The Shepherd, September 2006
“So that you may judge how you shall be rewarded,” the other answered, “I shall reveal to you what those crosses were which you saw.” “The golden cross, which you looked at first, that is a kingly cross. You yourself think that it is fine and easy to be a king. But what you do not consider is that the kingly dominion is not an effortless dominion, that the cross of kings is the very heaviest cross. And the silver cross is the cross of all those who are invested with authority; this is the cross of the pastors of God’s Church, and the cross of the closest servants of the king. They all have many cares and sorrows too. The copper cross - this cross is that of all those to whom God has granted riches. Now, you envy them and you think that people such as they are happy. But life is more onerous for the rich than for you. After your labours, you can peacefully fall asleep; no one touches your poor hut and your small goods, but the rich man always, day and night, fears that someone will cheat him, that they will steal from him, that they will set fire to his home. And besides this, for his riches the rich man will have to give an answer to God: how did he use his wealth? And if misfortune befalls him, and the rich man becomes impoverished, then what sorrows crush him…. And here is the iron cross - this is the soldiers’ cross. Question them who are at war, and they will tell you how often they have to spend the night on the bare, damp earth, how they bear hunger and cold…. The stone cross, this is the cross of trades people. Their life seems pleasing to you, because they do not have to work like you. But, all the same, doesn’t it happen that the merchant goes to sea, spends all his capital on merchandise, and then all that merchandise perishes in a shipwreck, and the unfortunate merchant returns to his home as a pauper. And here is the wooden cross, which you carried so easily up the mountain; this is your cross. You were grieving that your life seemed difficult, and now you can see that it is much easier than life for other people. The Lord, Who beholds the heart, knew that in any other calling or situation you would have lost your soul, and so He gave you the most humble cross, the very lightest one, the wooden cross…. So come on and do not murmur against the Lord God because of your wretched lot. The Lord gives each a cross according to his strength, as much as he can bear.”
At the last words of the Elder, the countryman awoke, he thanked God for the instructive dream, and from that time on never more did he murmur against God.
Translated from the 1984 Trinity Calendar, Jordanville, NY
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FROM THE SACRED CANONS
IF ANYONE should find fault with the synaxes, or gatherings, in honour of the martyrs, or with Liturgies conducted thereat, and the commemoration of them, owing to his being imbued with a proud disposition and overcome with abhorrence, let him be anathema. Canon XX of the Council of Gangra, 340 A.D.
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