Who Shall Separate Us from the Love of Christ? - Sermon for the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers (2026)

What do we do when all seems lost? Where do we turn when there’s no one to turn to? All of the hopes and dreams, all the desires and aspirations of the disciples lay lifeless in a stone cold tomb. We trusted that it had been [Jesus] which should have redeemed Israel (Lk. 24:21). Though the Lord had foretold to them numerous times that He would be betrayed, scourged, mocked, and crucified, the calamity still over took them by surprise. Though He had spoken clearly beforehand of His Resurrection on the third day, the interval between Holy Friday and Easter Sunday was an abyss of sorrow and hopelessness, the longest sabbath since the foundation of the world. For the disciples still savored not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men (Mt. 16:23).

Search your hearts, beloved brethren, and know that if you find there anything besides God that you simply cannot live without, then you too still savor the things that be of men. Any feeling, any desire, any hope, any aspiration, any activity, any goal, any person, any relationship, any status, any rank, any object, any possession, any thought, any notion, any being, any creation whatsoever—if our heart depends on anything less than God, we savor not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. And when the just decree of God strips our heart of its creaturely supports, we too say like Peter, “Far be it from me, Lord,” (Mt. 16:22).

Does He not promise us that to be His disciple we must hate even our own life (Lk. 14:26)? Does He not preface the call to follow Him with the command to deny ourselves and take up our cross (Mt. 16:24)? How it then that when the fateful hour comes for us to mount our own personal Golgotha, and die to all that is earthly within ourselves, we meet the calamity as though some strange thing were happening to us, and not as something that proceeds naturally from our profession of Christ? Are we above our Lord? Is the servant greater than his master? But it is enough for the servant that he should be as his master (Mt. 10:24-25). If the Sinless One did not depart this earth without trial and torment, much less should we sinners expect to pass our life in this world without our share of difficulties and temptations, even great ones, tribulations that seem impossible for us to bear. For until our heart rests confidently in the Lord, it will inevitably find every substitute for Him—every idol in which our heart hopes and adulterously seeks its fulfillment—put to shame and sentenced to death, like the two thieves crucified with the Lord. When Providence so deprives the soul of its habitual supports in the flesh, then heart and mind are often plunged into an abyss of despair from which there seems no relief—a forced exile, a sabbath in the flesh, a cessation of all habitual thoughts and feelings rooted in the flesh.

So I ask again—what do we do when all seems lost, when all lesser loves have reached their inevitable and inexorable end? We rest on the sabbath day according to the commandment (Lk. 23:56). That is, when the loving Providence of God puts an end to some love in us that is not worthy of Him, we heed the command of God and do not resist, but keep the sabbath rest. Even good things and blessings from God can be stripped of us, just as the Lord commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac in sacrifice. For every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from [Him], the Father of lights (James 1:17), and so He is never unjust when He requires anything of us, no matter how dear to our heart, no matter how deeply cherished. For the Lord gives and the Lord takes away: blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21). For He would not have the hearts of His children to be succored by anything less than Himself, and His pre-eternal Word, and His holy Spirit. The time-bound mind of man, with his puny heart of clay, often protests against the infinite love of God. We would have a more manageable lover, one less jealous, or else we would refashion Him in our own image and make Him as small as ourselves, less demanding, harmless, irrelevant. But before the terrible, immense, severe, uncompromising, all-devouring Love of the Lord, the heart and mind of man is better served by keeping a sabbath rest of silence. Whenever God deigns to deprive us of any one of the things of this life, we should not protest, and fight and flail about, striving with all of our might and all of our feeble self-justification to demand it back from Him. But let the spirit keep a spiritual sabbath by clinging to the sacred words of our holy Fathers, “Glory to God for all things.”

This and other pious thought and feelings are the spiced and ointments we prepare on the sabbath, to bring to the tomb of the soul which is weighted down by despair and all the woes of the present life. And the most fragrant oil we can bring is the name of Jesus, as it says in the Song of Songs, Thy name is oil poured out (Song 1:3). No matter how great the trial or difficulty we face in life, the name of Jesus is as costly perfume that gives a sweet savor to any sorrow. When we find ourselves perplexed by trials beyond human strength, and ask like the Myrrhbearers, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? (Mark 16:3), then let us go forth in faith as they did, bearing their spices—that is the precious name of Jesus, and the cries of a broken and humbled heart—and we will find as they did that the stone is rolled away from the tomb. For there is no sorrow so great that the Lord cannot sustain our heart through it, and there is no earthly trial so heavy that our Lord is incapable of lifting it off of our hearts to reveal the empty tomb, that is, a heart free of earthly preoccupations and sensual pleasures.

But we should know that the sight of the empty tomb is not yet the vision of the risen Lord. The death of the old man and the purification of the heart is not yet the deification of our human nature. For this, we must still wait outside the empty tomb, like Mary Magdalene, weeping and disconsolate that despite all of our sufferings and the promise of resurrection, we still have not seen and handled the risen Christ. In reward for such love, Jesus call Mary by name and show Himself to her. But, in the words of John Damascene, “as a weak woman, she still thought earthly thoughts,” (Doxasticon for Matins Gospel VIII, Sunday Octoechos). In her joy she supposed that Christ had risen again to His former state. We do the same when we keep Pascha in a carnal manner, rejoicing more in beautiful services, joyful chanting, the breaking of the fast, the blossoming of spring—and not in the true meaning of the Feast, the Passing over of our nature from death to eternal life. Christ did not die and rise again in order to resolve all the conflicts of earthly life, or to satisfy all of our fleshly desires, or to help us realize all our earthly ambitions. He did it all to inaugurate an entirely new mode of human existence. The God-man Christ becomes the first to show us humanity deified. And so He fittingly tempers Mary’s enthusiasm, telling her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God (Jn. 20:17). “Though you see Me risen from the dead, Mary, think not that I intend to remain here on the earth. So let your thoughts and desires not remain bound to the earth, but ascend with Me into heaven, into the presence of My Father and your Father, into the presence of eternal majesty and glory.”

Look, brethren, on the risen Christ when your heart are in sorrow, and see the end and justification of all your suffering. For this earthly life is fleeting, this corruptible flesh passes away and all of the sensations and activities of the flesh have no place in God’s kingdom; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50). All the sufferings of this mortal life, which is really a protracted death, are simply a preparation for that eternal bliss. For, like the Apostle Paul, we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live for themselves, but for him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:14-17).

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (Jn. 1:13). And how does this new creature live? Not for himself, but for his Master and Benefactor who died for him and rose again. Now that the season of Pascha is here, let us not like Mary think earthly thoughts, and return to our selfish, carnal way of life that we have striven so diligently to uproot during Lent. And should we find ourselves in this time, or at any other season, beset by temptation, compassed by sorrows, bereft of anyone or anything our heart has ever held dear, then let us cling ever more fervently to Him, then let us turn ever more ardently to Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Let our hearts no more be sustained by the things of this world and the vain joys of this life. But, filled with the power of an imperishable life, and of a love stronger than death, let our hearts cry out triumphantly, like a clarion call resounding through all eternity: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35, 37-39).

May His love conquer every lesser love of our hearts, so that through Him we might conquer death. To Him be all glory, honour, dominion, and worship, now and unto endless ages. Amen.