Vigils Reading test3

A reading from a commentary on an Easter hymn of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, by St. Dorotheus of Gaza. ¹

This is the Day of Resurrection.

Let us offer God its first-fruits — which is ourselves.

Let us, as his most precious children, return to the likeness [of God],

What is truly his likeness in us.

Let us reverence our worth.

Let us honor our Exemplar.

Let us come to understand the power of the ‘mystery’ wherein Christ died.

The Israelites of old, coming together for their festivals, according to the Law offered God gifts such as incense, burnt offerings, first-fruits, and the like. St. Gregory invites us too to celebrate this feast in God’s honor as they did, and exhorts us to do so by saying, “This is the Day of Resurrection”, a day to replace all their holy feasts, a day of divine assembly, the day of Christ’s Passover. What is this Passover of Christ? The Israelites kept the Passover when they came out of Egypt. Easter, the Passover which we are now keeping and which the Saint commends to our celebration, is enacted in the soul, which comes out of the spiritual Egypt, that is, from sin. When the soul passes over from sin to virtue, then it celebrates the Passover of the Lord, As Evagrius says: “The Passover of the Lord is the passage away from evil.”

Today… is therefore the ‘Passover’ of Christ, a day of brilliant festival, the day of Resurrection, the day of his nailing sin to the Cross, of his dying and being raised to life—all for our sakes. Let us offer ourselves as sacrificial gifts and holocausts to the Lord, who has no desire for senseless animals. “You did not desire irrational sacrifices and offerings, and are not pleased with burnt offerings of sheep and cattle” (Ps 40.6, Heb 10.5-6). …What sort of gift ought we offer to Christ in order to please him on the day of his Resurrection, if he does not desire the sacrifice of senseless animals?

The Saint in his teaching tells us the answer, for after saying “This is the Day of Resurrection”, he adds, “Let us offer up its first-fruits, which is ourselves.” The Apostle [Paul] too instructs us: “Offer up your own bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, the worship that your reason dictates” (Rom 12.1).

How then ought we to make an offering of our bodies as a living sacrifice to God? “By no longer following our physical desires and our own ideas,” but “walking in the spirit and not fulfilling the desires of the flesh”(Gal 5.16). “For this is to mortify our earthly members” (Col 3.5). This is what is meant by a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God.

But why a living sacrifice? Because an animal destined for sacrifice, by the very fact that it becomes a sacrificial victim, dies. But the saints who offer themselves to God, offer themselves alive, every day—as David says, “For your sake we are put to death all the day long, we are considered as sheep for the slaughter” (Ps 44.22). …By not loving the world or what is in the world [but by] taking up the Cross and following Christ and crucifying the world to themselves and themselves to the world… this is how the saints put themselves to death.

But how did they offer themselves up? By not living for themselves, but reducing themselves to servitude to God’s commandments and putting away their own will for the sake of the command and love of God and their neighbor.. As St. Peter says, “Behold, we have given up everything and followed you” (Mt 19.27). …This is how the saints offered themselves up, putting themselves to death… in regard to all their passionate desires and doing their own will and living solely for Christ and his commandments.

So then for us! Let us offer ourselves as St. Gregory teaches us. For he wants us to be “God’s most precious children.”

¹ Dorotheus of Gaza, “Commentary on an Easter Hymn of St. Gregory Nazianzen,,” Discourses and Sayings (Cistercian Studies Series 33), Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977, pp. 220 ff.