I want to welcome all of you who have come out today for our Annual Pilgrimage. I want to thank Fr. Constantine Sitaras, the director of St. Basil Academy for once again opening this beautiful place for us and Fr. Peter Paproski for all his hard work and dedication putting together this Annual Pilgrimage. It is important for us to come and gather as one community; to pray together, to be with one another, to realize that we are not alone in our spiritual journey. It is important for us to know that there are others who share the same faith, who encounter the same day to day struggles, who strive for the same holiness, in and through our Orthodox Christian Faith. The times that we live in are not easy, and be assured, that they will become more difficult as times goes on. But also know that the Church has encountered these difficulties before. Not only has the Church survived through the difficult times, but She even thrived.

The times that we find ourselves in are as decadent, as faithless, as anti-Christian as they have ever been. Many scholars refer to our times as the post-Christian era. The battle between good and evil, between heaven and hell, is evident throughout the world. But it is nothing new and nothing that we should fear. In a first century writing called the Didache or the Teaching of the Apostles, it opens with this sentence: “There are two Ways: a Way of Life and a way of Death, and the difference between these two Ways is great.” The author of the Didache clearly lays out the differences between Life and Death. The only possible difference that we Americans may have is that the attacks against us are much more subtle, much more intangible. Allan Keyes, who ran for the Republican nomination for president back in 2000, gave a speech about abortion and how it has become the scourge of America. He said that people today are afraid to speak up against things that are morally repugnant because there exists today what he termed ‘the persecution of the heart.’ Some people may call it ‘political correctness’; changing ones actions or speech for fear of what others might think of you. Persecution of the heart that has infected American society. Political correctness is evil and insidious because it prevents us from saying or doing what we know is true and good as Christians. We do not have secret police storming our homes looking for icons, crosses, bibles or prayer books. And yet how many of us feel comfortable placing an icon at our desk at work, or wearing a cross around our necks for fear of what others might think? How many of us are secretly embarrassed to bless our food in public without looking around to see who might see us? How many of us allow our kids to attend baseball and soccer games on Sunday mornings instead of attending Church as a family? How many of us are afraid to talk about the bible or things spiritual because we do not want people to think we are a religious fanatics? We are under a full assault here in America, only it is not an overt persecution, but one of subtlety and perception. We are a vain society that is more concerned about what others might think of us, rather than what God thinks of us.

All persecution whether it be the overt persecution that Orthodox faced during the Soviet era, or the persecution of the heart that we encounter here in America, can only be met with, and conquered by the Cross. The Cross is a word that is often used by us Christians. Indeed, we make the sign of the Cross on our bodies, we have them hanging in our homes, we wear them upon our chests. But often times we think too little of it. Indeed, for some, the cross can be more of a fashion statement than a statement of faith. For us as Christians, the Cross is the door of our faith. Through the Cross, through this door, is where we see the expression of our Lord’s great love for us. And unless we willing open this door and step through it, we will not find our salvation. Great and Holy Friday is the door that leads to the empty tomb; if we too want to find our tombs empty and be with the risen Christ, then we too must open the door of the Cross and pass through it.

We must remember at every moment that Jesus Christ was not just a great teacher, He was not just a great prophet. He was, and is the Son of God. As God, there was no need for Him to suffer and die on the Cross. The Cross for Jesus was a voluntary act of self-denial in order to show us the Way to eternal life. His suffering was something that as God, He could have passed over. But He knew that the only way to restore us to a full relationship with Him was for Him to suffer and die on the Cross. His passion, His suffering for us was an act of total self-emptying love. He did something that, as God, He did not have to do or experience. Yet because He loved us so much, He did. And what is amazing, is that He did this for you and me even before we were born. He did this for you and me even while we were still sinners, even before we were sorry for what we had done. As St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

What God suffered for us was a tremendous act of love. Like any good parent or spouse, Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself in order that we might live. But by doing so, He showed by example, what is the Way of Life for us. If we want eternal Life, we must be like Him in taking up our own cross of suffering, we must endure our own personal passion. As long as our cross is connected with the Cross of Christ, we too shall find the Way to Life eternal with Jesus Christ. What He asks of us is nothing more than what He has already done for us. It is something that is both simple and yet very difficult.

You see, the path to salvation is not lined with gold and milk and honey. Jesus never promised a chicken in every pot, nor did He promise us that we could have our cake and eat it too. Life as true believing Christians in this world is going to be difficult. Christ tells us Himself that we are to deny ourselves take up our Cross and follow Him. Well, if we do that, if we take up our own cross and follow Him, we know that that Cross leads to Golgatha, the place where Jesus was crucified. We too must voluntarily suffer our own crosses, our own difficulties, our own experience of self-denial. We have to die to ourselves, to our wants, to our needs, to our desires, in order to find eternal life.

This message of self-denial is not a message that is very American. If anything, America promotes an environment for the individual, where I – the individual - comes first and everyone else second. It has even seeped into family life, where husbands divorce wives and wives divorce husbands because one or the other is just not happy or healthy. Did Christ die for His health? Did He suffer His crucifixion for His ‘personal’ happiness? NO! Christ in the garden of Gethsemanee even asked that this cup – His passion – would be taken away, it was so horrific. Our society seeks to indulge our senses, soften our bodies and emasculate the soul. This is why Christ and the Cross is so misunderstood in our society. Why would anyone allow themselves to go through such suffering – and not even for themselves? Where clergy men are portrayed as either gay, pedophiles or egomaniacs, the message of the Cross is no where to be seen. It is difficult to see the real message of the cross amidst all that noise and distraction. But the message must still be preached even if only one or two people are listening, it still must be preached even if there are only a handful of people from all the parishes here for this pilgrimage. We still must gather together and proclaim for all to hear – whether they are listening or not – that the Cross has power; it still has meaning, today, in this place, to save us.

Crosses come in all shapes and sizes. There is the Cross that this nation bears today in its fight against radical Islam. It is a cross with which we as Orthodox Christians are all too familiar. It is the path of martyrdom, it is a path strewn with much suffering and it is a path upon which we as a nation are now journeying. But there is also a cross for us as a diocese. Our forefathers encountered their cross back in 1938. They boldly and courageously picked up that Cross that was placed before them and brought us here today as a diocese intact and whole. The cross that we as a diocese encounter today is how we are to pass on our faith to the next generation. An indomitable task and work are before us. Do we have the zeal to pass on the Orthodox Faith vibrant and strong to the next generation? Are we ready for the challenges of the twenty-first century like our forefathers before us were back in the 1930’s and 1940’s? Or, are we going to allow the imperceptible persecution of the heart put out the glowing embers of our faith?

For me as the Dean of New England, and a parish priest in Danbury for over 16 years, I can assure you that we should have nothing but hope that our Faith will be more vibrant and stronger than ever before. However, it is not something that we can take for granted. We need to encourage one another. We need to work together and inspire each other to ever greater acts of holiness, faith and charity. We cannot allow the zeal of our Faith slowly fade away. If Christ’s death on the Cross freed us from death and opened to us the doors of eternal life, what is there that we cannot accomplish for the glory of God? The only things that can stop us is our own fear; especially fear of what others might think. We must remind ourselves that we will be judged not by what others think of us, but by Christ who sees our hearts and know our most intimate thoughts. As a diocese, as parishes, and individual parishioners, the Cross frees us from all concerns. It gives us the freedom to live and act as God wants us to live, not as what others might think of us, but as God who sees us and sees in to the very depths of our hearts. For we will not be judged so much by the bad that we have done, but by the good that we have failed to do. Let us look at our lives; let us scrutinize our day to day encounters and see how much good we can and should do.

Look at the Cross, and see the great Good that Christ accomplished. He was not lazy, He was not selfish, He was not too busy to do the good. Rather, He voluntarily climbed up on the Cross and died and opened that door to eternal life. He not only told us what we need to do, but He, Himself, led the way by His own example. In a real sense, as St. Paul says, Jesus Christ is a pioneer, He blazed the path to heaven for us. And the door that opens onto the path that leads to heaven is the Cross. Knowing that just as He arose from the dead and ascended into heaven, so we, who deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Him, will also rise from the dead and ascend into heaven with Him. Let us in our own lives, not be afraid to open that door of the Cross, for that door leads to life itself.

Very Rev. Fr. Luke Mihaly