Benefits to Society from Cross-bearing Christians (Dr. Haralambis Bousias)

The faithful who cheerfully shoulder their Cross are the basis of a well-regulated state, one which builds its progress on Christian morality, selfless love, active hope, harmony and mutual understanding. Cross-bearing Christians are the bulwark against the moral and economic crisis in our society. The moral decline of people who don’t shoulder their cross gladly and patiently has brought about today’s economic crisis, which, nevertheless, is ‘the disciplinarian to bring us to Christ’ (Gal. 3, 24), because it brings us close to Him, because it forces us to rein in our excessive demands and to increase our trust in Him. The economic crisis teaches us to abandon extroversion and to concentrate on full knowledge of our self, this unknown quantity which lends us the breath to enjoy life, lends us a heart, blood, eyes and all the senses, only for us to live materially, not spiritually, because we’ve reduced God to the margins. The economic crisis is making us live life in its true dimensions. By returning us to our moral roots, we’re able to reorganize our life on the model of the Gospel of love and gain the clemency of our most merciful God Who seeks an opportunity to save us, since ‘mercy triumphs over judgment’ (Jas. 2, 13) and Who wishes ‘all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2, 4). Cross-bearing Christians are the boast of society and show the power of the Cross, since the face of society can be altered if it’s based on fellow-feeling, on active love such as that which filled Christ on the Cross. Thus, Cross-bearing Christians love God and other people, they inspire those around them with the moral behaviour, based on the Cross and the Resurrection, they create an earthly paradise within their environment, they promote the Orthodox faith with boldness and struggle ‘against the flow’ of the well-orchestrated polemics aimed at the destruction of Orthodoxy and national values.

Let us therefore, with the Cross in our hands, make our way along the path of life, in the full knowledge that, however, tortuous and filled with thorns that path may be, it is still wonderful, because, in all our tumbles Christ is there to help, to lead us from sorrow to joy, from tribulations to repose, from the dread Golgotha to the lambent Resurrection, and to the never-ending bliss which, God willing, we shall all enjoy.