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JUNE 24<br />
DESTROYING DEATH BY DEATH<br />
“Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship, the holy Lord<br />
Jesus, the only Sinless One! We venerate Your Cross, O Christ, and Your Holy<br />
Resurrection we praise and glorify; for You are our God, and we know no<br />
other than You; we call on Your name. Come, all you faithful, let us venerate<br />
Christ’s Holy Resurrection! For, behold, through the Cross joy has come<br />
into all the world. Let us ever bless the Lord, praising His Resurrection.<br />
By enduring the Cross for us, He destroyed death by death!” (Byzantine<br />
Paschal Hymn, sung weekly at Sunday matins)<br />
In our church-services we often hear this phrase, that Christ “trampled”<br />
or destroyed “death by death.” What does this mean? It means that He<br />
took the most unpleasant, the most difficult part of our existence, which<br />
is death, and walked right through it. He didn’t avoid it. Just like He didn’t<br />
avoid the other parts of being human, like feeling hunger, enduring<br />
poverty, grief, fatigue, and so on. Death is “destroyed” by Him walking<br />
through it, because it can’t “hold” Him, Who is not only human, but also<br />
divine. And He takes away the “sting” of death for all of us, who share<br />
in His victory, through communion with Him. The difficult parts of our<br />
existence, including death, are now life-giving, in Him. The previouslydark<br />
and difficult now leads to growth and new life. This is not a merely<br />
abstract dogmatic concept; it is something I see at work every day, when<br />
I walk through difficulties in Him and with Him, rather than avoiding<br />
them.<br />
So my Lord shows me the path of the cross, which leads to victory, in<br />
Him. It is not through avoidance or escape from my human existence,<br />
which includes hardship, difficulty, and ultimately death. The light-filled<br />
path of the cross is about walking through it all; walking through life on<br />
life’s terms, in Christ and with Christ. He brings new light to the whole<br />
picture of our human journey, on which we no longer walk in darkness.<br />
“Through the Cross joy has come into all the world. Let us ever bless the<br />
Lord, praising His Resurrection.” Amen!<br />
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