence the shouters, He said to them: "I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out." Therefore, all that the crowds shouted was a prophetic shout from the work of the Spirit who spoke through the mouths of children and infants!!

Cleansing the Temple and Manifestations of Violence:

It is new and very strange to us to see Christ with a whip in His hand, driving out merchants from the temple and sternly rebuking those who polluted prayers. What is the secret behind this sudden violence? And is there a reference to it in the prophecies?

Now, back to the prophecies:

In the book of Malachi, the prophet describes this situation with exquisite sensitivity:

+ ""Behold, I send My messenger,

And he will prepare the way before Me.

And the Lord, whom you seek,

Will suddenly come to His temple,

Even the Messenger of the covenant,

In whom you delight.

Behold, He is coming,"

Says the LORD of hosts.

And who can stand when He appears?

For He is like a refiner's fire

And like fullers' soap."

He sits as a refiner and a purifier... "And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, and against those who exploit..." Yet the question remains: what is the secret behind this violence that we have not accustomed to from Christ before? Here, we need to return to the Gospel.

Saint Luke gives us the answer to this question, but on a secret level that requires more mental openness from us to grasp the deep signals. Before Saint Luke recounts the incident of the Lord's entry into Jerusalem on Sunday, he narrates a parable of Christ, which He told upon entering Jerusalem, and which has a very important connection to the matter, explaining to us the secrets of that great day.

The Gospel says: "+ ...Then He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. Therefore He said: 'A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return...'"

But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'

And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him (and he held them accountable according to their faithfulness)...

'But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.' Having said this, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. The reader notes here the Gospel's statement: "because He was near Jerusalem," this is a subtle hint alerting us that the aforementioned parable spoken here is related to Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Sunday.

Then His saying: "and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately," gives an indication that Christ will explain in the parable that the kingdom of God will not appear immediately, and indeed Christ clarified this in the parable when He said: "went into a far country."

Also, the phrase: «they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately» indicates that the manner of Christ's entry into the temple on Sunday will explain to us how the Kingdom will appear and how Christ will come in His kingdom.

This becomes even clearer with His saying at the end of the parable: «When He had said this, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.»

Indeed, Christ entered the temple in the manner of a king, and immediately upon His entry, He began at once to hold accountable, rebuke, and strongly admonish the officials with authority, as a king, which

He amazed the chief scribes and the Pharisees, and they did not know that He was doing the work of the Judge. Here we note the division of people into two groups upon receiving Christ: an angry group, who are displeased by the second coming of the Lord because it will expose the evil of their lives, and these were represented by the Pharisees; and a joyful, cheering group, who are pleased by the coming of the Lord because He will reveal their secret, and these were represented by the disciples, children, and simple-hearted people. As for His driving out those who bought and sold and overturning the tables of the moneychangers, it was a sign of the deprivation of those who used religion for trade and worldly gain. As for His overturning the seats of those who sold doves and expelling them from the temple, it is a sign of the Lord's rejection of those who sold the gifts of the Holy Spirit (the doves).

And as for the violence displayed by Christ and His use of the whip, it was a secret sign to the level of judgment that will reach its ultimate violence when the public trial of Satan begins, along with all his helpers and followers who did not want Me to reign over them [], when He casts them under His feet, according to the saying of St. Luke. This is the secret of Christ's violence that appeared in the temple.

Prayer

O Prince of Life and King of Ages, You who redeemed my soul from death, You who broke my bonds. Today, in commemoration of Your ascending procession to Jerusalem, I walk towards Your house and renew my vows. I carry my palm branches and olive branches to enthrone You as king of my life, and I shout: "Hosanna in the highest!" [] I have no splendid garments to spread on Your path, but I lay my life on the doorstep of Your house. I enter with joy, Your church, the place of Your dominion, and I prostrate myself with awe before Your holy temple. I kiss its doors and thresholds and wipe my forehead with its dust, hoping You will lift my face. My Lord, do not grant me in it any gain or portion with those who buy and sell. My Lord, today I pledge to You all my life, all my possessions. "Hosanna in the highest!" []

We can identify the races of these peoples from the Book of Acts.

According to Josephus, their average number was more than 2.5 million pilgrims. The news of Lazarus' resurrection from the dead had filled Jerusalem in all its parts, creating great enthusiasm and eagerness towards Christ.

As soon as the Sabbath was over, the crowds rushed to Bethany to see Jesus and also Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead, to see him with their own eyes. Certainly, Christ was the one who planned this entry into Jerusalem, otherwise He could have avoided entering amidst these crowds, as was His custom.

But for the first time, we see that Christ orchestrated His triumphal procession during His entry into Jerusalem; rather, He was determined to challenge the Jewish authorities to arrest Him, because He had determined that Passover would be the day He would die, on the level of divine providence. And His appearance as He entered Jerusalem was not in the manner of the former teacher, but in the manner of the triumphant King.

So He decided to yield to the people's fervor and not interfere to silence the vast crowds as they followed Him and presented Him, shouting with voices that welcomed Jerusalem: "Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the Son of David!" because He saw in the spontaneity of the people the correct image of the coming of the Kingdom, its celebration, and its proclamation, considering Him the Messiah who came to save Israel and all who believe in Him from among the nations.

So when the hour of heaven met the hour of earth at the focal point of the Cross, Christ's entry as the triumphant King coming to redeem His people and the world was the urgent answer to all His previous deeds, and indeed, to all the Torah and the Prophets. Thus, the event ascended to be the unique event of the world throughout the ages. And Christ walked in a procession unique of its kind; thousands upon thousands followed Him, those who had come to see Lazarus, and thousands more came out of Jerusalem when they heard the roar of acclamation coming from afar.

Christ did not create this unique triumphant procession for the King who comes in the name of the LORD, but He approved of it and saw it as the true spontaneous expression of the people who believed with their senses and emotions that He was the coming Messiah who had arrived, if only the Jewish leaders had not silenced His voice all these years that He taught.

But the appearance of the King who comes in the name of the LORD was not like any other king.

For He became gentle and lowly as a king of peace.

Palm branches instead of swords bear witness to this, and the colt, a symbol of simplicity and humility, instead of stately horses.

And the walking people were not in the order of trained soldiers, but were overcome with euphoria, dominated by children shouting "Hosanna" with all their might, and whose deafening shouting greatly annoyed the chief priests.

It was a peaceful procession in every word and meaning, and even if the disciples tried to make the shouts of the people in front and the responsive shouts of the people following in the form of an antiphon, which praise to God is famous for, it became spontaneous and without strict order.

The verse that seized the hearts of the people and became their cry was the Psalm verse: "Hosanna! 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

As for the Pharisees' stance, it was extremely negative; they inwardly denied the declaration that He was the Messiah without their opinion, and they moved to try and silence the crowd but could not. When they despaired, they said to one another, ""You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!""

It was a momentous event, an matter whose meaning reached the highest and utmost that simple people could express. It shook history, for the Son of God was coming to surrender His body to be crucified with the meekness of a lamb.

Those who cheered and those who cried out were like those echoing the event that resonated in heaven, and the scene was enough to stir the emotions of the hardest hearts and the narrowest of minds.

However, the Pharisees and chief priests became distressed by Him who was coming, bearing glory for Israel and light for the nations.

And when Christ responded to their distress, saying that "if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out," He revealed the extent to which Christ's entry into Jerusalem to be crucified fulfilled hundreds of prophecies and thousands of years of preparation and waiting.

The disciples' dreams revolved around the greatness that would befall them with the revelation of the Kingdom and Christ as King over Israel. Indeed, arguments even broke out among them over who would be the greatest. These dreams then spread to families and mothers, and mothers, as usual, boasted that their sons would win the blessed kingdom and be referred to as friends and associates of the Messiah in the coming glory.

Not all these dreams were wrong, but the only error in them was that they preceded their time by ages and ages, just as their conception of greatness was on the level of the great ones of the world.

Christ tried again and again to make them understand the extensive humiliation and disgrace that lay before them, and that He would precede them in drinking the cup of shame and abasement, even unto crucifixion.

But far be it for them to believe anything but their own dreams.

And every difficulty Christ presented to them on the path to the end, they would say: "We can." So if He presented a child to them and told them, "You must become like this child to enter the happy kingdom," they would say: "We can."

And when He spoke about drinking the cup and the bitterness, they said, as recorded in :

"But Jesus answered and said, "You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They said to Him, "We are able.""

This was because they were certain that they would inevitably attain the Kingdom, and this is true and honest, but not in the simple way that filled their imaginations. Christ spent time with the disciples in their homes, and a familiarity developed between the mothers and Christ. It seems that the mother of John and his brother James served Christ a great deal, and she knew that Christ loved her two sons. So she resolved the matter, having sensed that His journey to Jerusalem was inevitably for His declaration as the coming Messiah, the Son of David, the possessor of the eternal Kingdom, Israel's temporal dream.

So she took her two sons and came to Him, meeting Him on the road. Her wish was pressing in her heart, and she resolved to present it to Him publicly, to obtain a promise that she could secure for her two sons.

"Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave - "

And this is contrary to the way of the people of the world.

The true greatness of the soul lies in submitting itself to God and people, in giving not in taking, in letting go of what it possesses rather than indulging its own desires, in its service to others not in lording over them, in shunning servile acts not in its lust for dominion over others - And a great soul is measured by its love and magnanimity, by its gentleness and forbearance.

And the greatness of the Christian soul is that which works, lives, walks, loves, and gives, imitating Christ.

And Christ summarized all of that in His saying: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

And this is the important and fundamental image that Christ desired, through His incarnation and the redemption He accomplished, to give an impression to man of what man should be like to become His partner in eternal life, and to accept adoption as the Father's greatest gift: «learn from Me»! which the Apostle Paul transformed into: «Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name». Thus, the Apostle Paul was able to transform the divine works of Christ into an image to be acquired: «Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus».

"Lord, who has believed our report?

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?"

The cross is a lifting power.

Jesus said this about His being lifted up on the cross.

In reality, this earthly lifting up was a prelude to His subsequent ascension into heaven.

The first lifting up drew everyone to Him, those who believe in His crucifixion, by which and upon which He protected man from the debt of sin that brought man down to earth, so Christ was lifted up on the cross.

And man was freed from his attachment to the earth when the terrible burden of sin was lifted from him, which tied man to the dust of the earth, living from it and dying beneath it.

So man's place was from dust he came and to dust he returns. When Christ was lifted up on the cross, He lifted man with Him from the death of curse to the life of salvation.

Thus, for the first time, man was freed from the prisons and curse of the earth, to the radiance and light of heaven.

Because man transitioned with Christ from the cross to a heavenly resurrection that seated him at the right hand of the Father.

Thus the cross was the power of lifting that raised man with Christ from earth to heaven, and from the darkness of earth to the light of heaven.

Thus, the attraction of the cross was a lifting power, which raised humanity from the bondage of sin and its shackles, which bound humanity as a slave by the neck to serve the curse of sin, to the glorious freedom of the children of God, favored to live in heaven, not merely as free individuals, but as kings and priests of the Most High God. In the cross, in the cross, is my rest, indeed, my boast.

For it lifted me from the depths of sin and dust, to the fellowship of the Son of God in glory and His inheritance in the Father.

And no matter how much we praise, thank, and exalt the glory of the cross, we will never do justice to its mighty power, which triumphed over the enemy and all his allies, casting them down to the lowest depths, and stripped Satan of his false claim to power and his deadly temptations, exposing him naked and disgraced, and delivered humanity from its bondage to the glorious freedom of the children of God. The cross, which is an instrument of torture, shame, and disgrace, became, while bearing Christ, higher than the crown of kings. And Christ made it the throne of His divine glory, which has become the object of our worship and the pride of our faith, and the rest for our souls, the light for our eyes, and the banner of our victory.

And Christ spoke with utmost truth when He said, "If I am lifted up from the earth" (meaning the cross), He will draw, and will continue to draw, everyone whose eyes have been opened to divine truth and who has known the deepest depths of the secrets of the cross. And the cross filled the whole world, so the world became Christ's possession, after Satan had reigned over it for all previous ages.

And by the cross, the kingdoms of the world were snatched from Satan's grip, and humanity was freed from its slavery and subjugation. So, what are we doing, brothers, in light of the exaltation to which Christ raised us, whether by His cross or His resurrection? For we are indebted to Christ for our new life, our glorious faith, and our joy that cannot be taken from us.

There are no limits separating my cross from the cross of Christ. My experience is a re-enactment, first successfully accomplished on the cross of Christ, and today it is to be renewed for my sake. My cross passes through three stages to transform into the cross of Christ's joy and resurrection...

Stage One: Contentment

If I truly believe in God and believe that God is capable of all things, and He is in control of all, then I must surrender my life to Him, knowing in whom I have believed, trusting in the everlasting arms able to keep my deposit and raise me from the dead. With this faith and this trust, it becomes easy for me to be content with my cross, whatever this cross may be: an incurable disease! A thorn in my flesh or in the flesh of one whom my soul loves! The betrayal of a brother and friend who was dear to my soul and companion of my life! Humiliating loss and poverty! Injustice, persecution, and tyranny! Blame, backbiting, and the strife of tongues! No matter, no matter, it is a cross in any case! For if my eyes are fixed on Christ, the life of my life, and His cross and sufferings are etched in my heart and in my body, then I will be content; yes, I will be content with my cross because in my view it will be a re-enacted experience...

But as soon as I am content with my cross, God tries to ascertain my contentment, or rather, makes me ascertain my contentment myself. So He weighs His hand upon me a little, and prolongs the time of the trial a little, until I ascertain my own contentment, and thus He also ascertains it from me...

And here, yes here, the first secret of the cross is revealed when contentment turns into thanksgiving by the action of grace, and thanksgiving becomes a precious, almost miraculous gift, because thanksgiving is usually only associated with good.

Therefore, here evil has turned into good for me by the action of the cross and the power of contentment.

The Second Stage

The Trial of Thanksgiving: After the flood of amazement at gaining the ability to give thanks in the midst of pain and the depth of trial, man suddenly awakens, wondering to himself: "How can I give thanks when I am humiliated?" "And why should I give thanks when God is able to remove the trial, and He has not removed it?" Here the soul enters into a struggle with the gift, and thanksgiving wrestles with the pang of pain.

But when a person honors the gift and gives thanks, then gives thanks, defying pain and trial through days and nights, the second miracle happens, and the secret of the second cross is fulfilled, when thanks turn into joy!! As a great gift from God!

The Third Stage

The Meaning of Joy: What happened? How can I rejoice in deprivation and injustice? How can I rejoice while in the crucible of trial and the blaze of pain? Joy is the sure proof that the soul has exited the realm of sadness and completely and certainly stopped thinking about the woes of painful reality.

So how did this actual exit from the realm of trial happen? Rather, how were pain and injustice ignored while I was in the heart of the trial, raised on my cross? Here is the secret of the third cross.

Here is the secret of union! Union with what? Union with God's will and His good pleasure!! My cross was indeed God's will for me, so when I accepted it, I accepted God's will; and when I gave thanks for it, I gave thanks for His will, and it overflowed upon me.

But when I rejoiced in my cross, my will met God's will perfectly, and the glory and joy of the cross, which is the ultimate pleasure of God, descended upon me: "but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy." O brethren, rejoice in your cross so that the pleasure of God may descend upon you!

I will follow You, Lord, just let me know where You are going? Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" Thomas did not know that he was called to the cross and to death.

He used to think that he was called directly to the Kingdom, as long as he followed Christ; but the truth that Thomas ought to have known, and which everyone who follows Christ must accept, is that the Cross comes first, then the Kingdom.

Voluntary death with Christ first, then life with Him. Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."

Following Christ is not forced upon one, nor is it attained through a life of ease and luxury, nor by mere prayer and ritualistic worship practices; rather, it first requires self-denial, meaning the stripping of the self from all factors of outward appearance and vain glory, and depriving it of the enjoyments it desires by clinging to the world, to flesh and blood, and to the dust of the earth. All of this is akin to an inner death, which is a voluntary death, then an involuntary one. Only then does a person become free to carry the cross every day, meaning to begin to endure the insults of the surrounding world, the injustices of the environment and circumstances, the tyranny of the wicked, the betrayal of relatives, friends, and disciples, painful diseases and the decay of the body, and the tribulations that Satan tempts and brings upon a person in their most critical circumstances, striving perhaps to cast them into doubt and apostasy from faith.

All of these are like external death, which is involuntary death. But without inner death, that is, voluntary death, or self-denial, it is impossible for a person to be able to carry his cross daily and follow the Lord; that is, it is impossible for him to endure external death, which is involuntary death.

Therefore, the Lord, wisely, presented self-denial before carrying the cross in His commandment. For a person to follow the Lord, he must first undertake voluntary death, that is, self-denial, so that he can carry the necessary cross. Inner death is difficult, more difficult than external death.

Denying, renouncing, and mortifying the self is more difficult than enduring insults, injustices, and tribulations.

Therefore, he who is able to deny himself, can endure the harshest insults; rather, he rejoices in injustices and tribulations! But he who loves himself and pampers himself might endure insult once or twice, but he cannot endure insult every day!! He who undergoes inner death and succeeds, finds it easy to take up his cross daily, no matter how heavy it is, and follows the Lord not to trial like John, but to Golgotha and then to the Kingdom, that where I am, there you may be also.

The practice of inner death to the self is truly the practice of the life of a dead person!! For what is required is that a person practices every thought, every action, and everything in life as dead to themselves and to others, and alive only to Christ: «and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.» As for the practice of involuntary outward death, it comes as a confirmation of inner death and a discovery of its authenticity: has a person truly died to their self, to their body, and to the world? If involuntary death corresponds to voluntary death, this is the greatest proof for a person that they live with Christ!!! How great is what a person needs in accepting involuntary death, it is the essence of Christian life, it is the resurrection: «Follow Me».

Peter Confesses Christ

Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection

The cross is the instrument of passage to the Kingdom.

The sight of Christ leaving Jerusalem, carrying the cross, with some of His relatives and disciples accompanying Him to the place where He was destined to be crucified - it was a sight full of shame and scandal. But Christ endured it for the joy set before Him.

This was the most critical hour in the life of Christ, the hour of leaving Jerusalem never to return.

This critical hour was known beforehand to all of heaven and was a topic of discussion among the spirits of the Old Testament saints awaiting the world's redemption and salvation: "And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." His departure from Jerusalem was like a departure from the visible world, and the cross was the instrument of passage from the world to outside the world.

Departure from the world does not happen naturally for those who have hated and rejected the world; the world will surely take revenge on those who despise and mock it: "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before *it hated* you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.'"

"If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." This was said by Jesus before the crucifixion, before the trial, before the revelation of the plan to arrest Him, fabricate charges, and summon false witnesses, and before the emergence of the signs of betrayal carried out by His disciple, as an image of how the world uses the closest of associates to torment the souls of the saints.

For Christ knew exactly what the world had prepared for Him: hatred, malice, and an elaborate plan to torment and abuse Him before getting rid of Him: "Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, 'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles,"

This is the inevitable shame of separation. Christ bore this shame with complete satisfaction, because He had purposed in Himself from the beginning to stand against the world and abhor its evil deeds, and He knew what price He ought to pay for this conduct! The shame symbolized by the Cross, which Christ bore as He departed from the world, was an inevitable price for His separation from the world.

Thus, the shame of the cross - that is, public death with complete stripping of all dignity, along with any possible added torments to complete the mockery and spite, such as scourging, spitting, slapping the face, and striking the head - is what can await the person who renounces the world, who intends to seek Christ alone and resolves to follow Him!! And this truth Christ made a general rule that should be given first consideration by everyone who intends to depart from the world to come to Him:

"Follow Me, carrying the cross,"

"Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast him out?"

So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."

Now while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up." And they were exceedingly sorrowful."

Faith and Answered Prayer

Many ask, "Why do we plead with God with urgency and tears, and God does not respond?" I say: This is impossible when it comes to God with His people, for everything is possible except for God to be dishonest or change His promise. "Let God be true but every man a liar."

Christ made the answer to prayer guaranteed by His blood, His name, and the right of His Sonship.

He is the One who previously said: "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them." Thus, Christ made the answer to prayer not dependent on His vision or His own thought, but made it contingent upon our faith. And what kind of faith? The faith that trusts during prayer that it has received what it asks for, and it will be granted! That is, as it desired and trusted by faith.

Meaning that in Christ, God has given us the ability to first decide whether we receive what we ask for by faith or not.

He, however, is ready to give, and the Apostle Paul says even more: "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us." If, by the power of faith in the prayer we pray, we decide that we have received what we asked for, we will have as much as we asked for, and more than we asked for, or even more than we thought.

For God's generosity in Christ must overcome our greed for Him, why? Because it is God's pleasure in Christ to gladden our hearts so that we may thank Him and give Him glory.

No matter how much we long for His love and generosity, He is the one who will be glorified all the more.

Therefore, we hear Him urging us to ask with confidence in Him: "Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.

Until now you have asked nothing in My name.

Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."

But the first and fundamental condition remains that you must first believe that you will receive what you ask for, and it will be yours.

And in another sense, we are responsible for the answers to our prayers, and the difficulty of what we ask for is not considered, even if it were moving a mountain. Did He not say so? For Christ has set for us the rule for receiving answers, and made the answer present with Him, no matter how impossible the request: moving a mountain!!! Thus, He removed from our circle of doubts the need for the request to be reasonable, but rather urged us to the utmost boldness in our requests for His answer, no matter how large or unreasonable the request might be, as He made the only condition that directly moves Him to respond our trust that He gives us what we ask for, and after that: «all things are possible to him who believes.»

In truth, this sole condition that Christ set for answering questions and requests, that we trust in Him that He *has given* us, not *will give* us, what we ask for, is a breakthrough to reach the ultimate personal trust in Him.

Exactly like a child who loves his father and asks him for an expensive request, and his father replies to him: "My dear, consider it already in your pocket."

And thus, in the heart of his beloved son, trust arises that everything he asks of his father, he receives.

But this parable is also weak, for the Heavenly Father wants to train us that if we are in need of something, we extend our hands and take it from His pocket!! For He who enabled us to lay hold on eternal life: «lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called», with that same boldness He enables us to lay hold of His gifts based on His exceeding love for us.

So He who gave us His life will certainly give us what we ask for: «In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me», «He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?!». Therefore, Christ's promise that whatever we ask for in prayer, «believe that you receive them, and you will have them», is a firm and confirmed declaration built upon the Son's trust in the Father and the Father's trust in the Son.

Thus, the answering of questions and requests has become a fruit of the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, meaning a very great and profoundly deep theological work takes place.

So he who asks afterward and prays, yet doubts Christ's ability to answer, or doubts his own worthiness to receive, is as if he doubts the entirety of Christ's redemptive work, and doubts the great bond that connects the Father with the Son.

For if we believe in Christ, the Father loves us; and if we are the object of the Father's love, then we ask to receive, and we no longer ask to beg for mercy, but we ask to receive according to the promise of Christ and the Father. Therefore, Christ has set the great test for answered prayer: "whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them," to reveal thereby the level of our faith in Him and in the Father, and the level of our trust in His relationship with the Father.

If it is true, we immediately receive what we asked for without persistence.

This, in truth, is the constitution of answered prayer, and its law which depends on the soundness and strength of our faith in Christ and the Father.

Therefore, from the soundness and strength of our faith in Christ and the Father, we derive the answer to prayer.

Thus, the answer to prayer is the greatest witness to the truth and strength of our faith in Christ and the Father. And the application of this law has become as follows: Ask, and elevate your request and increase its difficulty, and desire as much as you wish from the generosity of Christ and the Father, and establish faith in your heart that you have received all that you asked for, and it will be yours: "all things are possible to him who believes." For this law is according to the will of Christ and the Father, and in it the Father is glorified through the Son in every request we receive!! And whoever elevates their request and increases its difficulty, in reality, raises the glorification of the Father and Christ and increases their glorification.

So after that, is it right for any person to say that he asked Christ repeatedly, urgently, and with tears, and was not answered? Would not such a statement be a direct accusation against the truthfulness of Christ and the Father? And would not such an experience be a spiritual error that deserves review and correction? And now that we have known that God and Christ are greater than any question or request, no matter how difficult, even impossible, and that the promise is firm and certain that Christ is ready to respond if we trust in this

Response: Doubt about the response is added to our lack of faith, and not to God's failure to hear. From this, we understand the seriousness of standing before God, praying and asking, for we are putting ourselves before a tremendous test of faith. Therefore, we must consider our questions and requests again and again: Are we serious in our prayer and asking? Are we at the level of trust in the response of Christ and God? Or, in other words: Is our faith in Christ and the Father founded on the certainty of truth, that His promises are true, that He is faithful to what He says, and that He is ready to give us everything we ask for? And then we proceed with our questions and requests, and we do not waver from our confidence that He has responded.

But He is truthful and faithful, and all He asks for is our truthfulness and faithfulness in His trust. Give me bent knees and hearts sincere in their faith in the promise of Christ and the Father, eager for the Father's generosity and Christ's response, and you will see how the blind see, the deaf hear, the paralyzed and lame walk, run, and dance, and all kinds of diseases are healed, even the incurable ones like cancer, tuberculosis, liver fibrosis, kidney failure, and heart diseases.

For Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever: the Physician who came for the sick, and to call sinners to repentance. From this, we understand that if we offer our prayers to God with a request and have faith that we will receive it, this faith must not be imaginary but stemming from the certainty of the soul and heart due to one's intimacy with Christ, supported by a life of prayer, worship, and asceticism.

For man derives his faith and certainty only from the reality of his relationship with Christ.

The stronger a person's relationship with Christ, the stronger his faith becomes and the more certain he is that what he asks for, he will receive.

The teachings of Christ are characterized by their profound impact that remains in the soul forever, given their inclusion of realistic representation, supporting His parables with powerful and clear deeds (or actions) to firmly establish in the human mind the purpose He aims for. Jesus saw a leafy fig tree by the road and came to it seeking fruit, but He found none. So He cursed it, and it immediately withered.

It was necessary for there to be fruit along with the leaves because they both begin together; in fact, the fruit's buds appear earlier than the leaves.

When He found it green and leafy but bearing no fruit, He condemned it to death, because it was no longer good for anything except the fire, according to the saying: «Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.» In this, He did not pity the farmer who toiled over it in vain, nor the land that it occupied. He did not curse it to be fuel to warm cold hands, but He intended something greater than this, for He intended to warm hardened hearts with it.

Who is the Tree?

The leafy, but barren of fruit, fig tree was a symbol for the Jewish nation which memorized the Law by heart and meticulously observed rituals and clung to formalities to the utmost extent. It was a green and beautiful tree, but it bore no fruit.

Jesus entered the Temple and saw it as He saw the fig tree; He saw it as a 'den of thieves.' He looked at the priests, scribes, and Pharisees, and He did not thank them or leave them, but gave them double woe because He found them hypocrites, who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. He likened them to whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

So He cursed their temple just as He cursed the fig tree: "See! Your house is left to you desolate;"

so that not one stone shall be left here upon another.

And the Temple remained desolate until today, and their synagogue and priesthood have been suspended until this hour.

The Temple withered as the fig tree withered, until the pickaxe of the Romans grew strong and uprooted the Temple and Jewish worship from its foundations, just as the ax was once laid to the root of this dry fig tree and uprooted it. The tree died, and the Temple died, but this powerful parable remained alive, a sword wielded against every nation that does not practice righteousness, and every individual who clings to appearance without essence and boasts of their creed without opening their heart to the Lord of the creed!

We thought him a lamb, but found him a wolf:

Look, my brother, lest you be a green fig tree, with the appearance of work and service, and with your appearance, you were able to attract people from afar, so they imagined that you are the rich one, the teacher of light, the opener of treasures of knowledge, and the holder of the keys of the Kingdom; while you are poor and naked, sitting in darkness, and the light has not yet dawned upon your heart.

Knowledge is on your tongue, but not in your heart.

You stood at the door, neither entering yourself nor allowing those who would enter to go in.

If you are he, then have mercy on yourself and on the people, because the ax has been laid to the root of the tree.

And what will people say about you then? They will say: We thought him a lamb, but we found him a wolf.

We thought him a root, but we found him a branch:

Look, my brother, lest you be a green tree that put forth its leaves before its growth was complete and it was fit to bear fruit, so you were deceived by its leaves, yet it bore no fruit.

You have zeal for the truth, but not according to knowledge.

You have activity and striving, but not as one who pleases God, but rather to please yourself and people!

You are still drinking milk in the knowledge of God and claiming before people, with your appearance, your words, and your artificial piety, that you are of full stature in Christ, and before you ignite, you want to shine! If you are he, then beware, for the gardener will not pity your beauty and your leaves, and with his sharp saw, he will cut off your false branches and strip you of your many leaves; and then you will appear among the trees as small as you truly are.

But what will people say about you then? They will say: We took him for the original, but found him a mere offshoot. having a form of godliness but denying its power. Look, my brother, lest you be a green tree that grew in shallow soil, so it became green and leafy, and since it had no depth, the sun came out and struck it, and drought is its fate.

Deepen what you have absorbed in the foundation, lest your toil be in vain and all your struggle be for the fire.

Send down your roots before you put forth your leaves.

Seclude yourself first and purify yourself from your impurities, sins, deceit, and hypocrisy. Become rooted first in the knowledge of God, and then you will be strong against the sun of trials.

And know that your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, and before him will not stand the weak-spirited, who deceive themselves and the word of truth, not rooted in the knowledge of God. For he will strike them with a blow for which there will be no healing, and darkness will be dearer to them than light, and defilement easier for them than drinking water, and deception, cunning, and fraud are their shields with which they fortify themselves. Search and examine, perhaps you are one of them. But what will people say about you then? They will say: 'having a form of godliness but denying its power.' Oh, my regret for these trees that turned green for burning and bore fruit for cursing.

Oh, if only they had not produced leaves, for they were content with leaves without fruit and deceived people into coming to them, exhausting them to no avail.

They became a curse to themselves and a stumbling block to people.

The Lord is coming to you:

And you, O green and leafy tree, know that Christ is coming to you with witnesses to see fruit in you! Is there fruit of the Spirit behind your words and deeds: faith, love, truth, joy, and peace in Him? With humility, self-denial, and fervent prayer! The Lord is coming to you because He is hungry, hungry for your fruit.

As for your leaves, they are bitter and uneatable, and no one will benefit from them.

He is hungry for your love, hungry for your purity, chastity, and holiness, hungry for your trust in Him, hungry for your fasting and prayers. The price of His blood and body: He nourished you with His blood, so why hasn't its scent emerged from you? He fed you His body, so why haven't you borne fruit yet? He quenched your thirst with the sweat that poured from His brow, and He hedged around you with a crown of thorns to protect you from your enemies, so what is your excuse? The opportunity is before you, discover yourself and do not deceive yourself or try to deceive God! You have only succeeded in deceiving people, but the eye of God will never be deceived, and He is coming to demand fruit, the price of the body and blood! Determine your stance, otherwise do not blame Him if He curses the fig tree! Christ never cursed anything.

He did not wish for fire to come down from heaven and consume the adversaries, as one of His disciples suggested to Him.

And He did not curse those who beat Him or crucified Him. Rather, His principle was always: a smoking flax He would not quench, and a bruised reed He would not break. But He could not tolerate the false, unfruitful fig tree.

A story that, on its surface, makes Christ appear as an ordinary human who gets hungry at mealtime.

But deep within, as usual, the secret of His whole life, service, and mission is hidden.

So after all this time in preaching and service, He desired to eat from the fruit of the fig tree, which is always a symbol for Israel, but He found no edible fruit, only green leaves, a metaphor for appearances and useless works.

In truth, the topic of the fig tree occupies an important part in these last days, especially after Christ wept over Jerusalem, lamented it, and prophesied its destruction. All of Christ's previous miracles were motivated by love and bore clear fruit of love.

So why - then - this miracle, as if it were disciplinary for a creation that neither feels nor perceives? And without any sin committed.

And this work has a very strong and dangerous relationship with the prevailing situation after Christ's long ministry, which had indeed reached its end, with His weeping over Jerusalem and His prophecy of its destruction.

Is there not in this work an expression of the appearance of the Jewish nation, which looks like a beautiful green fig tree from the outside, while from the inside it is rotten, semi-dead, and completely unfruitful! The owner of the vineyard performed the impossible in it for three years past for it to bear fruit, but it did not.

Is it not, by standing thus in God's garden, barren and fruitless, and leafy with a false appearance, a disruption to the land of peace, a distortion of God's trees, and a frustration of the work that Christ accomplished? The fig tree has been known among natural trees to symbolize the Jewish nation. This Jewish nation raised its hand against its Husband and Maker, deluding itself that by killing Him, it would become independent from its Creator. Thus, it condemned itself to destruction to exit the sphere of His kingdom before He was established as King on the Cross. And thus it was inevitable that, before it stretched out its hand to uproot the Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots from the land of its inheritance, it had to accept the curse forever.

What Christ did was no more than what the Jewish nation did to itself. For in its internal reality, which had decayed, withered, and resigned from the course of its destined life, it abandoned its God, the source of existence and life. Thus, it condemned itself - before condemning Christ - to imminent annihilation.

Therefore, by cursing the fig tree, Christ did no more than merely announce a death before the event.

And Christ did not explain to His disciples the meaning of the fig tree's death, because He explained it when He wept over Jerusalem.

He mourned it with His tears before ordering its drying up.

And there, at the beginning of His ministry, He saw this very fig tree and spoke of cutting it down:

"A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard," - and this one was none other than the only One - "and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, 'Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?'"

So, based on the keeper's plea, He kept it for another year, but when the time for figs came and He found no fruit on it, He cut it down!

"'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.'"

And so, Christ did nothing but what the keeper did, thus solving the riddle of the parable.

This is based on the understanding that Christ, from the beginning, intended to abolish all sacrifices of all kinds, and all that resulted from them - such as buying and selling, and rituals of slaughter and burning - just as He wanted to define worship and prayer within purely spiritual boundaries, without mixing with material matters.

It was He who said to the Samaritan woman, who wanted to know about true worship and adoration:

"You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

Meaning that God imposes worship and adoration as a duty, but purely on a spiritual level. So, no city, no mountain, no temple made of stones, no towering minarets or massive domes, no gold or silver.

All of these, Christ considered a deviation from the spirit of worship, and thus from what God demands in worship and from worshipers. Therefore, when the Jews confronted Him, seeing Jesus driving out both animals, sellers, and buyers, and asked Him: "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?" Meaning: prove to us that you are worthy to perform this great deed, because the temple was for them the holiest of holies, and its prestige was from the prestige of God.

Who then does such deeds in the temple of God? Christ's response was exceedingly powerful, announcing the beginning of the New Covenant, the covenant of worship in spirit, where the temple of worship is the temple of Christ risen from the dead, the spiritual body He delivered to us to be in us, and for Him to be the temple of God and the Spirit of God to dwell in it:

Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

From this, it becomes clear to the reader the imperative of starting by dismantling the temple as a foundation for building the new temple, whose divine form Christ served for three years and built in three days!! And when Jesus entered the temple, He found it teeming with merchants, buyers and sellers, sacrificial animals, pigeon sellers, and money changers, and the awe of the temple, prayer, and the name of God had departed.

It was a sight that stirred within him the spirit of true worship and resistance against corruption and corrupters. He showed his anger and made a whip from some ropes, then began driving everyone out of the temple:

"Take these things away! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise."

Christ was not in a position of mere resistance, but as one who frightens those who violate sacred things from God's perspective.

This act was no more than a demonstration of God's authority that frightens people without harming them. Christ is now about to finalize the last relationship between the great Yahweh and the beloved people who betrayed their Bridegroom. They are now lying in wait for the son of the owner of the vineyard, having arranged everything to kill him. He came seeking fruit from His holy fig tree, which He planted with His right hand and watered with His love for more than two thousand years, since Abraham and the first covenant, when He swore to His first beloved on earth that He would bless his descendants with a blessing and cause them to inherit the best of the earth. Yet His fig tree displayed its ornaments and beauty, grew great, and exalted itself above all the peoples of the earth, but after producing leaves, it failed to bear fruit for its Beloved.

He was very hungry for her love and came to be satisfied by her fruit, but she satisfied Him with mockery, beating, and murder.

The Lord entered His temple and found decorations without essence; they had kept everything except worship and prayer from the heart.

The teachings have corrupted the generosity of the Owner of the Vineyard, infesting it like ants and plundering it. They have squandered the reverence for the Lord of the House and disrespected the temple and its Dweller. Christ is here performing a process of replacement and substitution. He entered it only to lay out the engineering for its demolition and to measure its lengths and widths, because He is about to build a corresponding temple in heaven, whose gates are pearls and whose foundations are precious stones of apostles and prophets, and Christ Himself is the precious and upright cornerstone.

The entry of Christ into Jerusalem with His triumphant royal procession and thousands of shouts of Hosanna did not pass peacefully for the Pharisees, along with the feeling of bitterness left by the open resurrection of Lazarus from the dead and the spread of the news throughout the land.

Their rage reached its peak when they saw Him driving the sellers out of the temple with impressive power and authority.

The most agitated part of the Sanhedrin moved to put an inevitable end to Christ.

The main factor for this movement was His entry into Jerusalem with the triumphant royal procession, and they did not know in truth that He deliberately did that so that they too would hasten the work they had secretly planned - meaning His killing - which they wanted not to be during the feast, but which He wanted and determined to be during the feast; and they avoided the people, but He wanted the people to participate, because the sacrifice was their sacrifice and the offering was their offering.

They had spread secret news among themselves, saying: "Then they sought for Jesus, and spoke among themselves as they stood in the temple, 'What do you think - that He will not come to the feast?' Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a command, that if anyone knew where He was, he should report it, that they might seize Him." Therefore, His public triumphal entry with a sky-splitting cry of "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David", was a very surprising and unbelievable matter to the Sanhedrin, like a crushing blow delivered upon their backs.

They looked at the procession with deep regret and expressed all their fears and hatreds together: "You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!" However, before the procession, while He was still in Bethany, the intention was to raid Him, apprehend Him, and kill Him - perhaps by assassination, or perhaps by killing according to a legal pretext: "and plotted to take Jesus by trickery and kill Him. But they said, "Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.""

With the Father, it was imperative that it be at the Feast! For the accusations, as much evidence had been gathered by those who sought false news, they were ready and conspiring on behalf of the Sanhedrin.

However, and officially, the Sanhedrin sent some of the chief priests and elders of the people to Christ while He was teaching in the temple, to formally question Him about who He was and what His authority was in all these actions, so that they might obtain a statement from Him which they could use against Him as an official document.

"Now when He came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, "By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?""

Their aim was that He would speak about Himself, His relationship with God, and His authority in all of that, but He disappointed them and placed them in a dangerous predicament that could have incited the entire populace against them; for He turned their question into a question from Him to them, thus:

"I also will ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things: The baptism of John - where was it from? From heaven or from men?""

They were in great confusion, because if they said: From heaven (and it was so), He would say to them: 'Then why did you not believe him?' And if they said: From men, the catastrophe would be greater, because John was known by all the people to be a prophet: "So they answered that they did not know where it was from. And Jesus said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.'"

Even though by this question, He hinted that the authority of the Baptist was from the authority of Christ, because he was the one who preceded and baptized Him. And in plain terms, He made them understand without words that His authority was from God, whom they denied in John. At the same time, He recorded their lack of faith in the authority of the Baptist, and thus their disobedience to God's plan.

But the image of Abraham gained its splendor and uniqueness when God asked him to offer his beloved son as a burnt offering. So Abraham obeyed until he reached the point of raising the knife over his son's neck, and nothing stopped him but the voice of God from above, telling him not to harm his son.

Immediately, he saw a ram caught by its horns in the midst of the trees, and God inspired him to spare his son from sacrifice and offer the ram in his stead. So Abraham's obedience was considered the greatest measure of faith in God's word.

In fact, this whole story was a foreshadowing of the Father offering His beloved Son Jesus as a sacrifice on the cross. But the most astonishing thing is that the Father's mind was focused on His love for the whole world! The Lord Jesus Himself repeats this verse: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Here, Christ quietly ushers us into the greatest work the Father did in and for us. If Abraham took the greatest stance in the Old Testament, Christ is still greater than him as a beginning and an end; He is the Alpha and Omega of existence, the First and the Last in the Torah and the Gospel, in time, before time, and after time.

And if you wish, it can be said that Christ is the one who gave existence its truth and meaning, and even the truth of every human being.

It can also be said, according to the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians, that God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

It is abundantly clear here that Abraham stands in the being of Christ, and without Christ, no human being can have a name or existence.

So when Christ said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM," this is the greatest glorification for Abraham that his name is mentioned with the name of Christ. And in theology, Christ's being before Abraham is not enough to encompass His being, for it is an eternal being with the Father. And our knowledge of us being chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, as the Apostle Paul said, this was the beginning of human history in prehistoric times, while the incarnation of Christ is the beginning of the history of salvation for humanity.

Therefore, Christ says that He is the Beginning and the End, not only for humanity, but for all existence.

So Christ's statement that He existed before Abraham is merely an implicit truth, but it implicitly reinforces the superiority of the New Covenant over the Old Covenant, the commandments of Christ over the commandments of the Law, reveals the greatness of the Spirit over the life of the flesh, and the pride of the new man over the old man.

If the Jews boast in the Old Testament, represented by Abraham, we lift our heads, boasting in our fellowship in Christ and the Father.

And if prophecy was the fruit of the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit became above prophecy and prophets. Therefore, the person renewed by the Spirit has his heavenly home with Christ as his ultimate goal, instead of dwelling in graves.

And if the righteous in the Old Testament looked forward to Abraham's bosom, the righteous in the New Testament long to sit with Christ at the right hand of the Father. And if judgment was a sorrowful pause in the journey of the adherents of the Law and the prophets, it became: "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."

And if the twelve tribes of Israel became the pride of the walls of Jerusalem in its exaltation; then the twelve apostles have thrones around the throne of Christ on which they sit to judge the tribes of Israel.

Even if the most splendid prophets of the Old Testament were merely friends of the Bridegroom, the saints of the New Testament and His chosen children will be the Bride to whom the Bridegroom will be presented when human history reaches its end.

Luke placed it here to open the discussion about the Kingdom.

The response of Christ, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate," is not a direct answer, but it is an essential foundation for everyone who wishes to be saved and enter the Kingdom or eternal life, that they should not choose what is most comfortable and spacious, and that they should not postpone deciding matters because of the narrowness of the gate, lest they miss the opportune time and try to enter when it becomes impossible due to changed circumstances and the loss of the ability to endure hardships and entering the despicable decline of life, i.e., old age.

It should be known that those who are determined to enter must, from now on, possess the morals of the children of the Kingdom, because only those whose morals align with the commandments of the Gospel, no matter what it costs them in terms of sacrifice, deprivation, giving, austerity, self-abasement, and clinging to the last hold, and who are last of all in everything throughout the long, narrow path, will be approved for entry. For the abundance they will receive is worth a thousand thousand joys of their hardships.

Hopefully, the serious seeker of the Kingdom will realize that Christ Himself is the Way and the Door. Clinging to the Lord Jesus with all one's heart and intention is the only guarantee, for He is the one who opened the Kingdom by His death on the cross, and He is the one who leads us through the tribulations of the path. And many who can enter now, will later seek to enter and will not be able, no matter how hard they try, having lost the momentum of readiness for self-denial. For the Kingdom is gained by the intention in the heart first, and once that resolve is firm, a person can overcome horrors and difficulties with a lion's heart, as they see divine help present in every tribulation, because Christ is faithful to His call to the end. But for those who neglected the call in its time and preferred the world over Christ, and then ask to enter, it will be impossible for them because they will have been conformed to this world and become strangers to the narrow gate and the difficult way.

Therefore, whoever has a favorable opportunity before him and lets it abandon him, will seek it with tears but will not obtain it, because the call comes with power, blessing, and preciousness. If a person belittles or neglects it, he will seek it but not find it.

Moreover, the service of the Kingdom is for every stature, for every work, for every place, and for every time. It comes with its specialization, its guidance, its hope, and its sweet aspirations, to be received by the prepared heart with confidence, faith, preciousness, and joy that will not let a person sleep or rest until its purposes are fulfilled, no matter what the path costs him.

As for the closing of the door, it is for those who faltered and neglected the voice, found the call difficult, and then returned to seek it, only to find the door shut. This means they lost the qualities of the children of the Kingdom, such as fervent warmth and burning zeal. Thus, their knocking on the door and their pleading no longer enter the heart of Christ, who called them but they refused.

And His saying, "I do not know you," is because they denied His love. As for His saying, "where are you from?", it is because they became estranged from His land.

The call does not come twice.

With this statement, the Lord refers to the many times God tried to gather the people of Israel to Himself with His love and tenderness through the prophets He sent early and late.

But the result was always, as in the parable of the vinedressers, that they rejected Him and dishonored everyone He sent. Likewise, the Lord, by these words, refers to His teachings, His signs, His gentleness, and His abundant goodness, by which He intended to gather their hearts to Him with all compassion and affection, but the result was that they rejected and spurned Him.

"I would gather your children": The Lord here addresses Jerusalem, and Jerusalem at that time was not scattered, but was teeming with its children from all regions and lands, and the Temple was bustling with prayer and worshipers.

Therefore, the Lord here does not mean the conglomeration of the Children of Israel, because neither their gathering nor their dispersion benefited them at all; for in their dispersion and humiliation they abandoned Him and blasphemed against Him, and in their gathering and might they betrayed and provoked Him. The Lord here speaks of the secret of His will, for which He came that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad [, NKJV], into His tender bosom and under the shelter of His wings and in the shadow of His shoulders.

This is what David always sang about, and for which his soul longed, yet look what they did to Him: They bared His compassionate chest and stabbed Him, and stretched out His gentle arms and nailed them to the cross. The feet that went about doing good, they drove nails through them onto the wood! And so, instead of these wayward children of Israel gathering to His bosom and under the shelter of His wings, they abandoned Him: 'They abandoned me, the Beloved, like a despised dead man,' and pursued their own desires.

Thus, the chicks left the hen's embrace and paid no heed to her pleading and calling. Consequently, they fell into the talons of the lurking hawk (the Roman Empire), and Israel met with ruin and a curse.

But the invitation is renewed for you here, dear reader, for with two outstretched wings on the cross, and the beloved side bleeding with the blood of healing and redemption.

Christ still calls His sheep, sending forth His voice early each day to gather them under the shadow of His wings until evil passes.

He does not merely call; rather, He runs after the lost sheep to seek out its folly, but not without purpose.

In a moment, we receive the recompense for our obstinacy when the Lord ceases calling, running, and pleading, to declare His vision to the ignorant souls: "How often I wanted... but you were not willing." The Lord says this and weeps over the soul that "did not know the time of your visitation," for the enemy would have seized it and it would have fallen into his nets.

"I wanted, but you were not willing": Do you say to yourself that this person who does not want what God wants is mad? But the chief priests were not mad! Rather, they were certain that they were wise and in the right, and that they were entirely correct when they decreed that Christ should be rejected and even crucified!

Behold, the voice comes to us again today, and Christ asks: Do you want what I want? I want you to be My portion and to always be where I am, do you want that? And I wanted you to have a gentle heart like Mine, and I wanted you to seek My kingdom and My righteousness, do you want that? I wanted you not to worry about the world, but to carry My yoke, and I will resolve all your worries, do you want that? And I wanted you not to demand your rights nor seek revenge for your injustice, and I will repay you a hundredfold, do you want that? And I wanted you to love your enemies, and bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, and I will reward, do you want that? I wanted you to carry the cross and not despair of crucifixion, just as I carried My cross and was crucified upon it, do you want that? I went through all this for your sake and overcame the world so that you may be encouraged and follow Me, do you want that?

This is a call from Christ to watch in order to receive the Bridegroom with burning lamps and oil in the vessels. Watchfulness and readiness entered the early church in an overwhelming practical way, giving rise to groups of believers who were actively preparing themselves to receive the Bridegroom.

Monastic life was inspired by it, and communities and institutions dedicated to worship at the level of constant vigil emerged. We should understand watchfulness and readiness as awaiting the encounter with Christ and gazing upon His face, when the Christian sets forth, carrying his lamp and oil vessel to present them to the Bridegroom.

For the coming of the Son of Man is specific to a generation who will rejoice to see Him coming on the clouds of heaven with His angels and the spirits of the saints.

As for us, we watch and prepare to go to Him. And Christ here speaks of the vigilance of the spirit.

And when it speaks of the thief, the thief is the devil of the world who comes to man to visit him, and in his hands are desired gifts for him to choose from as he wishes: money, works, and interests - as the Lord says, they are limitless - until, if he receives a gift from him, he is supplied with everything it needs until he succeeds in it and is led astray.

And little by little, the Gospel is pulled from his hand, and then from his heart. So watchfulness is the watchfulness of the spirit, and the thief stands, never ceasing to try.

And the watchfulness of the spirit is an entry into the mysteries of God, the Gospel, and the Kingdom.

And one of these mysteries is sufficient to fill a person's life with the gifts of the Spirit, from which he gains for his life wherever he is and however he is. The mystery of the Gospel and the Kingdom is not seen or felt by the people of the world; to them, it is without price and not esteemed. But the day he is called to leave the world, nothing remains for him of what he has done and cared for, except what he has gained from his Gospel and known from the mystery of the Kingdom of God.

So watchfulness here is watchfulness against the world, its illusions, and its worries, and not falling into the trap of the devil, adorned with many benefits.

"Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." Vigilance is well-known, but here, 'supplication' refers to begging, so that you may escape what befalls those who are not vigilant.

Thus, supplication, understood as begging, depicts the worshiper as one who pleads and intensifies their pleading, like someone begging for a morsel to appease their hunger.

Because everything we receive from God is not our right, but rather something we beg for.

And to the extent of our pleading, as we learned from the story of the unjust judge, it is given to us - not because we deserve it, but because God is overcome by His compassion.

Therefore, the gift we seek here is immense and warrants standing at God's door for nights and days, because our adversary lies in wait. What we accumulate our entire lives can be snatched from our hands by the enemy in a single hour.

And we ask to overcome so that we may be counted worthy to stand before the Son of Man. And I tell you that we have learned, and God knows best, that when one of us passes away, their spirit goes to face Christ to hear from Him the word of acceptance or rejection after their whole life is revealed to them.

I say this so that the enemy may not discourage us and portray standing before the Son of Man there as something in the distant future. Therefore, I earnestly and sincerely ask the reader to consider himself summoned to meet the Son of God on the day he passes away.

And here the value of Christ's words becomes clear: «...and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare...» This encourages us to stand before Him now as beggars, asking that His presence be granted to us worthily there, with an unashamed face. Dear reader, time is short and the days are evil, redeem the time for the sake of the Gospel and take refuge in it, for in it is salvation.

Until we meet.

Spiritual Guidance

Change yourself, and do not try, nor even think, about changing others. Adjust yourself to fit the place God has put you, and do not try or even think about how to adjust it to fit you, lest you spend your whole life adjusting and never find rest.

Do not look at others with a prejudiced view: 'this one agrees with you and this one doesn't,' 'you talk to this one and frown at this one,' 'you laugh with this one and you don't even try to smile at this one,' 'you comfort this one and you wish this one's spirit would be broken.'

O hypocrite, O liar, learn how to live Christianity and do not be prejudiced towards any person or towards yourself. Treat everyone equally with sincere, unfeigned love, and with genuine self-giving that comes from true godliness, not artificial but real.

Do not fill your eyes with wrong situations, nor open your ears to corrupt talk, so that you may avoid judgment and the condemnation of people's actions.

Forget all people's words, sayings, and appearances before you enter your chamber to live with Christ, lest the devil nests in your heart and turns it into hell. Do not sit again talking idly, starting with praise for some people then ending with blame and gossip.

From now on, do not praise anyone again, but imitate those you admire instead of describing their deeds with empty words devoid of application. Do not place the responsibility for your salvation on your spiritual father; as soon as this feeling comes to you, know that you are negligent, lazy, and evading the laws of worship and prayer, and turning away from the face of Christ.

If you are sincere in your worship, you will no longer find any need for the support of others, and the company of Christ will enrich you and enable you to enrich others. If you neglect the advice of your spiritual father and disregard his warnings and counsel that he has always given you, your destiny will be to drink the wine of the cup of self-conceit.

And on the way, you believe the words of Satan as if they were the words of Christ, and you wander in confusion for long distances without noticing. The day you find your spiritual fervor weak, and prayer has grown cold in your heart, and your inner peace has dissipated, beware, then beware, of undertaking any public work, or giving orders or advice to others, because they will be worthless and graceless, and Satan can easily speak through your mouth on that day, leading you into many prohibitions.

On that day, commit yourself to silence and grieve for your soul, keeping your sins before your eyes all day long. These words are for you alone; do not pass them on to others, and do not say to yourself that a certain point applies to someone else. All points are for you; act upon them so that you may live.

"After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how they might take Him by trickery and put Him to death.

Knowing the Times and Seasons

Here lies a theological impossibility: for the Father to know and the Son not to know! However, the interpretation of the verse is that the ultimate goal of the world is inevitably and necessarily the end of time. The day of the end of the world, or the hour when the end begins, absolutely does not exist within time, because it *is* the end of time. Therefore, it certainly cannot be *in* time, nor can it be counted from time or calculated by its measure. Thus, the day and hour of the end of the world are beyond time and do not exist within it; they are at the core of temporal non-existence and temporal unknowability.

Therefore, it is impossible for any human being, no matter who they are, to grasp it, as they are temporal creatures subject to time.

Consequently, it is neither part of the mission of the incarnate Son nor is it His work, because His mission is within time and His work ends with the cessation of time. Therefore, it is absolutely certain that it falls within the exclusive purview and work of the Father alone.

Therefore, when it was said that the Son (incarnate) Himself does not know that day and that hour, the reason is that it is outside the scope of His mission, work, and service. This is because the timeless became temporal and no longer cares about anything but what is temporal, leaving to the Father all that is timeless. This is the voluntary renunciation or emptying. Thus, the extreme difficulty in interpreting and explaining this verse lies in the fact that it was considered within the realm of time while it is intrinsically an act of eternity.

It's as if you're asking me: What is the day and hour in which God created the world? The answer would be: this was before time, and in it time began when the first movement in the world started.

Similarly, the answer to what is the day and hour in which the world ends would be: this is not a temporal act, nor does it inherently contain time; rather, it is outside all days and hours, because in it movement ceases and consequently time itself is brought to an end. It is impossible for any temporal mind to grasp or understand it, for it is the absolute zero.

by the concept of motion, time, total death, or eternal nothingness. But out of God's immense mercies or by the action of His living, ever-living being, humanity or the world was entrusted by God with the seed of eternal living existence. So when man or the world reaches zero time or total physical death, the motion of new life springs forth from it. Thus begins man's new creation, and with it, the spiritual world begins with its new heaven and new earth, with its new living motion derived from God and no longer from matter.

This has no end, but is expressed as immortality, because with God there is no end. In agreement with this verse, Christ also said to His disciples when they asked Him at the beginning of the book of Acts: "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"

This question reveals the error of their assumption that the coming of Christ and the return of Israel were imminent.

So Christ definitively raised their thoughts beyond the realm of time: "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority."

It is clear that the Son is speaking here, in a state of His absolute manifestation and perfect equality with the Father.

However, the end, the end of the world and time, is still considered not to be within the Son's jurisdiction, but rather it belongs to the Father.

Because the end of time, as we have previously presented, is not subject to time.

And it is known that "restoring the kingdom to Israel" is an idiom for the coming of the Kingdom of God.

And it is clear that this means after the end of the world's time, i.e., after time ceases. From this, it becomes perfectly clear to the reader the folly of anyone, no matter who they are, to prophesy or even claim to know the end and determine its time, because the end of time does not enter into time, nor does it occur within a temporal dimension, and no human being can ever comprehend it. Therefore, anyone who claims to know the end of the world or the end of time directly attributes to themselves the folly of a false prophet.

Then the Jews said, "Will He kill Himself, because He says, 'Where I go you cannot come'?"

And He said to them, "You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins."

Then they said to Him, "Who are You?"

And Jesus said to them, "Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him."

They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father. Then Jesus said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him."

"And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him."

You are from beneath; I am from above.

Here Christ explains the reason why they could not follow Him.

This clarifies it based on the difference in nature and existence between what is earthly and what is heavenly. You are from beneath, meaning from the earthly nature, from the earth, from the temporal boundaries ending in death, from under falsehood, deception, and transient masks. As for Me, I am from above, meaning from the creative nature, from heaven, from the eternal unlimited, from the immortal everlasting, from the self-existent truth and the permanent in His being. You are of this world, the changing and transient, governed by natural forces, subjected to falsehood, dominated by evil, covered by shadow, and tossed about by cycles! But I am not of this world; I came to it as one sent, and I will leave it and go from where I came. I entered it to save it, redeem it, give it life, and enlighten it, then I will depart, opening the way leading to heaven for those who could overcome it, just as I overcame it. And note that the nature of Christ is from above "and never ceased" to descend.

For those of you who live with Him in true fellowship, and not just an intellectual or ideological fellowship; He is ashamed for us to ascend with Him upwards, because our nature pulls us back down to the earth. But He, by His nature, is heavenly "from above," and has the power to lift us up; it is an absolute power, while our burdens and sins are limited and not absolute. For this reason, union with Christ is of utmost importance because it is the only means by which we ascend with Him upwards in all calm and peace, for it is He who draws us and lifts us, and not we ourselves. The lofty places that have immense height require great lightness to reach them, and we will not attain them until the Lord lifts our burdens from us and teaches us how to ascend with Him upwards and then upwards and forever and ever.

This is truly Christ's eternal desire, for which He endured everything, and which He earnestly requests from the Father on our behalf: "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world." This is our glorious portion above, but it is being made here in the present time.

For if we die before we obtain this union and before these living connections with Christ are realized, then, as He said to the Jews: "Then Jesus said to them again, "I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come."" where sin is the refusal to respond to Christ. If we ignore the call, we become like the Jews who rejected Him.

The Lord Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." Here, "light of life" means the light that leads to life, that is, "the vital light."

Christ places Himself here in place of the symbol.

The symbol is the pillar of fire that lit the way for the people of Israel as they journeyed through the wilderness at night.

Without the pillar of fire that guided them in ancient times, the people would have strayed and been lost. Yet, despite that, they did not reach the Promised Land and all of them died. This illuminating pillar did not enter into their depths; instead, it walked before them.

And this is the difference between the two lights: the light of the pillar of fire; and Christ, who is "the light of the world."

The light that leads from outside is not like the light that leads from within.

The symbol is always external, but Christ came as a true light to shine within the soul, as an inner light that grants insight and illuminates our depths. "He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness." Here, following is not outward; rather, it is inward.

So the person who follows Christ walks in the wake of His word, which works in the mind for enlightenment.

For we are children of light, born of Christ; not because we have become light; but because we have contained "the light of life" in our depths. The Word is illuminating; when a person contains it in the heart, they can walk in a straight path, the path of salvation.

Here, containing the light is the basis of our journey to the heavenly homeland, which remains unknown and unrevealed to us.

We cannot see this heavenly homeland with our eyes, nor can we encompass all that is in it or define its features; but all we can do is follow Christ and hold fast to the true light, and then we will walk in safety, and the truth will be revealed to us more and more. It is impossible for a person to keep the word of God richly within his heart and not bear witness to Christ, or have Christ borne witness to through him.

Why? Because Christ is the one who bears witness to Himself in the depths of man.

And then, man must bear witness to Christ who dwells in him, and here he cannot shut his mouth, because the light of Christ is a burning fire within him that does not rest until he speaks and declares and testifies to Christ. Faith without love does not enlighten the heart. «For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.»

Thus, the true light came based on God's absolute generosity.

But it is not faith alone that makes the light of Christ burn within us or dwell in our depths, but love.

Love is necessary along with faith.

Faith alone without love does not enlighten the heart.

Therefore, there must be positive love, sacrificial love even unto death. If you accept the Word and believe in it, you must keep it within your heart, apply it in your life, and turn it into action.

This is the difference between what the world gives and what Christ gives.

The difference lies in the word "love," for it is what reveals Christ. Light cannot shine in a person's heart without working or without bearing witness. For the light of Christ is movement, it is action, leading a person from one truth to another.

It is not a contemplative light, where a person sits in stillness and meditates on God and His works, without an inner movement that includes love for God, and love and sacrifice for others. We are now journeying on the path of eternal life, guided by the light of Christ.

But Christ is light only for those who walk who follow Him, so that the light of life is not outside them; rather, deep in their hearts, He leads them peacefully until He brings them to the heavenly homeland.

the Son of Man.

Signs of the Second Coming

Signs of the times indicate monitoring temporal events, but the signs of heaven are present and visible and do not require monitoring or effort.

For the time is a time of repentance, and the Lord stands at the door knocking. Now is the time to open and welcome Christ, before the time comes when the door will be closed and judgment begins.

Then no hope will be heard, and no plea will be accepted: "I tell you, you shall not depart from there till you have paid the very last mite."

For the Judge in the time of judgment is now your Advocate in the time of repentance, return, and reconciliation.

So make the effort now while you are still on the way to get rid of your debts before you are fined beyond what you can bear.

The present time is a time of reconciliation, love, affection, and free forgiveness. This is the time we should seek, not a time of judgment, condemnation, regret, and gnashing of teeth. Therefore, Christ rebukes those who seek to know the time of His coming, which is a time of judgment, and neglect to know the value of the present time, which is a time of reconciliation and salvation, saying: "Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it that you do not discern this time?" ( NKJV) After Christ left the temple with His disciples, and after He prophesied about the destruction of Jerusalem, the magnificence of the temple was dear to His disciples. They could not imagine the possibility of destroying and throwing down those enormous stones with their engravings and marble - and they drew Christ's attention to this - so Christ could only assure them that regarding these great buildings, "Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down." ( NKJV)

This stirred their thoughts and imagination, and the matter overwhelmed them. So they asked Him as they sat privately on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple - Peter, James, and John - "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" ( NKJV)

It was difficult for Christ to give them a complete picture of the development of events related to the completion of time and the succession of events pertaining to the kingdom of heaven. However, He began to give them what was necessary to make them aware of the deceptions that would occur. Most matters were beyond their comprehension, which Christ left for the Holy Spirit to enlighten their minds and enable them to grasp the events as they developed and unfolded chronologically. Yet, Christ always contented Himself with sowing the seeds of truth, then leaving them to grow with events and time until they were revealed in their due season.

Furthermore, giving an accurate picture of events before they happened, besides being of no benefit to them, was not consistent with Christ's method of building faith.

For it is the essence of teaching that important events concerning faith and life remain hidden until their appearance, so that they may perform their divine work in the mind and heart.

And He definitively cut off any possibility for them to have prior knowledge of the time of His coming: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only." The reason for this is not difficult for us to grasp, for the Son came with His angels to serve a cause in the reality of time, which is the salvation of man from sin, death, and the bondage of falsehood and time. So the boundaries of His work begin with time and end with time, but His coming after the completion of time does not concern the Son in His temporal state yet, nor the angels appointed to serve the redeemed; these are timeless matters, from the perspective of jurisdiction.

As for the perspective of authority, the timeless matters pertaining to the Second Coming can by no means be determined by a date or a temporal event in any way whatsoever; for its signs and movements are above time, and it is absolutely impossible to determine or confine them for a mind that operates under the measurements of time.

Therefore He said: Neither the angels, nor the Son in His incarnate state, knows through temporal thought or determines by temporal events when Christ will come!

And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, that He said to His disciples, "You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified."

The Parable of the Talents

The parable begins with a master embarking on a long journey, and accordingly, he called his servants to entrust them with his money. Here, the relationship between the master and his servants rises to the highest level of dependence and trustworthiness, reaching the point of handing over his money to them to perform his work, considering them possessors of all his capabilities and also of his trust.

The feeling here almost suggests that he treated them like sons, as he entrusted them with the responsibility of managing his money in his absence, as if they were representing him personally.

We are those whom God chose in Christ Jesus for His eternal kingdom before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blame before Him in love.

He chose us, and each one of us He created with a specific potential and energy in talents and in the ability to use those talents, and thus with a potential for service commensurate with that energy and talents.

While He gave us one redemption, one salvation, and one holy calling, equal in everything for salvation. It is observed that this traveling master did not take deeds or write conditions, nor did he warn or admonish or enlighten and instruct; rather, with full confidence, he gave his money to his first servant to trade with, according to the talents God had endowed him with.

Thus, he gave the second servant what corresponded to his energies and capabilities, and likewise the third, and it was never observed that any of the three considered the talents too many or too few, which suggests that the distribution was truly fair according to their energies. "Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made five other talents. And likewise he who had received two talents also gained two other talents."

Immediately, the servant who had received five talents went and traded with them, and gained another five talents. He lived up to his master's expectations and proved his worth, just as he proved that his master was wise, precise, and fully aware of his capabilities and potential.

Similarly, the second servant traded and gained two talents, adding to the first servant's proof his own evidence that he was worthy of the two talents, and that his master was wise and fully understood his potential. "But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's money." Hiding the talent or money in the ground corresponds to disabling or nullifying the work of the talent or spiritual gifts that God has given to the believer.

This happens with those who either have lost the sense of the gift's value or have become careless and disdainful towards the Giver of the gift, and consequently, are uninterested in His coming and the reckoning by which every person will be judged for what He has bestowed upon them.

And here the parable focuses on not staying awake, refusing to work, and losing sensitivity or faithfulness to Christ. After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. The specification here of the long time the master was away clarifies the delay of the Second Coming, and this is a response to those who thought He would come quickly.

As for the accounting, it is an utmost necessity as a firm principle of faith that faith in Christ is work and an account for work, otherwise Christian faith would turn into chaos.

Once again, we understand Christian faith as being based on gifts, talents, and privileges that hold an intrinsic transcendent value, which are only revealed and enjoyed by those who work diligently and trade with them.

At the same time, the profit from these faith-based talents and privileges will be required in the life of every believer in the coming judgment.

And like these talents [or 'weights'] here, whether five, two, or one, they are merely a measure for abilities against which deeds are weighed. It is imperative that these talents have produced an equivalent amount of work; otherwise, a person would be considered to have embezzled the master's money.

You were faithful over a few things.

The "few things" here refer to all the gifts and talents that are given to the believing individual to use for profit. And these gifts bring joy and make others joyful, whatever their strength, capacity, and greatness. This is because, in their current state, they are a reflection of God's gifts in heaven, which cannot be described or comprehended by the mind.

And it is clear from these words that Christ grants us these talents and gifts only so that we may trade with them for the sake of the Kingdom. It is the only way He trains us to ascend to what is higher, greater, and more glorious - and the final judgment or standing before Christ is only so that we may hear from Him this voice that will fill the ears of the heavenly beings: "Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord."

"Then he who had received the one talent came and said, 'Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground."

"Look, here you have what is yours." The servant here began to condemn the master for his conduct and morals, and based on that, accused him of being the reason for his going and hiding the talent in the earth, so neither did he profit from it nor did he benefit anyone. It is very clear to us that the absence of love in the heart of this servant is what separated his heart and mind from his master, as well as his dishonesty and lack of trust.

This made fear override obedience and sacrifice the master's pleasure.

And his description of the master as harsh is merely a justification for his dishonest behavior and his feelings of being unloving and unsubmissive to the master's commands.

It is a sweeping accusation for which he has no justification except his inability to be submissive, honest, and diligent. And it is impossible for us to justify this servant in saying that the master was harsh, no matter what excuses he may offer, because his master knew first that he had the energy, potential, and ability to bear the responsibility of managing one talent, and then he was indeed given a talent exactly equal to his energy and potential.

He is trapped between the master's knowledge of his potential and energy, and the gift of the talent which equals his energy and potential. And hold on, dear listener, do not be too hard on this wicked, lazy servant, for he is you and I!! Because the case of the servant who hid his talent in the ground, and then blamed God to justify himself, is the case of every sinner who refuses to confess their sin or repent of what they do, because they are convinced that a life without sin is an unfair divine demand. If God did not sow purity and piety in the body, how can He demand to reap what He did not sow? And it is cruel of God to demand that we rise above our nature that He created for us.

By this, we have put ourselves in the position of the wicked, lazy servant who did not trade with the gift of grace for the sake of purity, but buried it in the body (the ground) and then justified himself before the Judge. Therefore take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents.

"For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away." It is now clear that Christ's eye is focused on work, striving, activity, and profit concerning the talents He has poured out on the disciples and the Church.

So, Christ's absence is a period of great work and striving to complete the ministry and bring redemption and salvation to the maximum human potential in the servants upon whom Christ will continuously pour out His talents, according to their capacity and capabilities in service.

And whoever shows more activity will receive more talents, while whoever is lazy and negligent will have their talents taken away.

And Christ emphasizes that the period of waiting for the Lord's coming is a period of working with talents.

Therefore, vigilance should be a working and productive vigilance.

Christ here gives the parable on a human level, but what is meant here is God the Heavenly Father, the Heavenly King who loves His flock, and made a great feast for the flock. He sent to invite the leaders of the people, the dignitaries, the representatives of the people, and everyone who was able to accept the invitation to attend the wedding banquet of His Son.

His Son is known, and He is Christ, and His bride is the chosen people whom He loved and came Himself to betroth to Himself for an eternal partnership and a holy life in His kingdom. And this was nothing but a distant vision and a true prophecy about the coming of the time of the true betrothal, even a holy marriage partnership, "by the Incarnation," where the Son united with humanity in an inseparable union forever, and sanctified it on the day of His cross with His own blood, thus coloring the marriage and sealing it with blood and with the Spirit. In all of this, it should be clear to us that the wedding feast is the feast of Christ.

Thus, the first stages of the Kingdom's feast were completed, and Christ Himself invites and chooses the pillars and foundations of the Church. And it was supposed that they should be the wise men of Israel and the seventy elders, leaders of the people, gifted for leadership, but they all declined. So Christ contented Himself with the twelve to represent all the tribes, and the seventy disciples to represent the seventy elders of the people. This is the image of the betrothal of the Bridegroom with the Bride, which was sealed with the Bridegroom's blood on the cross in the absence of all the invited from the chosen people.

Here ended the first calling, which Christ and the disciples served for three and a half years. The second calling: But the invitation to the Kingdom did not close its doors with this failure, for Christ compensated for His absence with the coming of the Holy Spirit with powerful effectiveness in the disciples and all the people to give an opportunity

originally, and the chosen one, who was meant to be the bride.

And here He sent other servants, who are those who came after the apostles along with the rest of them, and sent an invitation containing an enticement from the delicacies of the Holy Spirit that appeared and spread to speak about the Kingdom and the powers of the Kingdom. It should not escape you, dear reader, how much the Heavenly Father paid for this feast.

He paid for it by means of the sufferings His only Son endured, along with the pang of death on the cross.

Yes, this is a miniature image hidden behind, "my oxen and fatted cattle are killed." This was the only way to open for them the way to the Most Holy Place through the blood of His Son, and a new and living way through His body broken on the cross.

It is not an embellished verbal invitation, but an invitation planned by the Father with His Son from eternity, at an exorbitant price that neither angels nor mankind combined could afford, with precious blood more valuable than all the gold in the world! For the feast is very costly and extremely precious.

So the King, in the person of Christ, expresses the Father's invitation with a wounded heart, knowing the exorbitant price whose time for payment was imminent.

But He spoke about how it would be accomplished after His departure to heaven.

However, their response was an exact replica of their initial answer.

And they divided into two groups: one group trivialized the invitation and the inviter, became engrossed in their farming and trade, and turned a deaf ear to the invitation; the second group was rude, and inherited crime from their first generations who killed the prophets. These seized the inviters, insulted them, brought them before the ruler, and killed them. The second invitation ended, and the door to the feast was shut in the face of the chosen people.

And the prophecy, in which the chief priests participated in uttering, was fulfilled: "Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it."

The divine comment of Christ, which applies to them most accurately, was as He said in the parable: «Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy."»

The Third Call:

Here, the third call departed from the old traditions of the first and second calls, because only the chosen ones were the invited, by appointment from Christ and the Holy Spirit.

But now, the distinction is lost; practically, it has become impossible for the messengers to discern the one called by God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit from the one not called. So, the invitation is for both the good and the evil to enter the house, hear, and learn what the call to the kingdom of God is and the extent of their capacity to grasp it. Christ solved this riddle in the last verse of the parable: «For many are called, but few are chosen». Therefore, the call is general without distinction due to the absence of the distinguishing factor, which is the Holy Spirit, whose work and selection have clearly weakened.

After that, based on the behavior of the invited and the extent of their understanding of the kingdom's duties, they are chosen.

But it is clear and certain that the envoys were not given the task to distinguish between the wicked and the righteous in their calling, for this is not their work. The King has reserved this for Himself, because He is the one who will distinguish and choose.

Therefore, in a clear and unequivocal manner, the call to the Kingdom for the Gentiles, ever since the people of Israel were set aside and the Kingdom was taken from them and given to the new people, which is the Church, is a general call without distinction. It is for everyone, for the wicked and the righteous, and the choice and distinction are left to Christ alone. A man there who did not have on a wedding garment. Therefore, there is a thorough inspection and personal discernment by the King himself, and a precise examination of faces, persons, and attire.

But the question that occupied the mind of everyone who read and explained this parable is: what is the wedding garment that Christ asked that man about, considering it something known to him and to everyone? While the instruction for the messenger was that everyone they found should be invited to the wedding, both evil and good! Therefore, this wedding garment has absolutely nothing to do with the person's righteousness or his bad conduct, as the examination and distinction now pertain to the wedding itself and the Bridegroom, for whom the wedding garment must be for everyone who stands in His presence, considering it His own, like a ticket with His signature on it.

As for the wedding and the Bride here, it is Christ's fellowship with believers and His union with them, which is accomplished through baptism, always expressed by putting on the new man, or putting on the Holy Spirit, or putting on Christ, which Christ made for the believer from His personal righteousness, and clothed him with it on the day of baptism, giving its owner the right to enter the Kingdom directly.

It is the garment of righteousness that Christ Himself clothed us with through His resurrection from the dead in baptism. It is the seal and image of Christ, having absolutely no relation to works or conduct, because it is a free righteousness granted freely by the Father to everyone who believes in His Son.

This garment has no price; rather, it is a gift from the King Himself, made by His own hands, the fruit of His own toil, and the blood of His cross. Therefore, everyone who wears it enters the wedding without restriction or condition.

Here, the meaning became very clear. The person who does not have wedding garments is not ignorant of the baptism of faith, nor of Christ's free righteousness, and consequently, not ignorant of communion with Christ. The question that now comes to the reader's mind is: Does everyone who is baptized, believing in Christ's death and resurrection, receive salvation? The answer to this is clear and explicit: "Yes!" But the question that arises from this "yes" answer is: Does one who abuses their faith with shameful conduct receive salvation? Here again, the answer is clear and explicit: If he confesses and repents and his sin is forgiven, he enters.

Waiting for the coming of Christ, watchfulness, readiness, and prayer take up a large part of the Gospel, but not in the sense of waiting for His second coming, which transcends the boundaries of space and time with its hours, days, and years. Instead, it focuses more on the coming of Christ into a person's life, where the concept of waiting and watching with anticipation shifts to desiring His coming and yearning for Him with a longing that grows with love, prayer, and worship.

And then it becomes easy to understand why there is such an intense urgency about waiting for the Bridegroom, keeping watch through the night, the oil, the lamps, and observing the clock, moving it from the first watch to the last with the hope of the Lord's coming! It is a waiting and a hope for the encounter: When, oh when will He come, and my eyes be delighted by seeing Him whom my soul loves? From Isaiah, we heard this yearning, longing, and overwhelming desire: "With my soul I have desired You in the night; Yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You diligently."

From night until dawn, desire burns my heart: When will He come, and I see Him? This extremely sensitive tension between the desire of longing and the prolonged absence of the Beloved is considered a vital part of the encounter, for every time the soul is exhilarated and in its extremely intense tension, it feels comfort as if it has seen Him.

Then, for the insatiable hunger of the spirit, it returns and repeats the attempt, as if it had never truly been satisfied by what it had seen! For the beloved Christ is truly absent-present to the soul that seeks Him.

If He is present, the soul forgets all its tears and pleas; and if He is absent, it forgets His beautiful presence! Christ cannot be absent from His coming, just as He cannot be present to the degree that humanity thinks and wishes, and no matter how much the eye sees, it is not satisfied, and no matter how much one eats and drinks, they return to Him hungry and thirsty.

The watchfulness that Christ asks for, so that you may be ready in heart and spirit to meet Him, therefore requires us to watch over our spiritual possessions and the treasure of our faith, which are more precious than perishing gold. So here, watching to prevent the thief is different from watching to meet Christ, who will come at an unknown time, because watching to meet Christ is a joyful watch, full of hope and happiness, and little. And our sentiment is the sentiment of the Church that calls its Bridegroom after every liturgy: "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:20) let the world pass away, and let the Lord come.

But the vigilance of guarding against the thief who breaks into the house is a vigilance of intense zeal and caution against the enemy who wishes to storm the house of our faith and steal our dearest possessions: faith, hope, love, and divine joy. These are our capital that we will present to the Lord at His second coming; rather, He will present us to Him that we may find with Him the ultimate rest He has prepared. Dear reader, what we must understand and believe is that it is necessary for us now, at this very moment, to review our entire lives - its past, present, and future - and to finalize the establishment of a law for the will that governs it by the truth of the Gospel, and to be ready to meet Christ now. Based on this judgment, we must immediately begin to settle the account of conscience, just as Zacchaeus settled his account before Christ and all witnesses.

As for the sign of our practical readiness to meet Christ now, it is found in a state of joy and peace of heart.

Wednesday 13 - 1:

"Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish. 3 Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 5 But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. 6 And at midnight a cry arose: 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!' 7 Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' 9 But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.' 10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us!' 12 But he answered and said, 'Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.'"

The Ten Virgins

The virgins waited together for a long time, and no one could distinguish between the wise and the foolish among them, for their lamps were lit in their hands and remained lit for a long time, until midnight. Shortly before midnight, signs of fatigue appeared on all of them, and they grew heavy with sleep. However, five of them concluded among themselves that there was no point in staying awake, for the bridegroom would not come. "We have exhausted ourselves and wasted oil in vain."

And then, in their foolishness, they collectively decided to extinguish their lamps and sleep, and their sleep was deep, like the sleep of death. As for the other five virgins, they were only tired in body, but their minds were active.

They had collected oil in vessels sufficient for them, and it was made sound, and they were ready, and in them was clearly manifest the saying of the Scripture: Song of Solomon 5:2 (NKJV): "I sleep, but my heart is awake." The bridegroom came despite the long wait, and after midnight they heard his voice and the voice of those celebrating his coming.

Oh, the loss of the foolish, and their disappointment! Oh, the joy of the ready, and their happiness! The foolish rose and struggled in vain to light their lamps, only to find their oil had run out. But the wise rose, took from their stores of oil, and lit their lamps, and their faces shone with joy. Christ will come, and His coming is more certain to us than the coming of the bridegroom to the wise virgins.

Yes, He will come after midnight, after a long wait, after our knowledge, understanding, and estimations have been emptied; when we surrender to Him with our hearts alone, when we extend this mind and pity this thought and set it aside.

This is the true sleep, the sleep of wakefulness, in which the spirit is active, when all the affairs of this body are completed, and we await in spirit the coming of the heavenly Bridegroom.

The Ready: The glory of the ready will begin when the Bridegroom appears, for His face will shine upon them, making their faces glow with glory. Then they will be with Him wherever He is; no time or place will separate them from Him.

So when He appears, they will be with Him immediately, and nothing will separate them from Him: «Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me;» Yes, Christ will lead those who shared in His sufferings, who endured and persevered and emerged victorious from the distress of this world, to eternal happiness. He will lead them Himself to share in His glory because they tasted His pains, washed their sins in His blood, and deserved to live with Him forever. And the source of their happiness is to see His face always and rejoice with Him in the feast of eternal celebration! How beautiful is an earthly wedding party, and how delightful are people's feasts! So how much more magnificent will be the wedding feast of heaven and the feast of God in eternity! Who can imagine the extent of the happiness of those invited to it? And if the mind is unable to describe this happiness, how can I speak of the mysterious divine relationship that will bind the Bridegroom to His bride! And His bride are the invited ones whom He betrothed to Himself and purified them thoroughly so that they may be united with Him forever without hindrance.

Who are the Ready/Prepared:

They are those who were wearied and burdened by the present, who put on the armor of a soldier and were wounded, but they resisted to bloodshed and did not cast away their weapons. They defended their faith and their creed, and they confessed their Lord and did not deny Him. When the enemy demanded their heads, they offered them gladly, then entered with the Lord into the wedding.

They are those who hated their life in this world and despised the world, leaving it behind their backs, disdaining its glory. They lived, "being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth" (Hebrews 11:37-38, NKJV); this was because of the greatness of their love for Christ the King, and when He called them, they entered with Him into the wedding.

They are those who labored in the vineyard and served faithfully, who tended the flock and watched over it, and did not leave a single sheep for the wolf to snatch, but were ready to redeem it with their own lives.

Feed the poor, support the weak, defend the widow and the orphan, feed the sheep with living teachings, and water them with the knowledge of the Holy One and His love. They were an example to the sheep in chastity, purity, contentment, and self-denial.

And then He called them and gave them the wage to enter with Him into the wedding. They are those who struggled against sin, and in their mouth was found no guile, and they kept their bodies blameless, and lived pure, so they were worthy to enter with Him into the wedding. They are those who sinned, stumbled, and fell, in ignorance and in weakness, but with courage they rose and repented, and washed themselves with their tears, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; so repentance gave them new hope, giving birth to them as virgin firstborns anew, as they came out of their mothers' wombs.

And then they became worthy to enter with Him into the wedding. And He said to me, "Write: Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!" Yes, blessed are those whose portion is with these, for they will be with Christ forever. And He closed the door: How difficult and harsh this phrase is! They have no portion with Christ because they will be deprived of Him forever.

But at the same time, it is sweet to those who are invited, for it means that they will never be deprived of Him. For the door was closed in the face of the rejected so that they would not see His face, and it was also closed so that He would not go out.

Forever and ever. These go into outer darkness where there is remorse, sorrow, despondency, and gnashing of teeth, while these enter into the joy of their Lord, enjoying and celebrating the feast of eternity.

The excluded: They are those who did not find oil in their lamps when the bridegroom arrived, so they went to look for oil at the wrong time, and found neither oil nor time, and when they returned, they found the door closed. Will you be among the excluded, O listener, O reader? Oh, my regret and my sorrow if you have resolved within yourself to disregard the invitation.

I pray for you and ask God that your portion may not be in the outer darkness among those deprived of the grace of being with God; but rather that the Spirit of God may be poured out into you to change your heart so that you may appreciate the importance of the calling to which you have been called with Christ. Oh, if only the rejected had a special form so that we would know and distinguish them, or even that we could implore and beg them not to choose this ill-fated destiny. But there is absolutely no distinction or differentiation between the invited and the rejected until the coming of the Bridegroom, for they are virgins and have lamps, and they walked together on the same path, watched together, slept together, and awoke to the voice of the Bridegroom together, and rose to trim their lamps together. But, alas, some of them had no oil with which to light them. Here destiny began to be decided, for the grace working in hearts is what enables us to shine and qualifies us to meet the Bridegroom.

This is the oil that qualified the wise virgins to enter with the Bridegroom.

He is the one whom the foolish virgins sought but did not find. Gather oil for yourselves before midnight, lest you find none, my beloved.

The hour of death is terrifying, and some of us imagine they can face death calmly, but in reality, the situation is otherwise.

We read about martyrs who faced death with courage, steadfastness, and joy, and we think that this is possible for us when the hour of martyrdom comes. Do not think that courage will sustain you in that hour, or zeal, or intellectual conviction, or even faith.

What sustains you is your life according to the Spirit and your relationship with the person of the Lord Jesus, even if you have no courage or intellectual conviction. He who lives according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit, his faith-powers collapse in that hour, and he is met by the desire for death; his faith evaporates, and he searches for his courage, zeal, and conviction but finds nothing to sustain him. We read about the story of a monk who used to repeatedly tell Anba Pachomius that he wanted martyrdom, and the saint would refuse, telling him that he was not worthy of it.

Once, Saint Ma'rakuba sent him, loaded with food for the monks in the wilderness. On the way, pagans met him, seized him, and forced him to prostrate to idols or they would kill him. So the poor man succumbed and prostrated to the idols, despite his intense zeal, for he had thought himself capable of martyrdom. If we contemplate these terrible moments in which one sees a dead person, such that we are not emotionally affected by the death of this person, we will gain true spiritual knowledge that advances us greatly in spirit.

For he who sees death before him personified in the corpse of a human just like himself immediately realizes that he too is inevitably dead, just like this person before him. And in that hour, by the work of grace, he can taste the moments of death to pain and the body. He can also immediately comprehend the truth of the Gospel and Christ, and the body, and the lie of the world and the passing of worldly glories. The hour of death, by grace, can immediately fulfill for us all the good yet difficult verses of the Gospel, and show them to be an important and imperative necessity.

Therefore, Anthony, the rich young man, was able to understand the verse that says: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me," and he was able to understand the verse that says: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" He was also able to understand the verse that says: "For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."

Yes, he was able to understand the Gospel practically. Yes, you are lying on the ground breathing your last, and you are told the commandment that says: "Give to him who asks you," will you object?! No, rather you will say: Take all that I have on earth, for I am dead, and what good is it to me?

And if you are told: "whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also," will you object? Of course not, rather you will say: Take both cheeks and strike them, for I will soon turn to dust.

And by extension, every commandment of the Gospel will become easy and possible, indeed, an essential and indispensable necessity. The hour of death is the happiest hour for the person who fulfills the commandments of Christ, when he faces it with faith and trust in His promises, because it is the truth he lives every day by fulfilling the commandments.

But for the one who has not fulfilled the commandments of Christ, the hour of death is a terror, a disaster, and a calamity that has befallen the body and the self, and while the world and the self are both still alive within him, he is immediately demanded to leave everything.

This is the sudden, terrifying shock for the person far from Christ's commandments when the hour of death takes him by surprise. Blessed is he who has kept death before his eyes.

For such a person, the Gospel will become a reality, and its difficult commandments easy, clear, and indispensable.

Christ's eyes never, in the conventional sense, fixed upon the hand that brought Him suffering.

For Christ never considered the hands of the wicked extended with hammer and nail, nor the hateful faces of the chief priests as they cried out: "Crucify Him, crucify Him," nor did He consider Pilate as a ruler or as the pronouncer of the sentence of crucifixion, nor did Christ's ears give heed to the insults and gloating words of the Pharisees; rather, His eye was fixed solely on the hand of the Father, considering it as the one holding the hammer and nail, and His ear listened clearly to the mouth of the Father alone as He recited the pronouncement of the punishment of scourging and crucifixion.

And Christ said it with utmost clarity: "You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above." Pilate thought it was within his authority to release the Lord and not condemn Him to crucifixion, but Christ corrected him on that, setting straight the entire course of the matter, from accusation and defense to judgment. For Pilate was speaking what Heaven dictated to him, not according to the Sanhedrin's judgment, nor according to Roman law! For the judgment of suffering and death on the cross was, first and last, mingled with love by the hand of the Father who loved Him before the creation of the world; indeed, and for the love of God for the world!

To fully grasp this high model, we must return to the smaller, creative models of 'little crosses,' such as the model of blessed young Joseph, who did not become embittered towards his resentful brothers who threw him into a pit, then sold him for silver to go far away into exile in Egypt alone. Instead, he kept his eyes raised toward God, considering this his portion directly from God's hand. Joseph did not see the treacherous hand of his 'brother' who lowered him with ropes into the pit's abyss, nor did his heart close off towards his brothers as they collected the price of his servitude while selling him to the Ishmaelites. Rather, in all this, he looked at God's own hand shaping these events together.

Thus, in the end, he was heard reassuring his brothers when everything was revealed, saying: "So now it was not you who sent me here, but God. But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good." Christ came to elevate these smaller experiences and individual models into a general methodology,

And a divine law, a great redemptive cross, and the constitution of God's covenant with man, which He sealed with His blood and guaranteed with His Holy Spirit, whose essence is that there is no pain or blow that afflicts our earthly tent except that behind it is the best hand in existence, the hand of God, playing its role with pure love! So the pierced hand of Christ, upon which our names were inscribed beforehand, has guaranteed our salvation, transforming our daily pains and seemingly arbitrary struggles - along with the persecution from our oppressors and the indifference of those we interact with daily - into a beautiful cross of utmost beauty that carries for us the seed of eternal life, and has the sweet fragrance of Christ, resembling His cross in glory! And there is no greater proof of Christ's acceptance of His cup from the Father's hand, with all its humiliation, scandal, shame, and pain even unto death, as if it were love, all love, without doubt, grumbling, or even reproach or groaning, than His saying: "Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.' "

If the eyes of Christ were not fixed on the Father's outstretched hand with the cup of pain and death, Christ would not have been able to overcome the bitterness surrounding Him, the ignorant hostility, the grudges and gloating, the egregious injustice, and all the foolishness that Satan dictated to the leaders and representatives of the people and to the treacherous disciple!! Therefore, when Christ asked us to pray in our daily prayers for forgiveness for those who wronged us, His request was not baseless, nor like the powerless ordinances of the Law concerning redemption and salvation; but based on the background of the Cross, which is founded on obedience to the love of God, and which He asked us to carry in His likeness and example. For eternal life with all its dazzling glories lies hidden in the sweet little secret of the Cross that the Lord placed on our shoulders!!

The union or unity that Christ desires for us among ourselves, and then between us and the Father, is a unity that is, first and foremost, compatible with our individuality, the diversity of our kinds, and the variations in our natures. For we are not equal in our inner being, in anything whatsoever, except in sin, inability, and spiritual deficiency!! Therefore, the unity that Christ desires for us is not based at all on the essence of our persons or on what we possess; but rather on the basis that we become equal in Him and the Father, and not on our equality in ourselves.

To the extent that the power of Christ's unity in the Father is poured into us - whether in terms of the love between them or in terms of truth and holiness - to that extent, we ourselves begin to become equal, draw closer, and unite through this power that comes from outside us and reaches us from God.

For by the love of God we are encompassed, so it cancels our enmities and puts an end to our divisions; And by the truth of Christ and the Father, He melts our thoughts and hearts, thus dispelling our ignorances, stopping our foolishness, and sanctifying our spirits and bodies. And note that the unity of Christ with the Father is an essential nature, based on complete equality in every respect; As for our unity which we have in Christ and the Father, it is grace and mercy, it is a favor and a gift, it is merely an effective emanation of the unity of Christ with the Father. And Christ in the book of Revelation depicted this unity He seeks from us by entering our door to dine with us.

For He dines from the dish of man's worries, pains, and groans, dining and sharing with him the morsel of hardship and alienation.

And man dines with Him - by grace - from the dish of his joys and the delight of his salvation, and takes from His hand the bread of His love and the seal of His indwelling.

This is Christ's call and request that He asks of us all, for every person, for every church, and for everyone who wishes to be within the scope of this prayer of Christ, or under the obedience of His call, or rather, responsive to this great commandment of His. It is a profoundly mysterious unity, whose every condition the human mind cannot exhaust, nor lay down its provisions, nor imagine its boundaries.

Therefore, we must all be very certain that any such attempt is capable of making us miss the mystery of Christ, indeed, the mystery of Christianity.

Because it is on the level of Christ abiding in the Father and the Father abiding in Christ; not only from the perspective of the eternal Word; but also from the perspective of the human Jesus Christ.

This is the unity for which God accepted the blood of Christ shed on the cross as its price. Christ sets the dimensions of the power of His union with the Father and the Father's union with Him as a model and identity for a unity He seeks for us in Him and for one another.

And as He sees it exceeding our capabilities and imaginations, He returned and requests it, and insists on requesting it from the Father Himself! And He still intercedes with His blood!! Therefore, our union as churches is not a union with temporal or geographical dimensions, or one that can be built on any human or intellectual basis, no matter what.

Because it is required to be a union with the Father through Christ first, then its actions and power are revealed in us on the level of time and the world afterwards. This unity will not be complete and perfected without the death of the self of every church for the self of Christ alone to live, and then: "the world will believe that You sent Me."

The desire for redemption in the heart of our beloved Jesus reached its peak this week, and He saw the cross as if it were His wedding day.

His Father's love moved His heart and tongue and guided His feet to Golgotha.

He went five steps behind His disciples and surveyed the hill of Golgotha without anyone seeing Him; He was very pleased with it and approved of the place as if it were the new Paradise.

And He wrote His name there on the skull as a memorial. "I, Jesus, have come and surveyed the place; it is the most desirable spot I have found on the old earth to sow My love in! I ascended to the high place and saw the counsel of My Father's heart from beyond earth and time, and found it perfectly according to My heart. Indeed, the sacrifice of My life became the subject of My joy before Me."

From here I will declare to the whole world the greatest gift I carried from My Father for humankind: My sufferings, which are the secret of ascent to glory. Yes, I will make My cross accessible to every human being, so that if their eyes are opened to the secret of My sufferings, and they see and witness and believe and partake with Me in the sacrifice of My love, even with a slight pain, they will enter into My glory; the feast of My cross; the feast of My broken body, so they may witness My secret and My Father's secret; the secret of love that gathers those who shine into one. I have planted My glories in My sufferings and hidden them deeply within them with all wisdom and discernment, so that no one can ever separate them, nor take one and leave the other! I have designed to bestow My sufferings upon every human being so that no one may ever be deprived of My glory; everyone who tasted pain in My name! The glory I give is My cross; My nakedness with My sorrow, My bitterness with My vinegar, My body with My blood.

And in the visible sufferings, My unspeakable glory is hidden. Whoever is courageous and tastes it will be transformed under their tongue into a living seed, a seed of ceaseless praise and glorification, untouched by fear, pain, sorrow, or death. It will continue to give glory to God, with worship, honor, and adoration forever and ever.

I am Jesus. I gave My sufferings to be the melody of the new creation. I will place this seed in every tongue that speaks in My name and testifies to My sufferings. O Jesus, we have loved Your cross so much, and we all love You.

We love You so much, Jesus, for Your cross.

Your Golgotha has captivated us deeply, and we will all go, each one by his name, under Your signature.

We have passionately adored Your cross and loved Your death, for both have become for us a fountain of tears, sweeter and more desirable than all the glories of the world.

We will live in Golgotha, we will make our tent there, we will wait for You there until You come according to the promise. I wept unconsciously, I wept until I had no strength left to weep. "Be silent, do not weep so much," I heard a voice from within my depths.

Behold, the Christ is coming from behind the empty tomb; He will wipe away your tears.

But I kept crying and ran toward Him. Did You see me, my Lord, while You were on the cross? I was watching Your suffering, and tears flowed profusely from my eyes, beyond measure. I drew my tears from Your love, not from my despair; never from my despair, Lord. I love Your cross, Lord, because I see all my pains etched upon it, and with them my name - the one You know, Lord, which You changed for me when You found me lost in the paths of the world - engraved on the wood and imprinted on Your hand! The blood drew it as a mark on Your palm, like a seal. How then can I not love Your cross, Lord? It is my cross and bears my name. Oh, woe is me from Your pale face that I glimpsed when they took You down from the wood! When the throbbing of Your suffering ceased, when Your heart stopped.

Grief throbbed within me, and I walked in a pang that bound me to Your death forever.

So I swore by Your love that I would not love any face but Yours. And I felt that the pulsations of my pains within me were drawing me to You and had transformed into the pulsations of life! Oh! Your death has turned into my life, O Lord.

I love Your death so much, I feel it as life within me, and its fragrance is more delicious than the scent of Lebanon.

Remembrance of Love

Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. There are services and works we do in the name of God towards the poor and needy.

These deeds are praiseworthy and commendable because they emanate from a feeling of mercy and sacrifice. And there are deeds we do directly with God, and these are neither seen nor heard by people, and they are too great to be praised or thanked for, because they emanate from an inner love from the heart towards God. The former deeds, we are praised for them by people, and perhaps we are not praised for them by God, if they were done for the sake of people's praise, thanks, and glorification of us.

As for the offering of our hearts to God through direct acts of love towards Him, these are sincere, without deception or hypocrisy. God accepts them, just as He accepted the perfume poured on His body by Mary.

This - if people see or perceive it, they will disdain it or at least become indignant: "But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, 'Why was this fragrant oil wasted?' " ( NKJV)

The Love of Adoration:

How few are those who are sincere in their love for Christ, who work and serve not for people nor for themselves, but out of a deep love for Christ burning in their hearts. When you give your charity to the poor, do you feel that you are giving it to Christ out of love for Him? When you pray and praise with the worshippers, do you feel that you are addressing God with your heart? When you love your family and friends, do you feel that the motive for that love originates from your love for Christ?

When you approach the altar to partake of the Lord's body and blood, do you feel that you belong to Him and He to you, bound by an eternal bond of love? If your works originate from your love for Christ, then be assured that you glorify God with your love and deeds, and all these have become a sweet-smelling incense before God at all times. But if your works are motivated by duty, or by flattering people, or by pride, then be sure that they are all a loss and have become like a stillborn miscarriage.

The Glorification of Love:

The sinful woman came forward with an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil and poured it on Christ's feet, mingling it with her tears and wiping His feet with the hair of her head. Of her, Christ said: "Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little." ( NKJV)

And Mary, the sister of Lazarus, also came forward with an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil and anointed Christ's feet with it and wiped His feet with the hair of her head. Of her, He said that she embalmed His body with the fragrant oil.

How abundant was the first love, for it was able to atone for all past sins and transgressions! And how wonderful was the second love, for it was able to embalm the very body of Christ!

The first love returned good to its owner, and the second love was for Christ, freely given. How glorious is pure love that is freely given and without price! It is good to love Christ because He redeemed us from the curse, sin, and the power of death. And it is good to love Christ because He opened for us the door to Paradise which had been shut in our faces. It is good to love Christ who qualified us to share in His glory forever.

But greater than all of this is that we love Christ "because He first loved us." A precious love: Who is Mary who presented a flask of perfume worth three hundred denarii? She was not a queen, nor a princess, or even wealthy; but a poor woman, yet she gathered all her money and bought a bottle of perfume.

It is the madness of love that Judas, the thieving traitor, mocked, and called it a waste, but Christ praised it greatly.

Judas valued it with money and appraised it as an expert in prices at three hundred denarii, but Christ valued the love within it and found it to exceed the earth and all that is on it. Every service you perform, every gift you give, or every word you speak, Christ will weigh it on the scale of love.

And then the reward and recompense will be, not for the quantity of service, or the greatness of the gift, or the power of the word; but for the sincerity of the love that impelled us to it. Mature love: It was not an impromptu feeling that prompted Mary to offer her gift, but a feeling that began when she sat at His feet, and secretly learned from Him that He would die at the hands of the chief priests and the Jews, and she became certain from the Lord's words that this must happen.

Then her love began to stir within her to offer Him something worthy of His death! From that moment, she gathered everything she had until she bought the flask of perfume in which she melted all her feelings of love, and kept it with her until the time was right: "But Jesus said, "Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial." This is the love that time fortified, and it grew strong.

And doubts of the soul attacked her, but she stood firm. And the needs of life rose against her, and they prevailed!

Often we offer an act of love, and when the opportunity presents itself, we hesitate for a while; if time passes, it cools, and if we are asked to fulfill our promise, we refuse! Oh, if only our love were mature and steadfast, preserved in our hearts for its due time, so that the days would only increase its strength and confirmation. Mary presented her gift at the opportune moment, for after she anointed His feet with perfume, He rose and went to be crucified, leaving Bethany and never returning to it. Opportunities are before you, my brother, and do not consult me: "What shall I offer to Christ?" For Mary consulted no one but her heart. Silent love: Mary kept the perfume with her secretly, offered it silently, and never spoke about it to anyone afterward. O you who love Christ, learn from Mary.

Christ returned the costly spikenard multiplied and abiding forever to the body of humanity, with which He united, granting it His Spirit, life, and sonship, by seating it at the right hand of His Father.

And the remembrance of this pure, precious love returned to its owner from generation to generation, and in every church and the heart of every worshiper throughout the entire world.

And the spikenard of humanity poured on the body of Christ became a beautiful prelude to suffering and a prophecy of a future resurrection that perfumes the history of humanity! Saint Matthew, a lover of comparisons, places the story of the perfume and the anointing in the house of a sick person whom Christ healed, in contrast to the house of the high priest from which the smell of blood emanates and foulness rises from the mouths and bellies of the great, the leaders, the subordinates, and the mercenaries.

"But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, 'Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.'"

Here the disciples were indignant, claiming that the perfume should be sold and given to the poor, because, in the astonishment of the body, it was a waste.

And thus they did not uphold love in its generosity, for they considered it a waste, and they did not distinguish between the joy of the poor and the joy of a soul whose sorrow reached even unto death?! They did not see, nor feel, nor understand that Christ, whose soul was facing betrayal from one of them, and it was like a snare in His throat and more bitter than the gall of the cross, was in need of the joy of this perfume that would lighten for Him the coming darkness of the grave, and remind Him of the resurrection on the third day or the ascension on the fortieth.

The disciples failed to offer Him a single word to support His heart, and when a woman offered all she had to appease His broken heart, they were indignant. Their indignation was a direct denial of the act of love. "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me." They said this act was a waste, and the Lord responded to them saying this response was troubling. They said it would be better to sell it, and Christ said she had done the best.

They said the poor were better, but Christ responded to them, "No, I am better!" Down with principles and customs and measuring what is best financially if they contain contempt for love. Oh, if only it were sacred love for a needy person, but it was for a Christ coming to the cross. However, the greater lesson we draw from Christ's saying, "for she has done a good work for Me" and "For you have the poor with you always," is that worshiping God in spirit is of higher status than giving alms, and revering the person of Christ with love is nobler than serving the poor. Therefore, dear reader, we find ourselves before the enigma of this woman - whom we know, according to the confirmation of the Gospel of St. John, to be Mary, Lazarus' sister - who strongly drew the church's attention towards a life of sitting at the Lord's feet, considering it the choice of "that good part, which will not be taken away from her," better than what Martha chose with her distraction and concern with many matters of service.

Then she comes back here and shows her good vials that were only her life breaking and anointing the body to beautify it with love so that it breathes, and her beauty is more beautiful than when she made this life either by sitting at his feet listening and meditating on what she hears, or by covering the age to pour it on his head and body and wet his feet with her tears as a covenant of piety, and anoint them with her hair to wear her a holy anointing, make her life in the church a work and a memory and a good memory.

This is the purpose of Christ for which He accepted, before entering the "hour" of conflict with "this world" and with the prince of this world, this one whom He cast down to earth so that He might be lifted up from the earth to the highest. For what else, after He had condemned the world of evil and exposed the pathways of darkness and evil within it, and judged it, and proclaimed the truth high above lies and deceit, but the opening of the world of light and the transfer of the center of gravity from earth to heaven? Then what else, after He had cast down the prince of this world from his sphere of influence and his authority, which was transcendent above man's horizon, and after He had brought him low beneath His feet, but to raise man above the head of Satan so that he might ascend with his spirit to where Christ is? Christ, by His death, being lifted up on the cross, raised man with Him from within death to resurrection and life, thus freeing man from the continuous and tyrannical pull of the earth, which leads to eternal death. And because Christ, by His death, triumphed over Satan on the cross and exposed him publicly, the cross became the strongest and highest center of gravity for man.

This is the direct meaning that includes Christ's death, "lifted up" on the cross, and lifted up above the head of Satan. The Gospel of John had previously focused on the meaning of Christ's elevation through death on the cross, saying: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."

Here, "the Son of Man being lifted up" includes resurrection through death or life from within death.

The bronze serpent lifted up by Moses, merely looking at it brought back to life those who had been bitten by the serpent and had its venom poured into their bodies. The application is that Christ on the cross nullified the act of the serpent, meaning Satan, and abolished the death resulting from it; for instead of the deadly venom of the serpent, He gave us His blood as the antidote to eternity.

So, everyone who looks with a glance of faith at Christ lifted up on the cross, the power of sin within them, which is

The sting of death or its deadly thorn: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Likewise, the Gospel of Saint John returns elsewhere to focus on Christ's being lifted up on the cross as it includes the revelation of Christ's truth: "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He," because by Christ's crucifixion His resurrection was revealed: "and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). Thus, the Gospel of John always insists on not separating death from resurrection from the body, and makes the concept of being lifted up on the cross also the lifting up of the resurrection, and even the lifting up of the ascension. Therefore, Christ's saying: "And I, if I am lifted up..."

"I will draw all people to Myself," refers to death on the cross and what follows it: resurrection, ascension, and glory, as well as the drawing of believers and their union with His body. We note that being lifted up from the earth is not merely a physical elevation above the ground, but also a spiritual one; it is an elevation above the level of earthly thought and attraction. I will draw to Myself: The meaning here includes an element of force due to the opposing pull from the earth and from the enemy. This meaning we see in the Old Testament: "I drew them with gentle cords, With bands of love, And I was to them as those who take the yoke off their necks; I stooped and fed them." (Hosea 11:4).

+ The process of drawing is a purely spiritual process, directly involved in the function of the Holy Spirit.

+ And the process of drawing is not limited to bringing one closer to Christ; rather, it extends into Christ Himself, as a process of gathering into the person of Christ, into His mystical body that fills heaven and earth.

The Father loves the Son; this is an eternal truth, and Christ mentions it here to assure His disciples that He offers Himself to death on the cross by His own will and authority alone.

So, if Christ has the authority to surrender His life to death, then this is by His choice and will.

And if Christ accepts death by His will, it is clear and necessary that He has authority to rise from the dead. For He says exactly that He lays down His life for the humiliation and shame of the cross, on the basis that He will rise from the death of the cross with power and might.

And if this is an existing truth, He merely declares it to the disciples so that they may have faith in His death and faith in His resurrection from the dead. He also informs the disciples that the Father knows what the Son does, and that what the Son does is with the Father's knowledge and pleasure.

Moreover, Christ goes on to declare the relationship that binds Him to the Father, by saying that what the Son does delights the Father's heart, and it establishes the love with which the Father loves the Son because He lays down His life for the humiliation of the cross. Christ's expression for the crucifixion as "laying down oneself," meaning a condescension even unto the death of the cross, represents a kind of self-emptying. Therefore, it was necessary for this self-renunciation to be balanced by acceptance and satisfaction from the Father's side; otherwise, the Godhead would be harmed or the divine existence would be touched.

Here, Christ was keen to mention the Father's love for the process of the Son's crucifixion and death, for the sake of preserving Christ's divine status.

It is true that Christ laid down His life unto death, but this death of the Son does not diminish the Son's existence in any way. The Son's divinity is preserved; death does not affect it. Christ was dead in body, but He existed in His divinity.

Therefore, Christ's death was considered an atoning act.

Therefore it is said, and this is true, that Christ entered the Holy Place or appeared before God His Father as a High Priest bearing the blood of His body's sacrifice, thereby completing the release of humanity from the captivity of death, having redeemed it with His blood, or, in other words, laid down His life as a price to remove death from humanity. And here Christ says that He lays down His life that He may take it again, that is, to raise it from the dead.

And He considered it, even though He died and rose by His own will, as a special commandment He received from the Father, and this is of the utmost theological profundity. Therefore, the cross is considered the work of the Father and the Son, or the work of the Son with the Father's consent and pleasure.

Therefore, it was said that the Father was pleased to inherit Him through sorrow. These are all theological expressions of extreme precision and meticulousness, until the death of the Son on the cross is completed, He who is God the Son of God. As for His sufferings, torments, and crucifixion, all these were witnessed by His mother, the Virgin Mary, and "a sword will pierce through your own soul also," according to the Gospel. Thus, she became a witness to her Son's suffering and death on the cross, standing beside John before the cross, until He breathed His last, saying, "Father, 'into Your hands I commit My spirit.' " And the saying of Christ that "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again," became one of the strongest expressions of Christ's death and resurrection, which gave the death of Christ the awe and effectiveness of divinity, and His resurrection the power of divinity.

Likewise, and at once, the death of Christ became an extended divine power that flows through everyone who believes in the death of Christ, and His resurrection became the cause of the absolution of the heavenly and earthly beings, encompassing all who believed in Christ's death and resurrection.

The woman with the very expensive perfume

We are just now coming to the cross, and before the cross, the head was struck with a reed, so it was necessary for humanity to offer an anointing of its most precious possessions to this head, which is the redeemed head of humanity. And Mark is the only one who valued the nard at more than three hundred denarii, and when Judas's soul overflowed, who seemed to lead the criticism squad claiming waste, Christ had no choice but to rebuke those with hateful souls and call for the woman to be honored, dignified, and perpetually remembered throughout all generations of the Church: Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her. And the sole purpose in Christ's mind was that it was a practical prophecy of the death and burial He would undergo by His own will.

But among the joyous things in the tradition of the Church is that the spices and embalming materials that were found in the linen wrappings after Christ left them as they were and rose, the Church took them and made the Chrism oil that it uses to anoint the baptized, expressing their passing through death with the Lord and obtaining resurrection! And to this day it is preserved in every church. And Q. did not mean.

Mark chose not to mention the woman's name in order to focus the reader's mind on the words of Christ, which was always his greatest concern.

Perhaps he intended to link her name only to the anointing of Christ. But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and they complained against her. Christ's response to them contained a scathing criticism.

For she had neither sinned nor wasted anything; rather, she had expressed the best of human emotions. Christ considered that she had done a good deed for His feelings, like one who offers his body as a sacrifice for the salvation of the whole world. Thus, the pouring of the perfume on His head was a beautiful response from humanity, represented by this woman, who won the Lord's approval. As for the protest of Judas and those with him, that the poor were more deserving than Christ, this was arrogance, for the act of honoring Christ cannot be compared to filling the stomachs of the poor.

But Christ, as He was about to enter His suffering and death, was also able to anticipate and prophesy: "For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always."

And honoring Christ is in itself an honor for all the poor of the world whom Christ considers His brethren. For Christ is the "Greatest Poor One" amidst the rich of this age, and He represents the poor of the world, bearing their concerns, pains, salvation, and comfort. All she had: It reminds us of the woman who gave two mites, which was all she had, as well as the widow of Zarephath who said to Elijah: "As the LORD your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die."

And behold, Elijah's God is here, so is a flask of perfume to anoint His body too much for Him? It is the opportunity of a lifetime, even an eternal opportunity, for this marked woman to touch the head of the Redeemer of humanity, who is the Son of God, and pour perfume on Him.

And it is not strange that Christ links His path with the path of the Church throughout the whole earth, for she poured perfume on the head of the Church, so that the fragrance of the Church might spread with love throughout the generations.

And what this woman did not know was that she had wrapped him so that we could bury him today, and tomorrow we would be with him.

And her memory stays that way forever, because the body is still in heaven carrying the perfume of this clever woman who bought a place in heaven with her perfume.

And why should she work in the gospel and in the church unless it has already become good for her, always in the gospel and in the flesh!

After he had said this, he withdrew from them. 37 But even after he had performed so many miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. 38 This happened so that the prophet Isaiah could say, "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" 39 For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah also said, 40 "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they may not see with their eyes and understand with their hearts and turn, and I will heal them". 41 Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him. 42 Yet many of the rulers believed in him, but they would not confess him because of the Pharisees. 43 They loved the glory of God more than the people.

Sin and darkness are inseparable.

Sin obscures thought, why? Because the gift of reason, thought and meditation is a divine gift to man made in God's image.

Man is a rational creature.

For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. (Ps 36:9)

And this gift is not from the dust from which he was created, but rather a gift from God to connect him with God, for through thought and by means of thought, God speaks with man and man with God. And thought or the mind is connected to the heart, meaning the inner man who is the center of feeling, sensation, affection, love, and the expression of personality.

The mind and heart together are beloved twins that do not separate; neither can work without the other. Therefore, because the mind (and heart) is a divine gift connected to God, everything that comes from God illuminates the mind and heart. And every distance from God blurs the features of the mind and weakens its ability to perceive what belongs to God. God is light, and light is known only by light, and man's mind is his lamp, his light. Therefore, it says:

For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. (Ps 36:9)

So if sin increases, the mind darkens, and consequently it becomes unable to approach God. Therefore, it avoids God, both willingly and involuntarily.

And as long as sin dominates him, he finds comfort in darkness: "And men loved darkness rather than light," meaning they loved sin more than light (God). Every person, even the greatest saint, if he sins, immediately feels a cloud of darkness has settled upon his mind.

Therefore, the children of God are quickest to confess sin and seek repentance, for repentance is also a gift from God. Whoever lives God's life cannot tolerate wickedness, and whoever loves the world enters into enmity and estrangement with God.

And God's constant message is what He said: "I have set before you life and death... therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live" (Deut 30:19).

Here, life is set against death, which is the darkness of sin. Before every person, sin presents itself; and the voice of God in the heart immediately rings like a bell: 'Do not sin, lest you die!' Indeed, every turning away from God is death. The sinner avoids God as much as possible, but in vain, for his eyes pierce through the veils of darkness. Initially, the sinner's heart condemns him with dreadful severity, causing him to lose comfort, tranquility, peace, and even sleep, and he will never, ever find rest until he truly confesses and repents! But if he disregards the voice of his heart and his feelings, ignores its cries from within, and sins again; here the heart begins to harden, its voice weakens, and its revolt subsides. After more sin, it completely dries up, and this is the hardening of the heart.

A hardened heart is one that has lost sensitivity, feeling, kindness, love, tenderness, and emotions.

Whoever believes in Christ must know that their name is recorded in the memory of Christ.

And Christ's knowledge of those who believe in Him means a divine knowledge in which the believer enters the sphere of Christ's revealing light. No movement, word, or even thought of a word can be hidden from Christ, for the entire being of the beloved believer enters into the being of the light of Christ's divinity, making their whole life revealed, and thus protected and sustained. And the believer feels an attraction towards Christ, an attraction originally emanating from the Father above, because the Father is considered to be the one who gave and gives the chosen ones to Christ.

On this basis, after one has fully come to know Him in whom he believes, and the believer faithfully, truly, and lovingly follows the Lord, Christ determines the destiny of His believers by making them among those to whom He has given eternal life and the blessed Kingdom of the Father. The believer's soul is secured by the blood of Christ and the seal of the cross, so no evil or harm will come to it, and it will never perish, forever. Thus, the soul that Christ has secured by His blood becomes very far from the reach of Satan, who cannot overcome it no matter what, for it is held in the hand of Christ as one embraces a friend and holds him with both hands.

For it has become known that the soul is the property of the Father, who entrusts it to the Son, making it impossible for Satan to snatch it from the Father's hand.

This divine assurance is affirmed in Scripture:

And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. ( NKJV)

Thus, the soul becomes protected by both the Father and the Son. This picture represents the charter of faithfulness in Christ; it is a faith armed with the combined power of the Father and the Son. It is the constitution of life for every believer who followed Christ and pleased the Father's heart, where human life becomes protected for the sake of the prepared Kingdom.

It is of paramount importance for the believing person to know the truth that Christ knows him, and that the Father also surrounds him, and reveals what is in his heart and spirit.

Thus, it is necessary for the believing person to understand the Father's role in his knowledge of Christ and in his choice for eternal life, because the knowledge of the Father and the Son is the capital of the believer's faithfulness, which supplies him with strength, patience, faithfulness, and the revelatory knowledge of truth by the Spirit and truth, so he follows Christ as a good soldier in the army of salvation, prepared for every war that comes to him from the enemy. So, the saying of Christ: "neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand, nor is anyone able to snatch them out of My Father's hand," is an affirmation here to reassure the human heart that the war he faces will not be met with his weak capabilities, for the hand of the Father and the Son secretly surrounds him, making it impossible for the enemy to approach the person.

And this is the secret of profound soul tranquility, because it is preserved by a power from above, for we are not alone in the world, struggling within it while it is within us, without the watchful eye from above and the preserving and encompassing hand [of God] around man. And when the war ends, yes, we will be crowned in the blessed abode.

One of the deepest descriptions Christ gave of Himself is His saying that He is the true light that illuminates the world, because the predominant characteristic of the world is that it is darkness and a world of darkness. This is not a metaphorical characteristic but one that almost embodies the world in the depth of its reality.

The children of darkness are comfortable with darkness because it suits their behavior. And darkness enveloped the whole world; until a herald from heaven called out, giving glory to God, because the Light came to the world to destroy darkness. Christ the Lord from heaven, Light from Light, and just as the sun rose, the night with its great darkness ended, and light spread to illuminate the whole world, so Jesus Christ shone upon us from heaven to make the world populous without night, and generally to illuminate hearts with heavenly light.

And for the first time, man perceives the truth, is drawn to it, and walks in its guidance. The truth is the essence of divine existence, and whoever knows the truth is immediately freed from all works of darkness and overcomes the world. And when Christ said, "You are children of truth and God, because I have made known to you all that is with God"; and when Christ addressed the Pharisees, saying that whoever follows Him knows the truth and becomes a child of God, and when they argued with them that they were children and not slaves, children of Abraham, He told them that they were slaves because they committed sin, and, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin."

And thus, the advantage of light is to walk in the light of God, for the light of God is the knowledge of truth and walking according to His guidance.

For this, Christ came to teach the truth and to shine upon the hearts that loved God and walked in the light of His commandments. Here Christ proclaims with truth and worthiness: Believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. For everyone who believed in the light had the truth revealed in their heart and followed the light and the truth. The sole enemy of light is sin, for sin is the essence of darkness - if the expression is correct here - because darkness has no essence; it is falsehood and imagination, and has no existence except with Satan. And Satan is alien to truth and light; rather, if truth and light shine, Satan is struck down and vanishes.

For the devil weaves his existence from the warp of darkness and the weft of lies, and the Scripture knows the devil as "a liar and the father of it." Sin is the greatest deception the devil has woven into people's lives; it has no existence, and whoever commits it nullifies their own existence by their own hand.

But whoever believes in the Light has believed in the Truth and made for himself an existence in Christ and God. So, brothers, the Light is Christ, and whoever believes in Christ has believed in the Light, the Truth, and the Life, and made for himself an existence in the presence of God, the saints, and the angels.

So Light and Darkness are existence and perdition; the choice here is bitter, for it is either existence or perdition.

Therefore, my beloved, choose existence and life, and Christ warns: "A little while longer the light is with you."

The Eucharist is the antidote to immortality. The Eucharist is the essence of Christian faith, the core of belief in Christ, and the practical starting point for living with or in Christ, to be a justified people and a holy nation. The Lord did not establish this mystery at the beginning of His ministry, not immediately after baptism, for example, nor after the forty-day fast, nor as the culmination of His teachings. Instead, He deliberately delayed it until its precise time, "the same night in which He was betrayed."

And when He had finished all His teachings, and when He had completed His love, and when He had delivered to His disciples all the secrets of His relationship with the Father, then He actually entered the zero hour, and it was decided to begin the execution of the crucifixion, and the price was paid to the betrayer, and the time and place of the betrayal were set, and Christ felt the approach of the hour of death; then He took bread and began to establish the greatest mysteries of human existence on earth; indeed, the greatest mysteries of life altogether, this which became for mortal man the antidote to deathlessness, the power of resurrection, and a key to eternity. "on the same night in which He was betrayed" On this historical occasion, existing between the establishment of the mystery and the night of delivery unto death, after the transformation of bread and wine, it became a super-temporal evangelistic occasion that encompasses all time and then transcends it into imperishable eternity: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes."

There is a mystery that unites Christ, sitting with His disciples and united with them by the mystery of love at the Supper on Thursday, with us in all generations and throughout all time, while death overtakes us day by day.

Here, the mystery of the Eucharist is indeed the mystery of the Messiah, who is and who was and who is to come, united with His children by His mystical body throughout all time, giving them life through the mystery of His life-giving death. And we now eat the Lord's body and drink His blood every day, as a practical evangelistic realization that Christ died and rose, and that the time is at hand when our union with Him, which we completed in the mystery of the Eucharist, will be revealed. It will be publicly unveiled how we lived and will live forever by His death. Our participation now in the death of the Lord, whenever we eat of the bread and drink of the cup, is the reality of the divine mystery. It is utterly necessary and inevitable, because our confession of the Lord's redemptive death by eating and drinking it cancels our daily death which is by sin, cancels our division, cancels our enmity, cancels our pride...

Our eternal life flows to us from where we bear witness to the Lord's redemptive death, eating and drinking Him in this mystery.

Therefore, the broken body and the poured-out blood in the Eucharist have been a fount of eternal life for us from the Last Supper on Thursday until today and to the end of all ages. The mystery of the Thursday supper is the core of the entire Church. The Church's veneration of the establishment of the mystery of the Eucharist annually on Maundy Thursday is not merely a historical commemoration. Christ and the community of apostles gathered that evening are present with us now in their entirety in the Church here when this mystery is celebrated, and not only them, but also all those whom the Church has incorporated into the body of Christ.

The mystery, in its essence, continually encompasses all who are saved. If we were to imagine an enormous cloud extending to the heavens, and then examine every single point within it, made of dense water droplets, and discovered that each point was the face of a saint or a righteous spirit perfected in glory, this might give an approximate image of the Church.

But if we examine it closely, we find that the power gathering and attracting all points together in this manner emanates from the center, where there is a small table with the Lord in its midst and the disciples around Him; this would be the approximate representation of the mystery of Maundy Thursday's supper.

Christ here elevates the partaking of the Holy Body and the drinking of the Holy Blood from a state of free choice and free will to a commitment, the abandonment of which is considered eternal death and eternal deprivation of Christ, and consequently, eternal deprivation of eternal life. For the partaking of the Body and the drinking of the Blood, coupled with sincere faith in Christ, completes what Christ accomplished for our salvation through the redemption He completed on the cross, and the glorious resurrection.

Thus, whoever partakes of the Body of Christ and drinks His most holy Blood has believed, testified, and had faith in all that Christ accomplished for free salvation.

Therefore, the partaking of the Body and the drinking of the Blood is a pure and complete affirmation of faith, encompassing all that Christ did in Himself for our sake. It serves as a declaration and a verbal expression of faith in taking Christ as Lord and God.

Thus, Holy Communion in the Body and Blood of Christ becomes an integral part of the declaration of faith in Christ and bearing witness to Him.

It is a faith process with a spiritual impact that accompanies the partaker of the Body and Blood, granting him real fellowship in Christ. Among all the mysteries we encounter in Christ's life, sayings, and miracles, none equals this awesome mystery, the mystery of immortality, which Christ kept secret until the last hour of His life.

On the night He was about to surrender Himself to death for the life of the world, He sat with His disciples and prepared for the mystery by declaring His love for His own who were in the world, a love which the Gospel described as being to the uttermost. And Christ was not exaggerating when He said: "I am the bread of life."

For at the Last Passover Supper, when He took the bread in His hands and looked up, He filled it with the Spirit of eternal life that was in Him.

Thus the bread carried the eternal life that was in His body, so that the natural bread became equivalent to His living divine body, that is, bread of life.

And Christ continued to perform mystery upon mystery, as He broke the bread in anticipation of what would happen on the cross.

Thus, the physical bread disseminated His physical death, meaning it carried the power of redemption and forgiveness simultaneously.

And thus, everyone who eats of this bread passes - as Christ passed - in the body from death to life, meaning that in this living bread, the power of resurrection from the dead resided. Thus Christ bore the bread as the breaking of the body, just as He bore the cup as the shedding of blood and the forgiveness of sins: "Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

And here, by saying "gave thanks" while raising His eyes upward, He entrusted to the blood the spirit of eternal life that was within it. Thus Christ bore the bread and the cup, the mystery of the breaking of the body and the shedding of blood on the cross, and the forgiveness of sins.

And from the essence of the forgiveness of sins, eternal life is revealed.

And as death passed over them by their eating the broken body and drinking the shed blood for redemption, they attained forgiveness of sins and rose with Him to eternal life. He would have delivered to them "the secret of immortality," which Saint Ignatius called "the antidote to deathlessness." More plainly, yet more mysteriously, He would have delivered Himself and His being: body and blood, and spirit and life!!

For the first time, we hear that Christ desires, and desires to eat, because the bread which He broke, took from, and gave became itself, and at this unique moment of Thursday, it is the very body hanging on the cross on Friday.

For when He broke it, He gave it, saying: "This is My body."

Thus, He gave to Thursday the awe and majesty of Friday, and to the broken bread the power and majesty of the cross and the dying and pierced body upon it! And He cried out to the disciples, and time records: "Do this in remembrance of Me."

Not for the remembrance of Christ; but the remembrance of the Christ of the cross, the broken body, the one family, love, and the desire for passage! And so that His farewell words, with their very secret emotions, would not weigh on their feelings, making them feel the terrible loss of His departure, He reassured them that He would proclaim it anew with them in the Kingdom. They drink it, and it has the power of victory, the glory of resurrection, the presence of the Father, and praise that endures! AND HE TOOK BREAD, GAVE THANKS AND BROKE IT, AND GAVE IT TO THEM, SAYING, "THIS IS MY BODY." This is the crucified Gevruzo, how He crucifies Himself without fear or nail, and with the knife of the greatest mystery of thanksgiving, He divided His body and entrusted it as bread. He gave it to them as bread, which is His body sacrificed for them by an eternal act, from which they take as they wish, living bread, and remember His sacrifice. Thus Christ made Thursday a memorial for Friday that endures beyond time.

"This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you." By the will of redemption, He sacrificed Himself alive, and filled His cup with blood, and gave it to His disciples to drink His new covenant and remember Him whenever they drank, and to remember His covenant and live by it the newness of life. And thus, at the Thursday supper, He made a Passover with His blood, entrusting His living self [within it], so that He might nourish them with His own hands whenever they partook.

Thus, before His ascension, Christ ensured that He entrusted us with His own body and His living blood, affirming the permanence of His presence and fulfilling His word to His disciples: "lo, I am with you always, *even* to the end of the age. Amen." And when He said: "this is My body" and "this is My blood," He presents Himself as a visible and tangible mystical reality in the bread and wine, so that He remains among us, just as He is, after His ascension, a visible and tangible reality through faith in the very Eucharistic bread and wine. The priest affirms this reality when he celebrates the Eucharist as a dispensation, pointing to the bread and the cup after their consecration, exclaiming: [The holy Body and the precious Blood which belong to His Christ, our Lord God Almighty], and the people cry out, prostrating themselves: [We worship Your holy Body and Your precious Blood].

It is adoration for the true presence of Christ; it is the divine unity between the Word (Logos) and His body and blood, exactly as He was present at the Last Supper in His person as the Incarnate Word, the Son of God, and simultaneously in the Eucharist, which is in His hands: the Holy Body and Precious Blood. Thus, the Eucharist has become an essential realization of Christ's presence, and consequently, a realization of the power and action of the Word (Logos) in the body and blood.

Thus the Eucharist became the mysterious means generously offered by God and Christ for us to enter into fellowship and union with Christ.

Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant

The blood of the Old Covenant could only atone for unintentional sins; as for deliberate sins, there was no sacrifice for them.

As for the sacrifice of Christ, it is not only to remove all sins but to nullify sin itself, as prophesied by Jeremiah the Prophet in his prophecy:

"Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah - not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt;"

Therefore, Christ, in the blood He shed on the cross and gave to His disciples on the night of the Last Supper, gave a 'new covenant.' Thus, the Supper, and consequently the Eucharist in the Church, became the power of the New Covenant through the blood of Christ, a covenant established by God the Father and His Son together: that as long as this holy sacrifice is offered, the covenant of God and Christ is renewed between Him and the believers in His name. As for the meaning of '"Do this in remembrance of Me,"' it is to realize the Lord's presence in the mystery of the Eucharist as a divine presence in His state as one whose blood was shed, meaning in a state of atonement, forgiveness, and eternal salvation. The remembrance here is not of a person who died and is gone, God forbid, but rather the remembrance of a living, perpetual presence by the Spirit, instead of a presence that was in the flesh.

The Lord is invisible and not dead, invisible in body but present in spirit, in His divinity, and in the power of His redemptive blood in the Eucharist.

That is why St. Paul mentions it in its strongest form: ""This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."" And why "as often as you drink it"? Because it is found in His saying: ""Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."" The Lord stands in the Eucharist, giving with His hand the broken bread and offering with His hand the shed blood!! And whoever doubts this, let him ask the two disciples of Emmaus who recognized Him at the breaking of the bread, for He Himself was present as promised when He broke and gave!! The Eucharist is therefore a compensation for not seeing Christ in His visible body, through His divine presence.

Therefore, when some err and say that the Eucharist is not a divine mystery but merely a memory, they reveal a blatant incapacity to understand the Lord's divine, active, forgiving, and life-giving presence in the Eucharist.

And the saying of St. Paul: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes," reveals here a living and permanent proclamation of the mystery of Christ's death on the cross, which is the mystery of redemption and atonement.

How then, and with what mind, can we understand that we celebrate the mystery of redemption and the mystery of atonement without Christ Himself being present? Is this not precisely what Christ did at the Passover meal, completing what He would do on the cross before He was crucified? If Christ was able to truly accomplish death within Himself before He died, and say to them, "Take, this is My blood which is shed," while He had not yet been crucified, does He not truly accomplish the mystery of His death after He has risen, when we celebrate the Eucharist in His name to realize the act of His death?!

For the sacrifice that Christ accomplished within Himself, by Himself, in the mystery of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday with the broken bread and poured-out wine, transformed into His most holy body and precious blood: it is precisely the same sacrifice that Christ completed at the hands of His crucifiers on the cross on Good Friday. And it is precisely the same sacrifice with which Christ ascended to the Father to offer Himself: "a Lamb as though it had been slain" before the Father, a permanent intercessory sacrifice on our behalf.

It is the very one He left for the Church to celebrate in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, through which the Church realizes His permanent presence and its communion in Him, to fulfill His faithful promise: "lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Furthermore, the Church believes that Christ Himself is still the One who secretly gives His body and pours out His blood with His own hand in the Eucharist to every communicant, through the surpassing and permanent mystery of His priesthood. The Church also believes that the Eucharist itself, with all its rites including readings and hymns, is considered the pulsating heart of worship, filled with the love of Christ and the worship of the Father in spirit and truth, and that it is a sanctifying act by which everyone who participates in it is sanctified.

Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you." For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, "You are not all clean." So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Love to the End

Today, my beloved, is Maundy Thursday, for if we now live in the New Covenant; this is the day in which this Covenant was established.

This mystery is called in the liturgy: Megale, meaning great, and it is truly great; it is the driving force in the Church until the end of ages.

This mystery, the mystery of Communion, they call it the mystery of the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, and it was formerly called the mystery of the breaking of bread. In truth, there is a close connection between the concept of the mystery of the Eucharist, that is, the mystery of the Body and Blood; and the concept of the mystery of the Cross, that is, redemption, forgiveness, and atonement. This mystery is the foundation for all salvific theological concepts.

And all theology cannot be explained except on the basis of the Eucharist.

And were it not for the Eucharist, the Cross would remain unknown or unclear in our minds as Christians.

And were it not for the Lord's saying, "Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many" (cf. ; ), the blood of Christ would remain incomprehensible and unknown as to why it was shed.

But now we live in the fullness of understanding because of the Eucharist. On this day, my beloved, earthly life transitions from a grain of wheat and earthly bread to eternal life, entrusted in the mystery of the awesome Body. It was a supper of a day; it became the supper of the ages.

It was a normal, limited dinner, beginning with a ritual and ending with praise, soon to be forgotten among the days; but behold, Christ transforms it into a mystical supper that continues to flow from every altar, deriving its existence and being from Christ, who stands on the altar, from generation to generation. It was a dinner that connected a fanatical community tied to physical inheritance, chosen nationality, and a sense of superiority, but behold, the Lord breaks all these bonds and iron shackles, and reveals His kingdom, which no longer gathers fanatics, but one body and one Spirit, from every tongue and people and nation, gathering blacks with whites, reds with yellows, gathering without hindrance the poor with the rich, all classes together.

In the Eucharist, there is only one human being. Yes, the Kingdom was revealed this evening, so that this supper would later be the delight of generations without hindrance, as they come from the east and the west and recline in Abraham's bosom, or as it says in the book of Revelation: After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands,

It was the Eucharist, the mystery of the body and the mystery of the blood, that gathered them.

The Eucharist removed the dividing wall between adversaries, gathering those near and far into one. Christ said to His disciples: "And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (, 30).

Do not think, my beloved, that these words refer to coming days or years that are yet to come, no.

Christ at that time was speaking of these days, our days that we live in now.

For we are those who ate and drank with Him after His resurrection, according to the disciples' expression.

The Eucharist continued. And here we eat and drink at Christ's table; here the kingdom of God is revealed, here is the kingdom of Christ. Christ, in this supper, and according to the Coptic rite, transformed it from being merely a meal of love, a `haburah` (fellowship), a feast among friends, and from blessings and thanks offered to God for His material gifts.

Blessings that soon fade, and bread that must spoil; (leading) to a blessing of a completely new kind. Christ also took the same bread.

But He said different things than they were accustomed to hearing on this occasion.

Instead of blessing God for the material goods of the earth, behold, He blessed God, and said, "Take, eat; this is My body." Then He took the blood and blessed it and said, "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

A radical shift in the concept of blessing. Christ, in the Eucharist, entrusted the mystery of divine life into the material bread, transitioning from inanimate matter to something higher, breaking the barrier of numbers, freeing matter from its bonds, abolishing limits and qualities.

And He said it frankly and clearly: "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." ( NKJV) This marvelous transition and transformation left the disciples astonished and perplexed, and Christ responded to Peter during the washing of feet, saying to him: "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this." ( NKJV) Notice that the divine act is not comprehended or understood by the mind; rather, it gradually emanates from the heart. Christ entrusted His disciples with this secret, placing all the mysteries of His suffering, death, resurrection, and second coming within them, implanting it deep inside them, as if performing a blood transfusion or transplanting a new heart into them. It is true that they did not comprehend or understand what was told to them, but Christ had already prophesied what would happen: "And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe." ( NKJV)

And this is indeed what happened when the eyes of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus were opened, and they recognized Him immediately after the breaking of bread. Notice that Christ did not present a theological treatise titled "Atonement by Jesus Christ"! This never happened.

He neither presented the topic of the forgiveness of sins nor any theological doctrine, but all He said was that the Son of Man would be crucified, beaten, and spat upon. He never, never told them that the cross was great and glorious; but the Church understood the cross well after the Eucharist. And the Apostle Paul says: "But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Galatians 6:14 NKJV)

Then, from where did the Apostle come to state: "but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Corinthians 1:24 NKJV)? Christ laid the theological foundation for them when He offered them the cup of the Eucharist, not as a teaching or a dogmatic theory; but as a sacramental divine act, as a hidden, incomprehensible divine power, yet felt and lived in broken bread that carries the mystery of the living divine Body, and a cup containing the shed blood of Christ that carries the mystery of life for the Son of God.

Prayer.

O our Lord Jesus Christ, O Lord of Maundy Thursday, O Guest of Love at the table of love, where You sacrificed Yourself, not with a knife, my Lord, nor with a lamb, but with Your exalted right hand You sacrificed Love itself; so You were both the Priest and the Sacrifice together, and You satisfied the whole world with the love that springs forth in our hearts when it is poured into them, making the Body and Blood a path to eternal life. O our Bridegroom today, O You who were sacrificed willingly, before You were sacrificed unwillingly, today You sacrificed Yourself by Your will alone, so that You might teach us that You have the authority to lay it down, and You have the authority to take it up; therefore, raise us up with You today, O Son of God, raise us up very high so that we may perceive our place from Your Body and Blood to draw our life and understanding every day from Your living divine action within us, and not from a book, You are our book. So grant us, O Lord, to receive with faith and faithfulness, so that our eyes and ears may be opened, that we may know You and follow You all the days of our life.

This is the day that separates two covenants, the day on which Christ instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist. Two days in human history are all of history:

The first day: Was after the flood that destroyed all mankind except Noah and his children, the day God covenanted with him that He would never again curse the earth or destroy every living thing in it. The sign of the covenant was a bow (rainbow) appearing in the sky after every heavy rain, a sign of God's pleasure.

The second: Is the one whose memorial we celebrate today, on which Jesus sat with His disciples and revealed to them the secret of the New Covenant for the forgiveness of sins and the attainment of eternal life. The first covenant was a guarantee for the continuation of human life on earth. And the second covenant was a guarantee for the attainment of eternal life after death!

"Take, eat..."

"Drink from it, all of you." What a magnificent call! It is not a plea or an invitation, but a command. We are not to say "no," no matter how sinful or wretched we may be, because we were sinful and wretched. Not one of us is worthy of this gift by which we become one in Christ. Peter wanted to refuse to have his feet washed by Christ out of humility, but Christ rebuked him, saying, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." I say that it is not an invitation and we are free to accept or reject it.

No, because in accepting it there is life, and in rejecting it there is death, and the Lord does not desire the death of the sinner, but rather that he should turn and repent to Him. Christ came to give us His body and blood, so whoever does not take of His body and His blood, Christ is not for him.

And if Christ is not for us, then we have no hope, but rather we are of all men most miserable.

Don't you want to get rid of your sins, don't you want to live a holy life, don't you want your mind to be enlightened with spiritual knowledge? There is no way but to take Christ within you to live by Him, for we are not sufficient of ourselves. I am amazed at myself, how was it given to me, the lowly, earthy, sinful man, to take Christ in me, to take Him all within me? I cannot, nor can anyone, explain this, for it is beyond understanding and explanation.

But I believe in it, for it is my Gospel, and He Himself said: "Take, eat; this is My body!" I would not dare to take anything that is not mine, but it is He who said to me: "Take, eat." Adam took from the tree of which the Lord told him not to eat, so he ate and died! And here is Christ saying to me: "Take, eat, that you may live!" So how can I not eat? "Eat..."

"Drink!" There is no process by which we can unite with Christ like eating and drinking Him! For the body unites with our bodies and the blood with our blood, and then nothing in existence can separate us from Him, as Christ will have entered into the depths of our being.

For the forgiveness of sins: This is the body and blood that bore all the sins of the world, so they melted and vanished like human filth dissolving in the sea, and the sea, as it is, does not become dirty; and as microbes die in the sun's rays, and the sun remains, untainted!

Indeed, a single sin is capable of destroying human life forever, but all the sins committed by humanity in past generations and those that will be committed in future ages were all laid upon Christ, so they melted and vanished like a drop of water on a fire-heated piece of iron. Come, O sinners, you who are burdened by sin with its chains and bitter habits. Come to the sea of Christ's mercy and the sun of His purity to be washed and cleansed.

I write to you, beloved, about our duty towards those who are bound and humiliated in the world and who walk the path of death, considering it our life's mission, because this has been placed upon us by our own will, and because there is no salvation for us except inasmuch as we see ourselves responsible for the salvation of others, or how can we find rest in ourselves while our brothers have no rest. I write to you about a hidden mystery among the mysteries of Christ that we must deepen and live out, which is the mystery of Gethsemane, the mystery of the suffering prayer that Christ established to be the living background for carrying the cross; for there can be no cross without Gethsemane.

So whoever has chosen to be a disciple of the Savior and has set in their heart to carry the cross, must first acquire "Gethsemane" to practice the prayer where His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground, in order to be on the level of the cross. All of us, brothers, have tasted the prayer of repentance with its burning tears, and have been quenched by the prayer of the Psalms to satisfaction; and some of us have experienced the prayer of intimate communion, whether as supplication, intercession, or pure love. Moreover, some have been honored with the prayer of lamentation, the prayer of Jeremiah the prophet for the slain of the people (sinners). And very few have offered Rachel's tears (the Church) and her bitter weeping over her children who were taken from her bosom and died far from her (the apostates).

But one prayer remains whose secret has not yet been opened before our hearts - the prayer of Gethsemane, with its depths and sorrows.

For Christ kept it until the end to be an integral part of the cross. Jesus began it when the hour drew near, when they completed their counsel against Him and agreed upon the price, and the traitor received payment, and the gloaters and haters set in motion. So Christ entered Gethsemane to gain Himself in the struggle of prayer to face the cross and those who crucified Him. Jesus entered Gethsemane, and left the eight at the gate, and commanded them to watch and pray because temptation was lying in wait for them. Then He took the three closest disciples: Peter, James, and John, to witness and record the Lord's most magnificent stands and deepest sufferings: "And He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed," as if He was entering

The cross is ready, and the nails are driven into His body by His own hands! How wondrous is this Savior who teaches us how to willingly enter death through bleeding prayer!! "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death," and "And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Christ entered the prayer of Gethsemane just as a person enters a winepress, and the closest disciples witnessed how His soul was truly pressed, and His sweat, mixed with blood, dripped to the ground! And three times, just like the temptation on the mountain, the Lord also faced this trial in a bitter struggle, kneeling to the dust. Each time He rose to instruct His disciples to stay awake so they might receive the secret of redemption with all its pains and toil! But each time, He found them asleep.

Oh, for sleeping Peter, while the Teacher before him passes through the agony of death. Consultations were made from afar, and plans were solidified for execution. Money was paid, and the testimony and witnesses were prepared. Murder was legalized by laws and clauses, and the killers competed as if they were offering a service to God!!

"For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?"

And we are all dry, so can we endure the trial while we are asleep? Can we bear the day of the cross and the violence of the crucifiers while we have not entered Gethsemane, nor stayed awake in the struggle of prayer for even "one hour"?

My dear ones, pay attention! Christ established for us in Gethsemane a city of refuge with "the prayer of the press," with the prayer of struggle at the level of death to overcome death! Listen to the saying: "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death."

Christ entered through sorrowful prayer into the depth of the cross, and with anguish, with vehement cries and tears, turning the flowing sweat into drops of falling blood!! Indeed, prayer in Gethsemane is the secret to triumph over the threat of death, for how can one fear death who has reached death through his prayers, or how can one dread the bleeding of death on the cross who, through his sorrows, reached the bleeding of blood in his standing and prostrations?

But we do not enter Gethsemane for ourselves, and was Christ agonizing with sweat and tears for Himself?! Sharing in the Lord's pains and sorrows in Gethsemane, even to the tomb, passing through all the events of the cross, is the most glorious inheritance for those who bore the burden of the people's salvation, and accepted their lot with the fate of sinners for the oppressed, the humiliated, and those cast outside the fences - those who accepted the honor of completing the Lord's sufferings in their bodies and in their souls for the sake of the church. For these, the Lord established the method of Gethsemane in prayer: a prayer of a soul pressed with sorrows, fervent cries, and tears, so that they might have an opportunity to be heard because of their godliness, that their judgment might be rendered, and that by His arm He might save all who watch and intercede for their salvation! But where are we from Gethsemane? And where is Gethsemane from our prayers? Woe to the church that has no Gethsemane! Woe to the pastor who has not led her into it! Therefore, the lost will not be held back by their great number, and no one will shed a tear for them!!

And as for the rest, there is no one watching over them in the horrors of this long, dark night.

What has passed was trivial, and what is coming is darker! Indeed, the days are passing swiftly, and feet are rushing, and the matter requires a supernatural miracle. Miracles are possible through faith, but they require supernatural work - Gethsemane and nothing else! For salvation is near, and it is by the Spirit of God: "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' Says the Lord of hosts." But how can we have the Spirit of God when we have not learned to pray, the prayer of crying out day and night as the Lord's condition? The Lord gave us in Gethsemane a special, unique type of prayer for the "great tribulation," the prayer of "siege," with the crucifiers at the door.

But the difficult question is: How can we strive in the prayer of the "winepress" (agony), where sweat mixes with blood for souls whose death or life we do not feel the value of??? Their salvation or destruction does not concern us??? O brothers, no one feels the value of the salvation of the human soul or is troubled by its destruction except he who has the Spirit of Christ, and he who does not have the Spirit of Christ, Christ does not have him.

Either Gethsemane or flight in the hour of trial, so let us beware, for there is no alternative to the situation. Brothers, in days of peace, knowledge and theories have divided us; in days of work, the greatness of leaderships and responsibilities have divided us; in days of spoils, hatreds and disputes have divided us. But what about in days of trials and tribulations? What then, when the specter of the Cross has cast its shadow on the distant horizon? If Gethsemane does not unite us, what will unite us but the sickle of harvest! And if we have failed in our days of peace in everything, we must never fail at the door of salvation in our days of distress!! If we could, with some foresight, imagine the loss before it occurs, we would be seized with dizziness and overwhelmed by terror. But if we were to pay attention to what is required to facilitate salvation, its simple and equitable value would astound us, for Gethsemane is our fortress on the day of the Cross! But we should note that Gethsemane does not exempt us from suffering, nor does it secure us against the Cross, nor does it abolish the tomb; for Christ prayed in Gethsemane, and was crucified, and died, and was buried, but He rose.

The greatest danger is that the hour comes and we have not mastered Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, because we will surely become weary and faint and will not control strength for patience or endurance: "For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin." Therefore, in the face of every resistance, we are called to enter the garden of our olive press and resist with God in prayer even to bloodshed. This is the method of the cross that the Lord drew with His blood in Gethsemane!! And it is the most suitable for us in these days.

Here, in His final prayer, Christ asserts that the knowledge of the Father and the Son is the truth of eternal life, as stated in : "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Furthermore, faith in the Father and the Son is the ascending path that qualifies a person of God to enter eternal life.

This is the summary of the entire Gospel.

And the knowledge of the Father and the Son comes through an open mind; an open mind is the capital of the devout Christian person, and it is accomplished by the light of the word of the Gospel and by the illumination of God's Holy Spirit.

So who is it that knows Christ and does not love Him? Rather, who knows the name of the Father and has not reached the ultimate point of loving the Father and the Son? We are lovers of the love of the Father and the Son, and we possess nothing in this world but this passion.

For the world will pass away, and with its passing, everyone who loved the world and wasted their life for it will also pass away.

As for us, we have renewed the world and loved the Father and the Son, a silent love that boils within our chests, which we have kept hidden from the world until the Father and the Son reveal it in heaven.

And for the listener to trust what we say, let him look intently and open the eyes of his heart, and read what Jesus Himself said: "And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." ( NKJV)

Here Christ reveals a secret among His hidden secrets when He says: "that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." ( NKJV)

Because it is impossible for the love of the Father to exist and for Christ not to exist.

For the existence of the Father's love implies His existence, that is, the existence of the Father. The Father's existence cannot be complete without the existence of Christ. We observe that knowledge here is not intellectual understanding, but a true revelation of the essence of the Father and the Son, transcendent above all knowledge, because the knowledge of revelation is the result of pure spiritual fellowship and experience.

Revelation, then, is practical, real knowledge, where the knowledge of the divine, that is, the Father and the Son, becomes a true, high-value fellowship that delves into the depths of divine existence.

We are in desperate need of a raising of ourselves from the level of the limited to the level of the unlimited, and this is a divine ability that we approach with faith and stay away from reality until God raises us. We stand before this divine mystery in awe, and if we had not heard of the miracles of Christ raising the dead from the grave, that is, raising a body decomposed by death to the level of life, it is not so much that he raises us from the human level to the divine level, and we become in a mysterious company, the human in the divine.

That's how much we can realize how God will lift us up to the corporate level of eternal life, so we can be blessed with what we never dreamed of and be proud of the worlds.

Know that everything God does, He does with wisdom so that all things may lead to your salvation, that you may be close to Him now and always, and there you will be with Him forever. I hope that it impresses upon your mind that God directs the years to serve His children, and with all patience, God follows the life of each of His children from the womb until their last breath, to make all circumstances and events subject together to the building of their character according to the specifications set by the Heavenly Father. Therefore, let us pay attention to God's hand that shapes events and circumstances into opportunities to renew our minds, for every day brings us an invitation to draw closer to the Lord, and the night reminds us of the day's shortcomings, meaning our inability to meet all the demands of His grace, and the day presents us with new opportunities to serve Him with all our heart, and the succession of night and day with the voice of God is sufficient to complete our repentance if we accept the conviction of conscience at once with a courageous, bold act that pleases the heart of God.

The entire Gospel is presented before us with hundreds of luminous commandments, and every single commandment, if a person accurately and sincerely executes it, is sufficient for him to enter through it into the mystery of divine grace that guides him and opens for him the door of God's heart to be filled with His love without satiety, where nothing in existence can then prevent him from being in God's presence and peace. All who embarked on the adventure of faith gained eternal life generously and with great glory, and faith is attained only through experience, testing, and voluntary deprivation.

The Gospel offers no comfort to a person who desires to live in worldly enjoyment, and God Himself appears to those who live according to the demands of the flesh, according to the measure of the natural man's thought, as if He is unnecessary, or their need for Him seems only related to increasing worldly goods or preserving them.

Those who entered into the covenant of God, that is, the cross, collectively disdained life on earth, and consequently disdained eating and drinking, clothing, rest, money, dignity, human comfort, the demands of emotion, hopes based on years, and hope reliant on the arm of man. Instead, they take what is greater and what is very important and what is true and in it there is no deceit or fraud or fading away or death; they take the name of the living God, by whom they live and are honored and comforted, and upon whom they base their faith, and by whom they hope and inevitably receive all that they hope for. Those who accepted that the cross of Christ is their cross no longer fear anything in this world - neither poverty, nor sickness, nor human enmity, nor human injustice, nor shortness of days, nor sudden death, nor incidents that seem disturbing, nor news that seems adverse, because everything melts away into the cross of Christ and transforms into resurrection and eternal glory.

Whoever has agreed to fulfill Christ's first and greatest commandment, then carry his cross and follow Him, must search with extreme diligence in every step he takes, so that he never departs from Christ and Him crucified, lest he carries the cross in vain if he walks according to his own will and does not follow Christ completely. And to follow Christ completely, it is necessary that the world be behind us, disregarded, and the image of the cross never leaves our heart, and the thorns of the world crown our head. The call of Christ is secret; it is not picked up by a heart preoccupied with another. But those who wait for the Lord hear His whisper from afar and rejoice, because when Christ speaks with a person, their spirit rejoices, and even their bones delight. The Almighty God, who revived us in sincerity and by the testimony of the cross, fills your hearts with His love, so that you may know your calling and your election, and discern His voice from amidst many voices, so that you may follow Him, each according to their ability.

Indeed, the most intense prayer ever heard by all mankind does not reach the intensity of the prayer of Gethsemane. And everyone is astonished and marvels, while some doubt, question, and stumble: Could such a prayer, which immediately followed it, emerge from the tranquility of the Last Supper?

"Do the expressions of love and peace: 'Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end' which Christ spoke while sitting at supper, or do the expressions of unparalleled intimacy and love for His disciples at the Last Supper: 'With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer'; are these followed by the Gethsemane prayer with tears and sweat dripping like blood, and Christ's face on the ground 'with vehement cries and tears'? How and why? Is it fear of death? And was Christ heedless of it all the days of His previous life, even though He mentioned it repeatedly? Then suddenly, when the hour of death approached, He became terrified? Could such a person be the Savior?"

Surely, if this terrifying dread - "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death" - was not justified, then all of Gethsemane would be unjustified!! The focal point of this sad, gloomy, soul-crushing prayer in Gethsemane was one thing: the cup! This is what terrified Him, and He felt unable to drink it, even if it was from the Father's hand!! He asked three times for this cup to pass from Him, and His request was accompanied by tears, supplications, and a soul sorrowful even to death.

But the secret of His terror is dreadful! For in the cup was dissolved all the sins of people: adultery, murder, blasphemy, impurity, and debauchery, things that are written and things that are not written, preserved in the registers of hell.

All of this appeared at once, making it imperative that Christ the Son accept it and drink it to the dregs, standing exposed before God His Father, with no one to cover His nakedness or ward off His shame.

Then to die in this state, lifted up on a shameful cross as a blasphemer against the Father.

Then, if He were not considered sinful, the judgment of death could not have spiritually passed upon Him! For He bore sins so that He could die, and this is an eternal judgment from God's judgments: "Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book." (Exodus 32:33 NKJV)

And had Christ not borne the sins of humanity, the judgment of death could not have passed upon Him, nor could He have surrendered His spirit in any way.

And in one aspect, had He not been the Only Begotten Son, He would never have risen from such a death.

Jesus was astonished when He saw those coming to arrest Him raising swords with clubs! They had lured Jesus into a battle with swords and clubs after being completely unable to lure Him with argumentation and wordplay, but the Lord does not fight people!! The world tempts us to enter the battle on the same scale, but we do not fight the world. We are in the very heart of the world's battle, but we do not fight anyone.

We have reached the end of what this world desires from us; we are dead! And we have definitively decreed death upon ourselves! Swords are weapons made for those who flee from death or from truth, or for those who covet the world or fear it. As for the dead, the sword has no effect on them and is not permissible! And against those who live for the truth, the swords of the world will break, their blades will shatter, their hilts will be damaged, and the arms that wield them will weaken. And those who are for the truth remain as they are, for the truth they have found neither perishes nor breaks, and the strength of faith melts the authority of man.

We never feel that we are fighting anyone, nor is anyone fighting us, because we have come to live alienated from the world, and thus from the authority of people. And he who lives under the authority of truth does not look at or judge the deeds of people; rather, he has compassion for those who carry swords and clubs, seeing that they damage their own hearts and defile their hands with them. For a time will come when the sword-bearer and the one who strikes with it will know that he has damaged not only himself but also the Church. And oh, the regret and oh, the pain of conscience when a person discovers that with the very weapon of truth he persecuted the saints and humbled the children of God, and with the respectable hand of the law, he repeatedly slapped the face of the Lord, defending his own dignity or the dignity of another, just as it happened in the trial of the Lord!! We do not hide our faces from the flame nor do we fear; we have set our face like a flint and exposed it to spitting and slapping, not because we are courageous - for courage is a form of harshness - but because we no longer live on the level of people.

Our eyes have frozen in their tear ducts and no longer

You move with weeping over what is, and do not see terror in what they see. Our eyes have been fixed on the One sacrificed on the cross, so we have set our faces toward Him and do not wish to be confined until we reach Him. Everything we used to weep over or from has become a means for us to achieve our hopes, and we do not want to turn back from the world until we conquer it with our love, and we desire nothing from it except that it crucify us. Previously, we were greatly troubled by afflictions, and we did not know that grace was what drove us to them. So we mistakenly saw that the attacks of some people on us would destroy our souls or ruin our endeavors or hinder our progress, so we would lose our composure and regard them as enemies persistent in hostility. So the blows would initially take on a violence and intensity that would overthrow calm, balanced thinking, and we would remain for a time in a spiritually unfruitful state, inclined to fearful doubt of people, of ourselves, and of the terror of the path. And this was the ultimate wish of our visible and invisible enemy.

But grace was watching over us, just as a doctor watches over a patient afflicted by a stubborn microbe. And the last treatment God offered us was to push us into an even greater distress! So He let us suffer distress to the utmost possible, to the point where beyond it, it would no longer be called distress but death! Until finally, divine consciousness was revealed in us, and in a glimpse of the Spirit, the enemy's plan that had been lurking in our depths was unveiled - the very reason the Lord had allowed us to suffer so greatly. For in the light of experience and with the help of God's light, we discovered the hatred, anger, resentment, and enmity that had been buried within us. And in the light of God's justice, we realized that this calamity was perfectly balanced with what was within us, like two equal quantities, and both quantities equal eternal death and the destruction of the soul. The moment of discovery was a moment of terror, as we realized we were lost and saw death and the abyss. And in our terror, faith suddenly awoke, so we cried out with our whole being, and then came the kindness of God, and the crossing.

Christ has turned the situation around concerning human suffering, hardships, and pains. After they were considered a price for his sins and a victory for the enemy who boasted in humiliating man, seeing him as bearing the image of God - thus, his vengeance was directed against God in us - Christ overturned the enemy's scales. He elevated man's worth by transforming his sufferings into a participation in Christ's sufferings, making them a means to receive Christ's grace instead of receiving Satan's vengeance. Thus, our sufferings and hardships are no longer counted against us, but are counted for us as a victory, despite the enemy.

Therefore, he who suffers as a believer in Christ, his sufferings are considered, according to the Scripture, a gift from God that enables a person to be a partaker in the sufferings of Christ. He is thus considered worthy of God's favor and completes the salvation plan of Jesus Christ, as partnership in the sufferings of Christ serves as a testimony of faith and a cause for the outpouring of God's grace. In this way, partnership in the sufferings of Christ in this evil world was considered a victory over the enemy and a means to overturn his schemes. For whoever is persecuted by the evil one and upon whom his wrath is poured out, that person is considered to have completed the struggle and attained God's favor and the pleasure of Christ.

Based on this philosophy of suffering, the Apostle Paul considered sufferings to be our glorious portion, as if we are appointed to them; that is, sufferings have become our glorious portion and a testimony against the enemy, qualifying us to be among God's beloved chosen ones. For the saints are considered to be an image of victory over this world because of the sufferings they endured from the enemy's hatred, just as the cross of Christ was considered a victory against the world and the enemy.

Therefore, it was truly our pride to receive the enemy's blows as victors and conquerors, and this method is the method of the cross, for those who crucified Christ were unknowingly placing crowns of glory on the body.

Thus, the crown of our salvation descending upon us from above does not rest on luxurious bodies that gained false glories from the world, but rather rests on persons who tasted the bitterness of distress, pain, and persecution, and whose bodies bore engraved marks from the enemy's blows.

Likewise, the history of the tortures of believers in Christ at the hands of executioners and the fangs of beasts became a history of glories adorned on the cross of Christ, as if they had truly been crucified with Christ and became owners of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, (1 Peter 1:4 NKJV) and a source of wonder for the angels and astonishment for all the heavenly beings, because they were placed in the front rows before the throne of God and of the Lamb, and their hymns became a source of pleasure for God and the Lamb.

Therefore, from this day forward, it is inappropriate to complain about sufferings or to shy away from the harassment of the enemy and people, because our portion of pride in this age is our sufferings which we joyfully bear as we are counted among the chosen ones who have been made a target for the enemy, for if Christ is our beloved for whom we suffer, then Satan is our sworn enemy who takes revenge on the Christ within us. And now, O brethren, our sufferings for the sake of faith in Christ are no longer heavy upon us, for after we have known how the suffering believer for Christ is crowned, we no longer find the carrying of the cross burdensome and proclaiming salvation with our loudest voice in all corners of the earth, or rather, in the sphere of our lives among brethren and loved ones, not afraid nor fearful at all, for sufferings and persecution of all kinds have become an open door for us to obtain supreme gains that no prophet could dream of.

Those who accepted Christ as Lord and God are no longer of the world; in fact, the world hates them.

Why? It is very clear that the world is in the hand of the evil one; so he who loves the world, the world loves him, and he becomes a toy in the hand of Satan, because he obeys him in all his counsels.

The world cannot bear the name of Christ because it hates Him. Therefore, for the sake of Christ's name, the world persecutes those who belong to Christ.

The world and its prince persecuted Christ, a persecution that led to His crucifixion, and Satan then learned how to strike blows against Christ through those who accepted Christ and believed in Him.

Thus, the world became marked by hostility towards Christians and their persecution for the sake of the Name.

And Christ here anticipates and warns His own to be aware of what the world holds for them, so that they do not get carried away by those who live in the world and are captivated by its pull. This was the first advice a Christian person receives: to be vigilant at the beginning of their life of faith, not to be swept away by the world's allure, and not to associate with the wicked who worship the world. This is the negative aspect of faith in Christ, capable of swallowing up beginners.

But as soon as a Christian begins their correct path, prays, and gets to know the love of Christ, the agents of evil move away from them.

And as soon as they feel the world's bias against them, they ascend into the embrace of Christ and grasp faith. And as soon as a person takes hold of Christ, Christ embraces them.

Because His promise stands for all ages, that "the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out."

Thus Christ made faith in Him dependent on the person who intended to enter the fold of Christ. And in the face of the world's hatred for those who accept Christ, Christ opens His arms to everyone who takes refuge in Him. And Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us, has bought us from the grip of Satan with His blood. Neither Satan nor the world will be able to snatch us from the hand of Christ and the hand of the Father, which is our strength and eternal refuge.

So no matter how much the world hates and the enemy multiplies with his fangs, we are under the protection of the One who created the heavens and the earth. He has created us anew by the Spirit for Himself, for we are children of God and members [of His body].

House of God. And our portion is an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for us, we see it by faith and live for it by sight. And we rejoice in it in the darkest hours of darkness, because our eyes are fixed above, from where My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. The right hand of the Lord protects us until we cross over to Him and rejoice because our portion is near. Thus, the world's persecution of us has become an integral part of daily life, and we have grown accustomed to it as we have to headaches and influenza - matters we should not dwell on because they afflict everyone, and no one is dearer than another before them; rather, it is they who choose whom to host with contentment and silence. And when a person lifts their gaze, they see Christ has endured all kinds of persecutions and never complained.

So if they did what they did to the Lord of glory, shall we deny them if they make it our food and drink? For we eat persecution as we eat bread and drink it like water, but despite that, by our Christianity, we are more than conquerors.

And we say that we have conquered the world, and we are greater than the conquerors. And as much as the world tastes bitter, we will taste the sweetness of the Lord, and we will see that he is very good, and he tastes the taste of honey mingled. And you know that the passage of the world is temporary, and all that is temporary is inevitably passing away, but the Lord remains forever.

Then shall we not replace bitterness with honey, and pain and sorrow with eternal rest? Drink, my brethren, of the temporary bitterness and enjoy, for all good things are reserved for you, and as we have been made partakers of Christ's sufferings, so are we made partakers of Christ's crucifixion and glory.

Christ has been crucified under the weight of the cross. If any of us are crucified under persecution, let us not forget the cross of Christ which we are called to bear whether we like it or not.

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. Blessed are the crucified, for they shall be glorified. Blessed are the crushed, for they shall reign. Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled. There all their pains are forgotten and their tears are wiped away, and in their place grows a light that points to the horrors they endured and to the secret glory obtained from them, and explains the greatness of human patience and the power of God's mercies. There the ratio between the amount of pain and the amount of glory obtained from it appears to be a tremendous and incredible ratio, and man discovers that the sufferings were a sacred opening established by God to draw him into His glory.

Bearing pain is stronger than worship. And one of the saints says that he saw in a vision a group of martyrs in glory surpassing the glory of the angels who were with them, and he saw around the necks of those who died by sword-slaying red flowers like a necklace at the place of the slaughter, shining and sparkling more intensely than any other light that appeared in the vision! The secret of the cross for Christ is the secret of His glory! The overwhelming pain that the Lord suffered under the burden of psychological torment due to injustice during the trial, the betrayal of the disciples and Judas's surrender, and His feeling that His life was valued at thirty pieces of silver...

All these were a passage from the world of ultimate insignificance to the glory of the Father.

And upon this same passage, the feet of man must pass in every time and place. The cross with its terrible pains cannot equal the glory that comes from it.

The cross did not happen upon the Lord in the path of His life, but rather He was born for it: "But for this purpose I came to this hour." Man is born for pain, and pain is born for man.

But at the same time, the cross was not an inevitable obligation on the Lord, as we feel from His words, and as we are sure from the perspective of His holiness and divinity, but He Himself made it an inevitable obligation upon Himself, "the cup which My Father has given Me."

Should I not share it? "So that He might share with us in the inevitability of suffering, and thus God, in the person of Christ His Son, suffers out of necessity, so that He might make the necessity of suffering equal to His choice, so that no human being in existence is deprived of God's mercy, and the Cross extends to include everyone who suffered unjustly.

Indeed, suffering is a great stumbling block for the human mind, for the mind does not permit suffering as a means to any good, and humanity's struggle in various fields of science is nothing but an attempt to avoid pain and fatigue. Therefore, the inevitability of suffering is a very difficult and arduous matter for the mind, even impossible to accept, because satisfaction with suffering is precisely the cancellation of the mind and all its activity.

If we understood that the Cross is the greatest manifestation of God's visible, observable movement, in which God revealed Himself to humanity (more than His revelation on Mount Tabor), where the Cross is suffering in its arbitrary and unjust form; then we must feel that the Cross is the inclined plane upon which Almighty God descended from His dwelling place, from the abode of His eternal hiddenness, and came to us and shook our hands.

The cross is the supreme dynamic force of God which God has brought to us and manifested clearly. Pain is in its physical form static and confined and stopped, but in its spiritual essence it moves and moves! Man remains spiritually stopped, and unmoved, returning with Christ to God until he bears his cross. Man is impossible to move towards God mentally, for the mind no matter how much it reaches by meditation, only discovers God, and discovers him by his love and rejoices and returns; but the real movement is in Christ, he is the Son of God who came to us on the cross, and on the cross we follow him to the Father.

This day, my beloved, is a great day.

It is the greatest day of all humanity.

It is the Day of the Cross. And the Cross is the great Day of Judgment that humanity entered, emerging justified and acquitted.

My beloved, I implore you, feel your place in the blows on the back, feel your place in the spitting on the face, feel your place from the reed staff howling on the head of the Savior - it is on your head, my dear one. Today is the day of your judgment, and if you wish and if you accept, it is the day of your acquittal. For today you enter it with a real trembling with Christ, your back bared, exposed, falling on your face, your cheeks plucked, struck with the reed staff on your head, then you advance with the freedom of your will and spread your arms by the will of your own free choice and by your authority alone, then you ascend with Him, secretly, little by little, you gain courage with Him from weakness to stand this dreadful stance: exposed, bared, hands and feet nailed to the ancient body that bore every sin, so that you may rise with that pure body, and take with Him a share of the punishment.

Then you will come out with him with a share of innocence... Yes, today is your day of judgment.

Do not be afraid, come. Bare your back with the one whose back was bared and was not ashamed.

Come, reveal your face and expose it, and do not look back, as Isaiah said about him: "Nor did I turn away." Do not be afraid, walk with Him step by step.

For this is the price of your sins, the price of breaking God's commandments... Come, come with me, partake in this punishment that can wash you, indeed wash your flesh, blood, and bones, and even make you born anew with the flesh of a new child. Come, come, you sinners, you burdened consciences, come, for today is your day.

Come so that you may live thereafter not with a conscience burdened by sins, nor with a conscience bearing any sin, but with cleansed, washed, pure consciences, whiter than snow. Come, come, to salvation that has been prepared, and a heavenly acquittal in which there is absolutely no debate.

For a case that has already been presented, judged, and for which an official acquittal has been issued, cannot be reconsidered. Anyone who has such a case, let him come forward today to receive his acquittal, to receive "a similar judgment" in today's legal language, and from a heavenly body and with the seal of God. O all you sinners of the earth: O sinner - any sinner - come with what is in your heart, mind, body, and conscience, from sins small or great, even if they have torn your heart with sorrow. Come today, and take an official copy of the acquittal with which you can stand, not before earthly priests; but before the heavens and before Jesus Christ, who is your advocate, your judge, and the one who presents your acquittal in the presence of God; receive your acquittal from heaven itself, an acquittal that cannot be debated.

Today, Christ entered bearing the form of a criminal, every criminal, carrying every sin that could ever enter a human mind, transferred no matter how heavy, and having the absolute sentence of death. Christ entered with it into the court of earth and heaven, and advanced and endured all its punishment in Himself from the moment they stripped the clothes from His back and beat Him at Golgotha, and blood poured from His hands and feet and from the wounds of the thorns embedded in His forehead.

Indeed, I can say that every part of His body was stained with blood. The sacrifice was offered for the sins of all humanity, and the blood became on His body a new, purifying garment for all the sins of humanity.

And this very body - which is your body and my body - Christ rose on the third day glorified, and ascended and sat at the right hand of the Majesty on high to continually make intercession and atonement and to obtain for us forgiveness for every sin. So today, my beloved, is the day of your judgment, and also the day of your acquittal.

Darkness covered all the earth from the sixth hour until the ninth hour. They crucified the Word, the light of the world, so the light truly disappeared from the world.

How then could the light flow upon the earth, when Christ, who is the light of the world, had been cut off from the land of the living?! There had to be outer darkness, for they tried to hide the true light from the world, and they succeeded: "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." Here, darkness enveloped the earth because of this injustice.

And the outer darkness was a perfect replica of what Christ was enduring on the cross. Christ fell silent the moment darkness fell upon the earth.

He felt death flowing through His body. But what was this darkness? Humanity desired to know its essence.

And why was it there? It was an exact replica of what Christ was enduring within: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" A criminal cannot stand before God and His justice with an unveiled face! Nor can God be approached with an unveiled face.

The face of God was veiled from the One who, by the freedom of His will, was considered a criminal, the One lifted up on the cross because of sin. Christ bore all the sins of humanity on the cross.

So the face of the Father was hidden from the Incarnate Son, without His divinity being separated from His humanity for a single moment or a blink of an eye. Christ said, through our mouths and the mouth of every sinner: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" For no person can sin and then stand before the Father with an unashamed face.

One must pass through this very darkness, yes, one must go with Christ from the sixth to the ninth hour, to enter once again into the Father's presence. Thus, the light that darkness cannot comprehend, consented to enter the darkness by His will, but "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

While in the tomb, Christ pierced the darkness of death

filling [it] at dawn on Sunday with a light that fills heaven and earth and illuminates the inhabited world forever and ever. So, He consented to the darkness, but He consented to it for a while, for a time.

Here, the concept of emptying is a temporal concept, not an essential one.

Christ laid aside His glory for a time, and laid aside His light for a time. For three hours, He consented to live in profound darkness as a sinful man, even though He is God, bearing the sin of the whole world on the cross in His body.

The Light of the Father was veiled from him; indeed, His own true light was veiled from himself, for That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. This cry, my beloved ones, is the cry of the sinner, when he feels that sin has veiled the Light of the Father and the Light of the Son from him. This is the darkness in which we live from time to time, when sin is revealed and when we feel it through a clear conscience and by the light of the Gospel and the verse, and in the light of the Word and the sermon, and in the light of contemplation and deep reflection of the heart. We face this very darkness; there is no escape; it is a terrifying darkness indeed. But, thanks to the true Light, And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it, and which the grave of sin cannot contain. For He was able to pass it over for me, holding my hand, I, the sinful human. So let us never fear! From darkness to light! Where the Light reigns, and darkness can no longer reign over us. Yes, Lord, our crucified Jesus, You who have passed through all this for me, remember me! "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom." Remember Your people, so that they may not receive the darkness should it overshadow them for three hours.

But let them never enter despair, as long as You have torn the veil of darkness with Your resurrection. Enter us today, O Son of God, into this Cross, that we may enter judgment with You and emerge forgiven of sins and transgressions. Amen. Justify us, O Son of God, and accept us on this day, that we may be partners in Your great love which drove You to this Cross.

Today we contemplate the cross as a transformative power, which turned death into life, the temporal curse into an eternal blessing, sin into righteousness, enmity into love, and darkness into light. The cross is a new power that entered the world, converting the negativities under which humanity groaned into positives that it now enjoys. For if outwardly the cross was disgrace and a curse, inwardly it is glory and a blessing.

This, in reality, expresses the essence of our life that we live in Christ, which the Gospel demands of us daily: "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." The cross here, in the evangelical sense, which we are required to carry daily on our shoulders as a heavy burden, is in truth a carrying power for man, not a burden upon him. It transforms the death that possesses the body due to sin into resurrection and eternal life due to the blood of forgiveness poured upon it. And to the extent that the cross is a true tribulation for the soul, through which the soul passes the bitterness of death, to that extent the cross reveals a peace that surpasses understanding. Whoever has not lived the cross of our Lord Jesus has not internally transitioned or moved to taste the meaning of passing from a life according to the flesh to a life according to the Spirit. As for those who have consented to enter into the experience of Christ's cross, many live it daily with its losses, with pleasure; such a one knows how darkness turns into light, sorrow into joy, enmity into love, and distress into pleasure and peace.

The cross is the miracle of the Christian person that they live every day. And whoever has not entered into the experience of the cross has not yet tasted the sweetness of Christ nor enjoyed the depth of Christianity.

The cross is the mold in which the entire Gospel is cast.

So when Christ says: "love your enemies," He says it on the basis that you carry His cross and willingly accept the death of the cross within yourself. The possibility of opening your hands to those who crucify you to stab your dignity or your name, to strip away your potentials, your abilities, and everything you have, these are all Jesus' commands based on skillfully carrying the cross every day to follow Christ.

According to theoretical reality, the cross is stagnation, loss, and nothingness; but according to spiritual reality, it is an upward inner movement, a transition from one state to a higher state, a fundamental change from a physical level to a spiritual level, a replacement of natures from a human level to a divine level, and then it is a wonderful and joyful gospel from death to resurrection.

The person who refuses to willingly die to the world, and fears crucifying his passions, desires, and members for Christ, this person remains a stranger to the reality of the cross.

He may be a diligent student, meticulous about the theological meanings of the Cross, proficient in the concept of doctrine theoretically and philosophically, but the Cross as an inner movement and a power that raises man from the level of human incapacity to the level of God's sanctification - this remains something hidden from man's eye and mind. For this reason, the divine power of the Cross cannot be discovered except by accepting death or mortification. Thus, the Cross remains foolishness and terror, an ignorant death that man cannot approach, until the moment when the Spirit reveals to man the secret of the glory of fellowship in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then grace propels man on the path of the Cross to courageously taste the meaning of living death with Christ.

And then the Cross is revealed as the wisdom of God and His power for salvation. The Cross is not considered the Cross as long as we live in contentment and comfort, no matter what we exert amidst evil.

For if we love and give for the one who loves us, this is not carrying the Cross,

"And what reward have you?" But when we succeed in giving to the unwilling and ungrateful, even to those who deny the act of giving and the seed, and to those who repay good with evil; this is truly the cross. The cross is counted as a cross for us if we can extend our giving from our loved ones to our enemies, and then to loss with persistence and contentment, and with a readiness to die for both our loved ones and our enemies. If we, as Christians, can keep this truth before our eyes, then we honor the cross and the memory of the cross, because by doing so, we receive from Christ the mystery of the cross as a truth we practice with love. If we have this readiness to give for our loved ones and our enemies and lose everything in our lives with a willingness to die, then we can overcome the bitterness of the cross to the joy of the resurrection. But the cross is easy in words, while the reality is bitter... For the cross is not laughter and joy, the cross is a choke and a deadly bitterness.

Talking about the cross theologically and in sermons is delightful and easy; but as an experience, when we enter into it, we find it bitter. The power and effects of the cross are numerous and manifold. Let's take one example: How the cross moves us from hatred to love: A wronged person who harbors resentment, is angry, and threatens others - in truth, the light of the cross has been withheld from this person because the spirit of the world has managed to contain them.

And the person who opens their being to the movement of hostility and hatred is immediately clothed by the spirit of the world; because hostility permeates the soul, body, mind, and nerves, and it becomes as if a dark cloud hangs over them.

And as John the Apostle says: «walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going». The greatest barrier preventing the light of divine love from reaching a person is hostility and hatred when it is buried deep in the heart.

The cross alone is the divine power that demolished hostility, which Christ came to remove in all its forms, whether between God and humanity or between one person and another.

A person who allows his heart to dwell in hatred means that he has not yet died to the world, has not tasted the gift of the Father's love for the world - the Cross!! The Father's gift to the world is giving His only Son on the Cross. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Indeed, the Cross is a power that transformed the entire world from under divine wrath into an exceeding paternal love. Through the Cross, the Father was able to reconcile the whole world to Himself through Christ on the Cross, overlooking human ignorance. "that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation." Therefore, the absence of love means the absence of the Cross, and consequently, the absence of God's love and peace. As a Christian, you might not draw the sign of the cross on your hand, but it is impossible to refuse the nail destined to be driven into your palm.

As a Christian, you might not wear a cross on your chest, but it is impossible to refuse expulsion, reproach, insults, and humiliation for the name of Christ and the Cross. "If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified."

Otherwise, how can you say: "I have been crucified with Christ"? If today we have come to proclaim so that we may together celebrate a true feast for the Cross of our Lord, it is to establish, or rather renew, a covenant of love through the Cross, that is, through our readiness to die for one another, not only for the living; but also for our enemies and the whole world. If we wish to celebrate the Cross, not only today but every day of our lives, a true feast that pleases the wounded heart of Christ and refreshes our lives; then we must establish today a covenant of brotherly love that no enmity can extinguish for any reason, nor can a single movement of hatred for any person disfigure it, even if they wield death in our faces. If we are able to establish this covenant in our hearts, then this will truly be a feast of the Cross, on earth and in heaven.

Glory to You, O You who stood a stone's throw from Your special disciples,

Glory to You, O You who stood sorrowful, with a sorrow that entered the depths of Your soul even to death, while You were still alive,

Glory to You, O You who prostrates on the ground, praying before the Father, and You are the only Beloved Son to whom every prayer is offered.

Glory to You, O You who lies prostrate on the ground with Your face covered in dust, yet You are the possessor of the heavenly face before whom all the powers of heaven tremble in awe.

Glory to You, O You from whose forehead sweat dripped thickly like drops of blood, because exhaustion and sorrow ravaged the body. This is the hour of the great trial, and the soul, in bitterness, suffers the pangs of death without dying. For You are the Living One and the Giver of Life.

Not from fear of death did terror enter Your heart. For the beat of Your heart gives life to heaven, establishes the earth, and draws the law of life for every living creature.

Nor from fear of coming pain, torment, and torture, for You are the One who lifts pain from every sufferer, who wipes every tear from the eye of every sorrowful one, and strengthens the hearts of the afflicted, and accepts every ache on behalf of every body that takes refuge in You and throws itself into Your embrace.

And no fear of an approaching enemy in whose hand is the power of death and Hades, for You are the one who terrified him and shook his dominion, and ordained that You would bind him with Your cross and cast him into the lake of fire that consumes those who oppose the truth and a liar and the father of it; because You are the only everlasting Truth who judges with eternal destruction the wicked hypocrite who humbled mankind and subjected them to disgrace.

+ I have known Your secret, and the source of Your sorrow, which brought You to the brink of death without death, has been revealed to me, and I have comprehended the intensity of the torment and torture that afflicted You without torment or torture.

Yes, I have comprehended the secret of the face stained with the dust of the earth, and the tears that drop without measure, and the sweat that pours down like blood! I have known: why the flock that took every hold of You and entered the depths of Your heart inescapably?! And I have known the secret of Your awe of the pain that afflicted the soul without the body, and the secret of the agony that pierced Your spirit and the torment You suffer while standing before Your Father, yes, and before His love which has separated from You, so You suffer alone, and the Father willed to crush You with grief.

So why not grieve the grief of death and no deliverer? I knew what this pain was, what tears there were, what heartbreak, and what terror of what was coming upon you.

And the Father abandoned you, yes, He abandoned you, and the secret of leaving you alone while you are the beloved Son, abiding in the Father's bosom. Yes, I knew, and I was certain, and the secret was revealed to me: it is the sins of humanity with all their burdens and kinds that your Father laid upon you, and you are innocent of all of them. And you accepted to bear them from the hand of the Father since eternity, while you were with the Father in the eternal counsel chamber, and on that basis, you accepted the incarnation to bear them with your consent and the Father's consent. But: in the face of the terrible reality of what sin means in terms of inevitable enmity with God, you were terrified. So how could you face the Father, with whom you are one, abiding in Him and in His paternal bosom, and from whom you came forth?

How, when the sin of blasphemy is the mother of sins! How can you bear it in your body, and how can you stand with it before the Father? How can you deny Him? What terror is this, and what dread befell you? And is it possible? And is it permissible? And would the Father be pleased?

Yes, He was willing when He agreed to have the sin of humanity placed upon You to atone for their guilt.

What anguish tore through Your soul! How could You, the Pure and Holy One, stand bearing the sin of adultery as if You were an adulterer; yes, as if You were an adulterer and the embodiment of all the earth's adulterers? Now I understand the brokenness of Your heart, and why Your face was covered with the dust of the earth to hide from the Father's sight! And the secret of these tears and sweat pouring down like blood.

Yes, the burden was laid upon You, and the Father's hand grew heavy on You. So why do You not throw Yourself to the ground, and courage flees from You, and the divine nature that binds You to the Father, which resides within You, betrays You?! How could You bear the lies of humanity and embrace their perjury, deceit, denial of truth, and rejection of honesty, while You alone are the Truth and all Honesty?! How did You endure to stand before the Father's face as if You were a liar and the embodiment of every liar? Would You take upon Yourself the crime of Satan in humanity?! Would You adopt the case of the murderer to take upon Yourself the murder he committed? And You stand before the Father as if You are a murderer and the destroyer of souls, while You are their Giver and Father! How? And You stood, my Lord, as if You were a thief and a brazen robber before Your Father, and You adopted the case of the brazen one, so it was easy for You to release the thief crucified with You as the first brazen one to receive acquittal.

And now I know why the wise Paul said:

"But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness," (Romans 4:5)

Why? Because he would have believed in the cross and the work of the Crucified One.

Now I know: why I knelt and knelt and knelt, and cried out to the Almighty for Him to save you, and with tears for Him to lift from you the burden of the cup, but He did not lift it; for your gentle soul collapsed before the sinful desire of humanity! But for this hour you came, and for the sin of humanity you were incarnated to drink its defiled cup, and to carry its filthy burden, and to stand to be judged as the man of sin!...

Now I know why the powerful cry with the great voice was: «My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?» For had it not been for this abandonment that wounded Your heart, which You expressed for a moment, and which You bore alone as a sinner and the father of all sinners before the judgment of the Father; You would not have been able to die, nor would You have been able to descend into the grave to bury the sin of humanity for three days, until You fully paid the right of punishment as the man of sin, so that man might be acquitted of sin and eternally freed from its punishment and the curse of death!! This is the power of the cross, and this is the power of the Crucified One. Mighty You are, my Lord, Mighty...

Truly, You worthily completed the attribute of God.

For You are He whom the entire Old Testament knew as the possessor of absolute might.

This is the omnipotence of God; You used it on the cross with the utmost might.