Christ is risen. Yes, brothers and sisters, please
come closer. I ask your forgiveness and your
patience. Normally, each week, one of the other
priests will alternate with me and you will hear
edifying and inspiring sermons from them. But
instead, you have me every week, every Sunday.
And that means that I am liable to say, not only
to repeat myself, but to say something that might
offend you and might stir something up unwittingly
that I've done. So that's why I ask your forgiveness.
And so I also ask your prayers that the Lord
would. enlighten my mind so that I could preach
the word of God. Now think for a moment how that
gospel ended. The angels said to the women, why
do you seek the living among the dead? He is
not here. Go, tell his disciples and Peter, remember
Peter had betrayed the Lord and he was probably
feeling... less than that big and not worthy
to be called a disciple. And the angel said,
go to them and tell them. And what did the women
do? They ran away and they told no one. I'm intrigued
and I'm amazed and I'm comforted that the church
gives us such realistic accounts, not a made
-up fictional account of the gospel. but a realistic
account as the one we had today in Mark. What
an ending! And we saw the same on Pascha, the
Gospel on Pascha, not at the liturgy, but later
in the day. Thomas said, unless I see you will
not believe, end of the Gospel reading that day.
And last week we heard the conclusion of that.
So we're encountering the disciples. Of the Lord.
In their doubts and their fears. And their uncertainty.
That's where we are sometimes. So the church
has specifically set for us. Through these readings.
Our return. Our return to the experience of Joseph
and the Myrrh bearers. After they had lost all
hope. The church brings us back to the worst
place. in the story. We get stuck there too,
don't we? In our own faith. Because we share
those same feelings. Sometimes even in the best
of times. And perhaps we let the so -called best
of times mask our fears and our doubts and uncertainties
and the weakness of our faith. We cover it up.
The gospel doesn't let us do that. It doesn't
sugarcoat anything. The Savior calls to us, are
you willing to follow? Take up your cross. This
is no opiate for the masses. Take up your cross.
Follow me. And if we say yes, we break through
that uncertainty. If we say yes, then we say,
not Christ, but we say, my Christ. Not Savior,
but my Savior. Not the Lord, but my Lord, Jesus
Christ. So the Gospel begins with Joseph and
ends with the women. Joseph bold, the women frightened
and shaken. Told to announce the good news, but
they kept silence. On the one hand, we hear that
account of the righteous Joseph of Arimathea,
an honorable counselor, as we sing the noble
Joseph. And he goes courageously to the Roman
governor, Pontius Pilate, who would just as soon
crucify anybody as look at them, to ask for the
body of Jesus. Incredible. So he could bury him,
yes, and so that the holy body of Jesus would
not be thrown into the mass pit. The mass rave
of bodies of executed criminals, yes. But mostly
because he, Joseph, loved Jesus. He believed
that Jesus, and he still believed that Jesus,
in his imperfect way, however it might have been,
that Jesus was the Messiah of God. And faith
remained in that man. I'm moved by that. I'm
inspired by that. While the disciples hid in
fear, and it was reasonable for them to hide
in fear because they thought that they would
be next to be arrested and crucified. Joseph
goes to Pilate. What a dangerous thing to do
for a follower of an executed criminal. And the
account ends, as I said, and as you heard, with
the angel telling the women, eight of these righteous
women, and if we look... On the north wall, we
see the women at the tomb, and on the right -hand
side, the angel saying to them, Why are you seeking
in this place the life of all? Don't you know
he is not here? And the guards were struck as
if asleep. This is a beautiful, beautiful image
for us right now. The women went out, though,
and quickly fled from the sepulcher, for they
trembled and were amazed. Neither said they anything
to anyone, for they were afraid. The women may
have fled in trembling, but they went to the
tomb out of love, in the darkness, with their
uncertainty, with their fear. knowing that they
could not do what they went to do, which was
anoint the body, because the stone was in front
of the tomb. What tremendous grief they had.
They could not have imagined two days prior that
they would be in that position. Their life had
changed completely, utterly. They had darkness
of heart. But they went. They went. They had
expectations of Jesus all along. and even that
day, but they couldn't imagine what God had planned
for them. This is our first lesson today. No
matter what expectations, let's also add uncertainties,
seeming impossibilities of our faith, of our
life, of the events in our life, whatever darkness,
despair, loss of hope, loss of joy. Remember,
the women came in that state to anoint the Lord.
And they heard a word from the angel. Never stop
praying, brothers and sisters. Never stop asking
the Theotokos to stand with you, to uphold you,
to intercede for you. Always come to Christ.
Never think that God doesn't love you. Banish
the thought. Instead think, do I love Christ?
Do I love Christ? Because he is risen from the
dead, and so all our attitudes, our words, our
thoughts, our actions, our ideas can be shaped
by the fact that Christ is risen. As it says
at the end of the Gospel of Mark, the very, very
end, you didn't hear this today, this part, the
Lord... working and confirming the word through
the accompanying signs. St. Gregory Palamas says
that those signs for us are not great ones, not
spectacular epic ones, but they're good ones.
They're simple ones. They're our faith lived
out in action. The resurrection as the center
of our life. If someone asks us or someone asks
our acquaintance, someone close to us, what is
he or she like? Are they going to say, oh, he's
wrapped up in this. Oh, she's completely obsessed
with that. Oh, she doesn't really care. Oh, he
is into all kinds of things. Or are those closest
to us going to say, that's a lover of God. We
have to show our expressions for God. Like the
women, we may think we're bringing something
to do for Christ. They came to anoint. They couldn't
anoint. But it turns out that God does something
for them. The Lord ends up anointing us. That
is, he sends us grace to cleanse our hearts.
We pray to him, even in our distraction and our
troubles. And by coming close to Christ, even
a little bit, he reaches out to us. He draws
himself to us. He and grace is drawn down to
us. But beyond that, and those are important
points, and I could end there. And some of you
probably thinking, well, he should end there.
But here's why we keep the day. Here's why we
keep this date. And we not just dedicate today,
but this whole week is dedicated to the Myrbaran
women. The entire week, all the hymns, all week
long, are dedicated to them, Joseph and Nicodemus,
the eight women and the two men. We keep it because
everything changed on that Friday and Saturday
and Sunday. And it isn't just those witnesses
to the crucifixion, death, and burial who experienced
the spiritual earthquake and the rolling away
of the stone and the good news. Because right
then and there, everything about this world,
about creation, about history itself, was revealed
in the cross and the death and the resurrection
of Christ. So powerful. Listen to these words
of Fr. George Causio. As he recalls his time
in prison, in a Romanian prison. During Pasca
of 1981, I was in the prison of Ayud. Early that
morning, when the guards were changing shifts,
I broke every diabolical rule of the prison by
saying to the guard, one of the cruelest, Christ
is risen. Christos anviat. He hesitated for a
few moments in which, like lightning, I saw passing
on his face the innocence of his childhood. When
his mama or grandma led him by the hand to the
church and when he heard the angelic voice of
the priest saying, Christ is risen. After this
moment of hesitation, he softly answered me.
Adeverat. In truth, he is risen. It was for me
the most assuring proof that I was never misled
in this regard. The one who was torturing me
was confirming the resurrection of the Lord.
I cried in silence with tears of joy. Christ
has risen in your heart even before I or someone
else could tell you and you knew this fact and
confirmed it, Father George says. The same as
my guard, when you cried from the deepest, unarguable
conviction, in truth he is risen, Christos unviat,
adeverat unviat. It appeared that the cross,
and it would seem so to Father George in his
desperate place in 1981 in that horrible prison,
it would appear that the cross of Christ was
a human tragedy. Pilate, sure, take the body.
But no. as Christ silently moves towards the
cross and the end of his life, as that human
tragedy reaches its climax, his triumph, his
victory over evil, his glorification becomes
more and more obvious. Since sin and evil have
not disappeared, on the contrary, they still
constitute the basic law of this world and our
life. Bad things still will happen. Terrible
and hideous events will continue to happen. Yesterday
and today, but not forever. Listen to this hymn
from Holy Saturday. Hades is king over mortal
men. The grave is king over mortal men, but not
forever. Laid in the sepulcher, mighty Lord,
with thy life -giving hand thou hast burst asunder
the bars of death. To those from every age who
slept in the tombs, thou hast proclaimed true
deliverance, O Savior, who art become the firstborn
of the dead. Pascha was not only then, it is
now. The Mary and women and Joseph and Nicodemus
continue in us in our care for the church. Pascha
is the victory over everything that wars against
us. And it shows us that all authority as the
Lord says, has been given unto Christ in heaven
and on earth. Christ is risen.