Solemn and notable days united with the glorious Resurrection¹

It is assumed that every day in our lives is holy to the Lord. Nevertheless, there are days of greater holiness. And although the days of fasting in general are holy days, there is no doubt that the Great Fast is holier than all other fasts. And if the Great Fast is the holiest of fasts, then Holy Week is the holiest of the days of the Great Fast. And there is no doubt that Great Friday is the holiest day in all of Holy Week, and thus the holiest day of the year, and the deepest, most spiritual, and most impactful on the souls of people.
On Great Friday, we see the Lord Christ at the peak of His love and at the peak of His offering…
Love reaches the depth of its depths, or rises to its summits… when it ascends upon the Cross. Love is tested by pain. We test it by tribulation, and we test it by giving and sacrifice. One who cannot sacrifice is a person who does not love, or a person whose love is incomplete, or who prefers himself over others… But if he loves, then he sacrifices…
And the more his love increases, the more his sacrifice increases, until he sacrifices everything…
If he reaches the perfection of love, and the perfection of sacrifice, he sacrifices himself… He ascends upon the Cross and offers Himself for those whom He loves.
And this is the lesson we took on Great Friday. “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). God showed His love for the world in many kinds and ways: He gave the world the grace of existence, and He gave it knowledge, and all kinds of good things. He even gave it spiritual gifts. And He took care of this world with His care, His providence, and His love.
But His love for us appeared in its highest forms when He offered Himself for us, that eternal life might be. And the Lord Christ came into the world to offer… to offer Himself as a ransom for us. And concerning this He said to His disciples:
“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).
And the first thing the Lord sacrificed was that He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant (Phil 2:7). He sacrificed His glory, His heaven, and His greatness when He became incarnate for our sake, and took the form of a servant, and was found in appearance as a man… Then He sacrificed His comfort also. He went around the earth doing good, having nowhere to lay His head (Mt 8:20). And finally He offered His life for us on the Cross… And through this sacrifice, He expressed His infinite love for us.
Thus the image of Jesus Christ crucified became the most beautiful of images before all humanity. It is the image of sacrificial love in the depths of its sacrifice…
The image of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, perhaps you do not find it everywhere; the image of Christ entering as a King into Jerusalem also is not everywhere… But everywhere you find the image of Christ crucified… for it is the most precious image, the deepest in effect upon the soul. Before it Mahatma Gandhi stood and wept. It is the image of perfect love and giving. For “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). And for this Saint Paul the Apostle said:
“But God forbid that I should boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14).
And whenever we look at the image of the Cross, we remember the wondrous divine love… We remember our God, mighty and unlimited in His power and greatness, having sacrificed His heaven and emptied Himself, and taken the form of a servant, and sacrificed His life and His blood out of love for man who was under the sentence of death…
The most beautiful phrase to be written on the image of the crucified Christ is the phrase “He loved until He gave Himself.”
They wrote a sign upon the image of the Lord Christ reading “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews — INRI.” But the most beautiful sign we write on His Cross is “Love and Sacrifice.” For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son… And the lesson we take from the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ is that we love and we sacrifice… We do not love ourselves, but we love people, and we love God… We do not love our comfort, but we love the comfort of others, regardless of the cost to our comfort.
If you do not love and do not sacrifice, then you have not benefited from the Cross of Christ in lessons, nor benefited from His Cross as an example for your life…
The Cross of the Lord Christ teaches us to love unto death… In our love for God we do this. And in our love for people we do this: “Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18).
And what is this practical expression of love?
It is giving and sacrifice unto death.
We love the love that ascends upon the Cross, the love that reaches death for the sake of the one whom it loves, or at least is inwardly ready to reach death and to sacrifice itself.
Look in repentance and in resisting sin, how the Apostle reproaches the Hebrews saying: “You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4).
Do you want to love God? Then you must love Him unto blood…
Resist sin unto blood. Ascend upon the Cross. Crucify yourself: “Crucify the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Crucify the world inside your heart, that it may not move within you. And crucify your self, that this self may not move seeking to appear. Here love reaches its goal. And here you practically boast in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying of it: “By whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). From the Cross of the Lord Christ we learn to love and to sacrifice. And we cannot love and sacrifice unless we deny ourselves.
The Lord Christ, before He offered Himself, first emptied Himself and took the form of a servant…
Thus if you love and wish to sacrifice, you must first empty yourself of all your self-love and your sense of self… meaning, to humble yourself and take the form of a servant; then you can sacrifice…
And be assured that sacrifice is the true expression of love:
Our father Abraham, father of the fathers, showed his love for God through sacrifice. He began first by leaving for God his clan, his country, and his father’s house, wandering after God as a stranger living in a tent. Yet Abraham’s love for God did not appear at its summit until he placed his only son on the altar, with the wood, holding the fire and the knife, to offer him as a burnt offering to God…
There are obstacles that may try to prevent a person from sacrifice:
For example: love of comfort, love of honor, and love of self… But true love knows no comfort or honor for itself except in fulfilling its love. Thus it sacrifices everything for the sake of the one it loves. Jacob the Patriarch, when he loved Rachel, sacrificed much for her… He labored twenty years for her, scorched by the sun by day and frozen by night… And these years were in his eyes like a few days because of his love for her (Gen 31:40; Gen 29:20). Truly love can work wonders. Love bears all things and sacrifices all things.
If you cannot sacrifice, then you therefore love yourself and do not love others…
And if honor prevents you from sacrifice, then you love honor more. Likewise if love of life or love of freedom prevents you…
When Daniel loved the Lord, he found no obstacle in being thrown into the den of hungry lions, and fear did not prevent him, nor did he consider his life more precious than love.
Love in Daniel’s heart was stronger than fear and more precious than life.
And the three youths likewise, in their love for God, found no obstacle in being cast into the fiery furnace. They disregarded fire and death and life for the sake of God. And Saint Paul the Apostle said, expressing his love for Christ: “I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ,” and “What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:6–8).
Here we find sacrifice with full willingness, without regret for anything…
But with full detachment from what is sacrificed, as though it were rubbish and loss…
The Cross of Christ teaches us the sacrifice of the self in love… But the sacrifice of the self may require other trainings beforehand. A spiritual person may train first to sacrifice what is outside himself, such as his money and his offerings, before he sacrifices himself.
Truly, one who cannot sacrifice what is outside himself—how then can he sacrifice himself? If you cannot give your money to the Lord, or your tithes and firstfruits, how can you give Him your life and your years? How can you give Him your blood? How…?! And if you cannot give the Lord a single day in the week, how can you give Him your whole life?!
In the era of martyrdom, in order to train her children to love death and meet it, the Church trained them first in detachment from material things, abandoning possessions, leaving property and belongings, leaving family and home, so that “those who use this world may be as though not using it, and those who buy as though not possessing, and those who have wives as though they had none” (1 Cor 7:29–31), that all may trust that “the form of this world is passing away.” And the Church places in their ears in every Liturgy the saying of the Apostle: “Do not love the world or the things in the world… For the world is passing away, and its lust” (1 Jn 2:15, 17). One who renounces the world and what is in it is able to sacrifice his life for God. One who says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” longing to reign with Christ in eternity, this one can sacrifice himself for his brothers and for the Lord.
But one who cannot sacrifice the little—how can he sacrifice the much?! And how can he sacrifice the whole?!
How can he imitate the Lord Christ who sacrificed the whole… who sacrificed glory and comfort, and lived without title or official position, without money and without salary… then sacrificed His blood for the life of the whole world, that we might live by His death and live by His love for us…
The Lord Christ was continually giving before giving Himself on the Cross.
His love moved among the people giving them compassion and mercy. It gave some healing, some consolation, and some food. It proclaimed liberty to the captives and release to the bound, and worked always for the comfort of all. Yet all this was not enough…
Love awaited to give itself, to ascend the Cross, and to sprinkle its blood upon humanity from the high peak of redemption.
And the Lord Christ walked toward Golgotha to offer Himself a sacrifice of love. He embodied love made flesh, and love sacrificing.
Satan marveled at this love and raged against it with all his power. He gathered all his forces to prevent the love of the Lord from reaching its summit on the Cross, with every trick and every violence…
And many waters surrounded this love that was burning like fire—
Many waters… such as mockery, insult, derision, and provocation through that cunning and instigating phrase: “If You are the Son of God, come down from the Cross,” or in the same meaning: “He saved others; Himself He cannot save.”
But the love of our Lord for us was stronger than all attempts at provocation.
And the Lord triumphed in the battle. He stood firm before all this challenge and mockery, to save us from the sentence of death, placing before Him the goal for which He came: to die for us that we may live through His death.
Thus His love continued to ascend to its summits—to the Cross, and to pain and torment—trampling in its path every obstacle until it reached its highest peak, which is redemption, and was crowned with an indescribable wondrous glory…
And the Cross became a symbol of love, and therefore of redemption and giving.
On the Cross the Lord Christ gave the whole world the document of freedom and offered it complete redemption and atonement for its sins…
On the Cross He gave the right-hand thief the promise that he would be with Him in Paradise, and He gave His crucifiers—if they repented— forgiveness and relinquishment of His right concerning their injustice. And on the Cross He gave John the Beloved a spiritual mother who is the Virgin Mary, and He gave the Virgin Mary a son who is John…
And despite the pains of the Lord on the Cross, His thoughts were not centered on His pains and His self, but on the salvation of people and on offering the price of divine justice to the Father.
And our eyes became fixed upon this Cross and its giving:
The Cross that gives forgiveness and salvation and life and certain hope in the joyous eternity…
The Cross that gives an ideal image of giving and sacrifice and self-denial and self-emptying… without limits… The Cross that gave us an image of One who gives while in the depth of physical pain, yet in the depth of spiritual love… and gives until the last drop shed from His body, at the time when the world was offering no giving at all… except precious tears poured by loving hearts, which had their value before the Lord… May the Lord grant us the blessing of His Cross, and grant us to train in love and sacrifice, and to love giving more than receiving. And may He grant us to grow in this giving and continue to grow until we offer our souls for His sake. To Him be the power and the glory and the blessing and the might forever. Amen.

1. Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani newspaper on 27–4–1997.

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