Father Gavril Galev: Let us love one another and open our hearts to Christ
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We read this evening the twelve agonizing Gospel readings which tell of the sufferings of Christ… and what can one say? Or rather we should be silent. Let us be silent and ashamed of ourselves, because we have no excuse for what we have done to Christ. Besides, do not think that if we were in Jerusalem at that time we would have chosen to be like the Mother of God or the beloved disciple of Christ, St. John the Theologian, and that we would have followed Christ, and would have been under His cross. No. We would have been either like the other apostles and run away or like Peter and renounce Christ, perhaps even worst , we would have been like the Jews who shouted, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”
Our way of life is the testimony that this is true. Our deeds, our words, and our thoughts. They testify that we still sin and thus in fact renounce Christ, we crucify Him and inflict wounds on Him.
But let us repent. Let us repent like Saint Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord gave a sign with the rooster to remind him of his sin. When Peter heard the rooster, he truly repented and wept bitterly. And always during his life, whenever he would have heard a rooster, he would have cried bitterly and kept repenting.
But, are we like him, so that we may recognize the signs that God sends us for our repentance, and do we repent? Most often not. On the contrary, we become even more aggravated and sinful.
That is why we need to have repentance and humility. Let us humble ourselves, let us repent, and let us have a love for each other.
Let us strive to be like Saint John the Theologian, the teacher of love, who wrote the most sublime Gospel and in which he, or more precisely Christ through him, teaches us about love. Let us love one another and let us lay down our souls for one another, as Christ did for us. Because, if we do not have humility, if we do not have repentance, and if we do not have love, we have nothing and we are nothing.
But let us humble ourselves and repent. Let us love one another and open our hearts to Christ. At least in these few days so that we may purify our hearts and feel the grace of the resurrection that Christ gives us. Let us enlighten the mind and see the light of Christ and know Him as the true God and the true Man and the criterion by which we should live.
Fr. Gavril Galev
Abbot of the monastery “St. Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
21 / 04 / 2022
