Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Homily; Theophan the Recluse; bearing the cross; Orthodox ascetical homilies; struggle against the passions; surrender to the will of God; Russian Orthodox spirituality; Christian suffering and salvation; Religion & Spirituality; Christianity / Orthodox; Christianity / Christian Living / Spiritual Growth
Description: Why would the Apostle Paul boast in nothing but the cross? In three homilies Saint Theophan the Recluse turns that hard saying into a rule of life, mapping the three crosses every Christian bears: the outward one of affliction and loss, the inward war against the passions, and the last and highest — the surrender of one's whole will to God. Bear them rightly, he shows, and each becomes a channel of the saving power that flowed from Golgotha.

Three Homilies on the Bearing of the Cross

Theophan the Recluse

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Творения иже во святых отца нашего Феофана Затворника. — М.: Изд. Афонского Русского Пантелеимонова монастыря (дореволюционное издание, переизд.).

Cover: Cross in the Forest (Kreuz im Wald, c. 1812) by Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:o_nesenii_kresta:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Saint Theophan the Recluse was born Georgy Vasilievich Govorov in 1815, in the village of Chernavsk in the Oryol region of central Russia, the son of a parish priest. He was formed from childhood inside the Church he would later serve, moving up through the ladder of clerical schooling that produced most of nineteenth-century Russia’s churchmen: the district college at Livny, the seminary at Oryol, and finally the Kiev Theological Academy, one of the great centers of Russian religious learning, from which he graduated in 1837. During his years in Kiev he was drawn toward monastic life, and in 1841 he was tonsured a monk and given the name Theophan, after an earlier confessor of the faith.

The decades that followed were unusually varied for a man later remembered chiefly for his silence. He taught and administered in a succession of schools and academies—Kiev, Novgorod, and Saint Petersburg—lecturing in moral and pastoral theology. He served with the Russian ecclesiastical mission in Jerusalem and, afterward, at the embassy church in Constantinople, where he came into direct contact with the living monastic tradition of the Christian East and with the Greek texts of the Fathers. He rose to be rector of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy. Then, in 1859, he was consecrated a bishop and given charge of the diocese of Tambov, and a few years later that of Vladimir. As a bishop he was a tireless preacher; he regarded preaching as a bishop’s first and most sacred duty and accompanied nearly every service with a sermon, most of them delivered without a manuscript.

This active public life was not, in his own mind, the goal. In 1866, at his own request, he was released from the administration of his diocese and withdrew to the Vysha Hermitage, a quiet monastery in the Tambov region. After a few years there he took the further step that gave him his name in history: he entered full reclusion, closing himself off from ordinary company and devoting his days to prayer, study, and writing. For roughly the last two decades of his life, until his death in 1894, he lived apart—yet his pen reached the whole of Russia. From his cell came a stream of books, articles, and letters of spiritual counsel that made him one of the most widely read spiritual guides of his century: works such as The Path to Salvation and The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It, a great correspondence of pastoral letters, and his monumental rendering of the Philokalia — the anthology of ascetical and mystical Fathers—from Church Slavonic into accessible Russian. In 1988, in the year the Russian Church marked the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Rus’, he was formally numbered among the saints. He is commemorated as Theophan the Recluse of Vysha.

The Work: Occasion and Purpose

On the Bearing of the Cross belongs to the preaching side of Theophan’s ministry rather than to the treatises of his reclusion. It is a set of three homilies—the Russian title names them simply “three words”—spoken to an ordinary congregation and, like his other sermons, later gathered and printed. They circulated in several editions, including one issued by the press of the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos, and have long been read as a small, self-contained whole. The pre-revolutionary Athonite edition, reprinted in modern Russian, is the text underlying the present translation.

The occasion is pastoral in the plainest sense. Theophan addresses the mixed body of the faithful—people with families, illnesses, losses, disappointments in work and in one another—rather than monks or theologians. This suits everything we know of him as a preacher. He held that expounding the word of God was a bishop’s first and most direct duty, wrote on how a sermon ought to be composed, and delivered most of his own without a manuscript, so that they keep the directness and the forward motion of live speech. These three read exactly so: they are spoken to be understood at once and acted on, not studied. His purpose is to take a phrase every Christian has heard, the call to take up one’s cross, and turn it from a pious commonplace into something a person can actually do on a given Tuesday. He wants his hearers to recognize the cross they are already carrying, to understand why it has been given, and to learn the difference between carrying it in a way that saves and carrying it in a way that merely crushes. The three homilies are best read as one continuous course of instruction, each opening by recalling where the last left off, so that the whole moves in a single unbroken line from the most familiar suffering to the most exalted.

Argument and Structure

The homilies take their keynote from the Apostle Paul’s astonishing boast rather than from the Gospel command: “may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Theophan begins from the difficulty this creates. The cross means sorrow, confinement, and disgrace—how can any sane person glory in it? His answer, stated at the outset and returned to at the end, is the governing idea of the whole work. Christ’s own cross accomplished salvation, but each person shares in its power only through a cross of his own. Our small cross, when it is joined to Christ’s, becomes a channel through which the grace won on Golgotha flows into us. The cross unjoined to Christ’s simply weighs on us and does nothing. This is why, Theophan says, no one is ever saved who is not in some sense a cross-bearer, and why everyone finds himself hemmed in on all sides by crosses: they are placed close at hand so that the saving power of Christ’s cross is never far to seek.

From this principle he sorts the whole weight of a Christian life into three kinds of cross, and devotes one homily to each.

The first homily treats the outward crosses—the “bitter lot of earthly life.” These are the sorrows that spare no one: illness, poverty, bereavement, failure, insult, slander, family trouble, the ordinary friction of circumstance. No rank or fortune escapes them, Theophan insists; they grew up with human life the moment Paradise was shut. His counsel is a change of interpretation rather than stoic endurance. Affliction is meant to remind us that we are exiles rather than settled householders, that we live under a discipline and should seek to return home. Complaint that one’s own burden is heavier than a neighbor’s dissolves once a whole lifetime, rather than a single hour, is taken into view; no one is spared, and every dark sky clears in its season. Above all, the sufferer is to trust that nothing reaches him except from the hand of a Father who knows exactly what to send and when, and who sends it for good—to burn away sin, to redirect a wandering life, to shield from a greater harm, or to give an occasion for faithfulness. The threads that bind this cross to Christ’s, Theophan says, are gratitude, humility, and repentance; without them the same suffering only embitters, and the sufferer remains a cross-bearer who is not saved.

The second homily turns inward, to the crosses that arise in the struggle against the passions. Here Theophan draws on Paul’s other word, that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” To crucify a passion is to fight it, weaken it, and at last tear it out by the root—and because the passions have grown into the soul like a disease sending its roots through every faculty, the extraction genuinely hurts. He reaches for the surgeon’s image: the tumor that must be cut and cauterized if the patient is to live. Either way there is pain; the only question is whether it is the pain that heals or the pain that kills. Everyone is tormented by passions in any case—anger that burns, envy that withers, pride that gnaws—so the wise course is to turn the knife around and wound the passion instead of oneself. The great obstacle Theophan names with precision: self-pity, the first offspring of self-love, which flatters us into sparing ourselves and so destroys us. Against it he sets a bracing encouragement. The first step is the hardest; once the fight is joined, zeal grows, the enemy weakens, and each victory draws in fresh life from what he calls the tree of the cross, the life-giving tree planted on earth in place of the tree of Paradise. And where one’s own strength fails, prayer supplies it.

The third homily ascends to the highest and least-discussed cross, the spiritual cross of complete surrender to the will of God. Theophan approaches it with deliberate reticence, saying only “a word or two,” because it belongs to the most perfect Christians and, he confesses, exceeds his own powers to describe. Yet it must be named, lest anyone who has mastered a passion or two imagine the whole work is done. Purification from the passions, he explains, is only the preparation; the principal act of the Christian life is to offer the cleansed self back to God as a pure and spotless sacrifice. What lifted the Savior onto His cross was His own “not as I will, but as You will” in Gethsemane; the soldiers were only the instrument. Those who reach this height are, in Paul’s words, crucified with Christ, so that it is no longer they who live but Christ who lives in them; their own will no longer moves apart from God’s. The homily—and the book—closes at Golgotha, where Theophan invites each hearer to find his own likeness among the figures on the hill: Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross under compulsion, for those bearing outward affliction; the penitent thief, for those fighting the passions; the impenitent thief, for those still enslaved to them; and the Lord Himself, for the few who have given their whole will to God. Comfort, he warns in the same breath, is the mark of an oblique path; the straight road is the way of the cross—but it ends in glory.

Theological and Spiritual Significance

The lasting contribution of these homilies is a single, clarifying idea worked out with unusual practical rigor: that suffering in itself is neither good nor redemptive, and that everything depends on how a cross is joined to the cross of Christ. Theophan refuses both of the easy errors. He will not romanticize pain, and he will not treat it as meaningless; instead he insists that the very same affliction can save one person and ruin another, according to whether it is carried in gratitude, humility, and repentance or in murmuring, envy, and despair. In an age—his and ours alike—that tends either to flee suffering entirely or to sentimentalize it, this is a sober and useful teaching.

His threefold scheme also quietly maps the whole arc of the spiritual life onto a single, memorable image. What ascetical writers often lay out as stages—the endurance of providence, the active war on the passions, and union with the will of God—Theophan presents as three crosses, so that the beginner and the advanced can locate themselves on one continuous path and see where it leads. The mysticism of the third homily, with its language of no longer living oneself but being wholly moved by God, is stated in terms that a layman can grasp without being flattered into thinking he has already arrived. And throughout, Theophan keeps the accent on the interior and the invisible: what matters is the hidden turning of the will from evil to good, rather than the outward respectability he can compare to a whitewashed tomb. The homilies engage no controversy and score no points; their whole force is directed at moving the reader to act.

Reception and Influence

Theophan’s broader influence has been immense and is not confined to one part of the Christian world. As the translator who put the Philokalia into readable Russian, he became one of the chief conduits by which the ascetical wisdom of the early and Byzantine Fathers reached ordinary nineteenth-century readers, and through later translations that same stream has watered Christian spirituality far beyond Russia. His shorter, warmer works of counsel—of which On the Bearing of the Cross is a characteristic example—have never gone out of print in Russian and continue to appear in fresh editions and English versions. Read alongside his contemporaries in the great Russian spiritual revival of that century, these homilies show the pastoral, accessible face of a tradition more often met in its austere monastic form: the same teaching on providence, the passions, and union with God, delivered from a pulpit to people who had come in from ordinary lives.

The Text and This Edition

This edition presents a fresh, modern English translation of Theophan’s three homilies, made from his Russian text. The basis is the public-domain Russian of the collected works issued by the press of the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos—the pre-revolutionary edition, later reprinted and made available in a modern re-typeset form—from which the translation was prepared directly.

The aim throughout has been a dignified, readable English that carries Theophan’s own voice: plain, urgent, pastoral, and warm, close to the spoken sermon it once was. Scripture is a special case worth noting. Theophan quotes the Bible in his own Slavonic and Russian wording, and often bends a verse to the point he is pressing; those quotations have been rendered here from his text as he gives it, rather than replaced with the phrasing of any standard English Bible, so that the reader hears the Scriptures as he cited them. Following the conventions of this series, the work is presented under the author’s traditional name, as the Church has long received him; the translators are credited as translators and never as authors; and scriptural references are given in the ordinary modern style—for instance, Galatians 6:14—for ease of use. The result is intended to stand on its own as English: a complete, self-contained reading of the three homilies, faithful to the Russian but meant to be read straight through in its own right.

Suggestions for Reading

The three homilies are short and are best read in order and, if possible, at a sitting, since each builds on the one before and the whole is designed to move from the commonest cross to the rarest. A first-time reader need not begin with the demanding third homily; its heights make more sense once the first two have done their work. The most fruitful way to read the book is the way Theophan intended it to be heard—as a set of questions addressed to oneself rather than a theory of suffering: What is the cross I am already carrying? Am I carrying it in a way that saves? And which of the figures at Golgotha, in this present season of my life, do I most resemble?

Homily One

“«As for me, may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ»”, says the holy Apostle Paul (Gal. 6:14). How did this holy Apostle arrive at such a disposition that he wished to glory in nothing else except the cross of Christ? For the cross is surely sorrow, confinement, and humiliation; how then boast in it? And yet the Apostle Paul does boast in it; and together with him all the Apostles surely boasted in it, and after them all other cross-bearers. Why is it so? The godwise men beheld the great significance of the cross, valued it highly, and gloried that they were deemed worthy to bear it. They saw in it, instead of confinement, spaciousness; instead of bitterness, sweetness; instead of humiliation, greatness; instead of dishonor, glory—and they gloried in it, as one glories in some magnificent adornment and distinction.

Oh, if only the Lord would grant us such understanding and disposition to comprehend and feel the power of the cross and to begin glorying in it!

Concerning the significance of the cross, here is a brief general explanation: the Lord accomplished our salvation through His crucifixion; on the cross He tore up the handwriting of our sins; through the cross He reconciled us to God and the Father; through the cross He poured upon us the gifts of grace and all the blessings of heaven. But such is the cross of the Lord in itself. Each of us becomes a partaker of its saving power in no other way than through our own cross. Our own cross, when united with the cross of Christ, transfers the power and action of the latter to us, becomes as it were a channel through which from the cross of Christ there flows upon us every good gift and every perfect gift. From this it is evident that the crosses of each one in the work of salvation are as necessary as the cross of Christ itself. And you will not find a single saved person who was not a cross-bearer. For this reason each one is surrounded on all sides by crosses, so as not to be hindered in seeking cross-bearing and to be near the saving power of the cross of Christ. One might say thus: look around and within yourself, behold your cross, bear it as you should, united with the cross of Christ—and you shall be saved.

Though willing or unwilling, everyone bears his cross, and the cross is for the most part not simple but complex; yet not everyone views it through the cross of Christ; not everyone turns it to the ordering of his salvation; and therefore not for everyone is the cross a saving cross. Let us review all possible crosses and examine how each should be borne so that it may be power unto salvation.

There are many crosses, but there are three kinds: the first kind are external crosses, composed of sorrows and calamities, and generally of the bitter lot of earthly life; the second are internal crosses, arising from the struggle against passions and desires for the sake of virtue; the third are spiritual and grace-filled crosses, laid upon us by complete surrender to the will of God.

Now I will speak to you a few words about external crosses. These are the most complex and varied crosses. They are scattered across all our paths and encountered at nearly every step. To these belong: sorrows, calamities, misfortunes, illnesses, loss of loved ones, failures in service, all manner of deprivation and loss, family troubles, unfavorable external circumstances, insults, injuries, slander, and in general the earthly lot, which is for everyone more or less difficult. Who has none of these crosses? And they cannot be avoided. Neither nobility, nor wealth, nor fame, nor any earthly greatness delivers one from them. They have grown together with our earthly dwelling from the moment when Paradise was closed, and will not depart from it until the moment when the heavenly Paradise is opened.

If you wish these crosses to be for you unto salvation, use them according to God’s intention in appointing them toward mankind in general and toward you in particular. Why did the Lord order it so that on earth no one is without griefs and burdens? So that man would not forget that he is an exile and would live on earth not as a native son in his homeland but as a pilgrim and sojourner in a foreign land, seeking return to his true fatherland. As soon as man sinned, he was immediately expelled from Paradise; and outside Paradise he is beset with sorrows and deprivations and all manner of difficulties, so that he would remember that he is not in his proper place but stands under punishment and should strive to seek mercy and return to his original rank.

Thus, seeing sorrows, misfortunes, and tears, do not be surprised, and bearing them, do not be vexed. This is as it should be. A transgressor and disobedient one is not befitted by complete prosperity and happiness. Take this to heart and bear your lot with equanimity.

But why, you ask, is my burden greater and another’s lesser? Why do misfortunes afflict me while another has almost complete happiness? I am torn apart by sorrow while another is comforted. If it is a common lot, then it should be distributed equally to all without exception. But that is exactly how it is distributed. Look around and you will see. You are troubled now, another was troubled yesterday, or will be troubled tomorrow; now he is given rest by the Lord. Why do you look at hours and days? Look at the whole life from beginning to end, and you will see that everyone is troubled, and very troubled. Find someone who rejoices their whole life! Even kings often do not sleep at night from heartache. You are troubled now, but did you not see cheerful days before? God willing, you will see them again. Wait, then! The sky will clear over you too. In life, as in nature, there are bright and dark days. Has there ever been a time when a threatening cloud did not pass? Was there ever anyone in the world who thought otherwise? Do not think so about your grief either, and you will comfort yourself with hope.

You are troubled. But is this a causeless accident? Bow your head a little and remember that there is a Lord caring for you fatherly and not taking His eyes off you. If grief has befallen you, it is not except with His consent and will. No one, save He, has sent it to you. And He knows precisely what, to whom, when, and how to send; and when He sends, He sends it for the good of the very one on whom grief falls. So look around and you will see God’s good intentions toward you in the grief that has befallen you. Perhaps He wishes to cleanse some sin, or turn you away from sinful deeds, or shelter you with lesser grief from greater, or give you opportunity to show patience and faithfulness to the Lord, so that upon you He might then show the glory of His mercy. Something of this surely applies to you. Find out what exactly and apply it to your wound like a salve—and its burning will ease. If, however, you do not see clearly what God wishes to bestow upon you through the grief that has befallen you, kindle in your heart an uncomplicated faith that everything comes from the Lord and all that comes from the Lord is for our good; and tell your troubled soul: thus God is pleased. Endure! For whom He chastens is as a son to Him.

Above all, fix your attention on your moral state and the corresponding eternal outcome. If you are sinful—as indeed you are—then rejoice that the fire of sorrow has come and will burn away your sins. You look at your grief from the earth. But transport yourself to another life. Stand at the judgment. Look upon the eternal fire prepared for sins. And from there look upon your grief. If you would be condemned there, what sorrows would you not be willing to endure here in order not to fall subject to that condemnation? You would wish that every day now they might cut and burn you rather than submit to indescribable and endless torment there. Is it not better then, so that you may not experience that, to bear not so great a grief now so that through it you may be delivered from eternal fire? Say to yourself: such blows were sent to me for my sins, and give thanks to the Lord, for His goodness leads you to repentance. Then, instead of fruitless grieving, discern what sin is yours, repent, and cease sinning. When you are so disposed, you will surely say: this is little for me. For my sins I am not worthy even of this!

Thus, whether you bear the common bitter lot or experience particular griefs and sorrows, endure them with equanimity, receiving them gratefully from the hand of the Lord as medicine for your sins, as a key opening the door to the kingdom of heaven. And do not murmur, do not envy another, and do not give yourself over to mindless grieving. For in grief it often happens that one begins to murmur and complain, another completely falls apart and descends into despair, while yet another is absorbed in his grief and only mourns, his mind not ranging about and his heart not lifting itself to God. All such do not benefit from their crosses as they should and let slip the season of grace and the day of salvation. The Lord places the work of salvation in their hands, yet they reject it. Misfortune and grief have come upon you. You already bear a cross. Make, then, that this bearing be unto salvation and not unto ruin. For this, it is not necessary to move mountains, but only to make a small change in the thoughts of your mind and the dispositions of your heart. Stir up gratitude, humble yourself under the mighty hand, repent, amend your life. If faith in divine providence has departed, restore it to your heart and you will kiss the hand of God. If the connection between your grief and your sins has faded, sharpen the eye of conscience and you will see: You will weep for your sin and moisten the dryness of your grief with tears of repentance. If you have forgotten that the bitterness of this earthly lot atones for the far bitterer eternal lot, revive that memory and to equanimity you will add the desire for sorrows, so that for small earthly sorrows we might receive eternal mercy from the Lord. Are all these things difficult and complicated? And yet such thoughts and feelings are the threads by which our cross is bound to the cross of Christ and from it flow the saving powers for us. Without them our cross remains upon us and burdens us, but has no saving quality, being separated from the cross of Christ. Then we appear as cross-bearers who are not saved, and can no longer boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Having spoken much briefly to you about external crosses, I invite you, brethren, to walk in wisdom, redeeming the time of hardship and sorrow with equanimous, grateful, and penitent endurance. Then we shall feel the saving effect of sorrowful crosses and shall rejoice in being subjected to them, seeing through them the light of glory, and shall learn to glory in them not only for the future but also for the present fruit they bear. Amen.

Homily Two

Of the three kinds of cross I have spoken to you some words about one—namely, external crosses: sorrows, calamities, and deprivations. Now I will say something about the second kind of cross—internal crosses.

Internal crosses meet us during the struggle against passions and desires. The holy Apostle says: “«those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the passions and desires»” (Gal. 5:24). Crucified? Then there was a cross on which their passions and desires were crucified. What then is this cross? It is the struggle against them. To crucify a passion means to weaken it, overcome it, uproot it. A man struggles against a passion several times and weakens it; struggles again and overcomes it; struggles further and completely uproots it with the help of God. Since this struggle is difficult, sorrowful, and painful, it is truly a cross planted within us. For one who struggles against passions, it sometimes feels as though his hands are being nailed, a crown of thorns is placed on his head, a living heart is pierced through. So it is hard and painful for him.

This toil and painfulness cannot be otherwise; for the passions, though foreign to us, have come from without and so grown into our body and soul that their roots have penetrated all our members and faculties. When you set about pulling them out, it hurts. Yes, it hurts, but it is saving, and this salvation is obtained in no other way than through pain. There is a disease called a polyp—some foreign body generates in our body, grows and sends out roots. If you do not cut it out, you will not be healed; but if you do set about cutting it out, it hurts. Let it hurt, but this pain restores health. If you leave it, it will hurt too, only this pain does not lead to health but to the worsening of the disease, perhaps even to death. And how is the Siberian plague treated? They cut out the pustule and cauterize the spot, and further anoint and rub it with something poisonous. It hurts, but it heals. If you leave it alone, the pain will be pain, and you cannot escape death. So it is with the struggle against passions, or their uprooting—it is painful, but it is saving. If you leave the passions, do not uproot them; they too will cause burden, pain, and suffering, but not unto salvation but unto ruin and spiritual death: for “«the wages of sin is death»” (Rom. 6:23).

What passion is not painful? Anger burns; envy withers; lust weakens; greed does not allow sleep; wounded pride devours the heart mortally; and every other passion—hatred, suspicion, quarrelsomeness, people-pleasing, attachment to things and persons—causes its own torment within us; so that to live in passions is the same as to walk on knives or hot coals barefoot, or to be in the situation of a man whose snakes suck at his heart. And again, who has no passions? Everyone has them. As soon as self-love exists, all passions exist, for it is the mother of passions and does not exist without its daughters. Only not everyone has them in equal measure: in one person one passion, in another another dominates and controls the rest. And when everyone has passions, everyone also has torment from them. All are tormented and crucified by passions—only not unto salvation but unto ruin.

Thus, bearing passions, you are torn by them and perish. Is it not better to take yourself in hand and yourself create suffering within yourself on account of the passions, but not unto ruin but unto salvation? It takes only a reversal of the knife, and instead of, by satisfying the passions, wounding yourself with them, wound the passions themselves by beginning a struggle against them and opposing them in everything. And there will be pain and suffering of the heart, but it is healing pain, after which comfort will quickly follow, as happens when a healing plaster is applied to a wound. Someone becomes angry—it is difficult to master anger and unpleasant; but when you do master it, you find peace; whereas when you give in to it, you will be troubled for a long time. Someone is insulted—it is difficult to master yourself and forgive; but when you forgive, you gain peace; whereas when you take revenge, you will find no rest. A passion of attachment flares up—it is difficult to extinguish it; but when you extinguish it, you will see God’s light; whereas if you do not extinguish it, you will walk about like a dead man. So it is with respect to every passion. The passion torments you, and the struggle against it causes sorrow. But the first destroys, while the second saves and heals. Everyone subject to passions must be told: you are perishing on the cross of passions. Tear down this cross and set up another—the cross of struggle against them. And your crucifixion upon it will be unto salvation! All this is as clear as day; and the choice ought to be very easy. Yet sometimes it is not borne out in deed.

And we must marvel at our blindness. Someone is suffering from a passion and still satisfies it. He sees that by satisfying it he causes himself more and more evil, and still he satisfies it. Inexplicable enmity toward himself! Someone even resolves to rise up against a passion, but as soon as the passion awakens with its demands, he immediately follows it. Again he resolves and again he surrenders. This happens several times and always with the same result. Incomprehensible weakening of moral strength! The deceit and lie consist in this: the passion, for being satisfied, promises mountains of pleasure, while struggle against it promises nothing. But how many times it has already been tested that satisfying a passion brings not happiness and peace but torment and languishing! It promises much but gives nothing; whereas struggle promises nothing but gives everything. If you have not experienced this, experience it and see. But our misfortune is that we do not gather strength to experience it. The reason is self-pity. Self-pity is our most flattering deceiver and enemy. The first offspring of self-love. We pity ourselves and destroy ourselves. We think we are doing ourselves good, yet we do evil; and the more evil we do, the more willing we become to do it. That is why evil grows and approaches our final ruin.

Let us rouse ourselves, brethren, and courageously set forth to the cross of self-crucifixion through the crucifixion and uprooting of passions and desires. Let us reject self-pity and kindle the zeal of self-tormenting. Let us take on the heart of a physician who in necessity inflicts cruel cuts and cauterizations even on beloved and honored persons. I will not point out to you the method and whole course of struggle. Take up the work and it itself will clarify everything and teach you all. Bring to mind that peace, that joy, and that light which will dwell in the heart after the passions are overcome, and kindle by them your zeal to rise up against them. Light, peace, and joy are born from the very beginning of entering into this struggle and grow and increase until at the end they are completed in the peaceful ordering of the heart in which God dwells. And God of peace truly ever abides with one who attains this stage. Then it becomes fully evident that the cross is truly the tree of life. The Paradise tree of life remained in Paradise; on earth, in its place, the tree of the cross was planted. The purpose of both is one: let man taste and live. Come, press your lips to it and drink from it life. You will press to the cross when, rejecting self-pity, you kindle zeal for self-crucifixion; and you will drink life from it when you enter into struggle against passions. Each overcoming of a passion will be as taking in living sustenance from the life-giving cross. The more often you do this, the sooner you will be satisfied and filled with life. Wondrous is the property of self-crucifixion! It seems to take away, but in taking away it gives; it seems to cut off, but in cutting off it grafts on; it seems to kill, but in killing it gives life. Truly like the cross of Christ, by which death was trampled and life was given. What good—and how slight the toil!!! The first step is somewhat difficult—first self-mastery, first resolve to struggle; but afterwards each encounter in battle becomes easier and easier. And zeal will burn more brightly and strength to overcome will grow and the enemy weakens. As in ordinary warfare it seems dreadful to soldiers only to begin; but afterwards they regard nothing, everything becomes easy and manageable to them; so too in spiritual warfare: only begin, and afterwards the warfare will fan itself into flame and lighten of its own accord. And the more vigorous and lively the encounters, the sooner comes the end of warfare and the closer the peace. Lacking strength to begin? Pray. The Lord will send it. Surround yourself with thoughts of the danger of remaining in passions, and you will drive yourself from their darkness into the light of freedom from them. Awaken the sense of their torment and you will kindle indignation against them and desire to escape from them. But above all, confessing your weakness before the Lord, stand and knock at the door of His mercy, crying out for help. Help will come! The Lord will look upon you, and the light from His eyes will burn away self-pity in you and kindle zeal to arm yourself courageously against passions. And then, if the Lord is with us, who can be against us?

Lord, Establisher of struggle! You who have filled us with zeal to enter into the struggle against passions, grant us also strength to stand firm in it, that under the banner of Your Cross we may wage the good warfare, looking to You, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, who through the cross brought us salvation and gave us life in it. Amen.

Homily Three

There remains to explain to you the third kind of cross, which is saving for us—the cross of surrender to the will of God. I will speak a word or two about it.

A word or two, because complete teaching about it exceeds my powers. The most perfect Christians ascend this cross. They know it and could speak of it clearly, fully, and with power. But where else would one speak so? Yet it cannot be left unmentioned, lest some of you, having overcome one or two passions and found some peace from inner turmoil, should think that you have done all that is required and all that is expected of Christians.

No, even then all is not yet done. Though one has completely cleansed himself from passions, he has not yet performed the principal act of Christian life, but only prepared himself for it. You have cleansed yourself from passions: now offer yourself clean to God in a pure and spotless sacrifice, such as alone befits Him who is Most Pure. Look upon Golgotha. There the cross of the wise thief is the cross of cleansing oneself from passions, while the cross of the Lord is the cross of a pure and spotless sacrifice. And it is this that is the fruit of surrender to the will of God—unconditional, complete, and irreversible. Who lifted our Savior onto the cross? This surrender. In the Garden of Gethsemane our Lord Jesus Christ prayed that the cup might pass; but His resolute determination in this matter He expressed thus: “«yet not as I will, but as You will»” (Matt. 26:39). From His word: “«I am»”, those who came to bind Him fell (Jn. 18:6). But then those same ones bound Him. Why? Because He Himself first bound Himself with surrender to the will of God. Under the cross all creation trembles and the dead receive life; but He remained immovable on the cross: for He committed His spirit to God. Such are all those who have grown into a perfect man and reached the measure of the fullness of Christ. They are all crucified, so to speak, upon the will of God. Upon it is nailed every movement of their individual will, every thought and desire. Or rather, such movements no longer exist in them in the ordinary sense: all that is their own has died in them, consumed by the will of God. What moves them is God’s bidding, God’s inspiration, which in a way known to them alone imprints itself upon their hearts and determines all their activity. The holy Apostle Paul describes this state in regard to himself thus: “«I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me»” (Gal. 2:19, 20). As soon as he was crucified with Christ, this most perfect Apostle ceased to live by himself; rather, Christ began to live in him. Or he came into that state of which he writes elsewhere: “«God… is the one working in” us “both to will and to work for His good pleasure»” (Phil. 2:13). This is the summit of Christian perfection, to which alone a man is capable of attaining. It is the foretaste of the future state after the Resurrection, when God will be all in all. That is why all those deemed worthy to attain it often stand in contradiction to all the orders of earthly life and—either suffer persecutions and torments, or are considered and regarded as fools in Christ, or withdraw into the wilderness. But in all these forms of their outward lot, their inner state is one: united, they dwell in the heart with the one God alone. By Him alone do they live and act, hidden in the most inward, deepest silence, with the complete absence of any movements of their own. They say that high in the outermost limits of our atmosphere all motion of earthly elements ceases. There abides in peace the one universal element. This is an image of those crucified with Christ, who have ceased to live by their own life and have begun to live only by Christ, or rather who have ascended the cross of surrender to the will of God, which alone moves and acts in them with the negation of all individual understanding and action.

I have nothing more to say to you about this. This has been said only to hint to you that this is where the goal is, this is where we must be and what we must attain; and knowing this, you should count as nothing all that you do not have and all that you do not do that is good if you have not reached this spiritual height determined for us and expected from us. Many think that Christianity is the same as other kinds of life; but it is not so. It begins with repentance, ripens through struggle against passions, and is completed through crucifixion with Christ of the pure inner man and immersion in God. “«You died»”, says the Apostle, “«and your life is hidden with Christ in God»” (Col. 3:3). Here everything is accomplished within, invisible to men and known only to conscience and God. The external is nothing here. It is certainly an appropriate covering, but not the decisive witness and much less the source of the inner. External proper behavior is often nothing but the beautiful appearance of a sepulcher full of bones!

Knowing this, brethren, let us stand at Golgotha at the crosses and begin to apply ourselves to them and them to ourselves, each as his lot requires. Simon of Cyrene, who bore the cross of the Lord, is an image of those cross-bearers who are subjected to external sorrows and deprivations. Whom does the wise thief upon the cross represent and whom does the Lord upon the cross—I have just said a moment ago: the first represents those struggling against passions, while the Lord represents perfect men crucified in devotion to God. But whom does the cross of the evil thief represent? It represents those who serve the passions. The passions torment them, tear them apart, crucify them unto death, giving no comfort and no good hope. By these signs fit the crosses to yourself and by them determine who you are—whether you are Simon of Cyrene, or the wise thief, or an imitator of Christ the Lord or the evil thief consumed by the passions tearing you apart.

As you find yourself to be, such an end expect for yourself. I will only add: put out of your head the notion that one can become what one ought to be in Christ by means of a life of comfort. If comforts come to true Christians, they come entirely by chance; the distinguishing character of their life is suffering and affliction, inner and outer, voluntary and involuntary. With many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God, and into the kingdom that appears within as well. The first step here is a turning of the will from evil to good, which forms the heart of repentance and is reflected in mortal pain from the wound of brokenness, from which blood flows throughout the whole course of struggle against passions, and which is closed only upon the attainment of purity, which lifts the Christian to the cross of crucifixion with Christ in the will of God. All—sorrows and afflictions and burdens. One might say thus: comfort is a sign of an indirect path, while affliction is a sign of the right path.

Reflecting upon this, rejoice, cross-bearers! But you who are comforted—what of you? The word of Abraham to the rich man in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here you are comforted while others suffer for the sake of Christ and His holy law; but in the next life it will be otherwise: those who walk by the path of the cross will be comforted while those who were comforted will suffer. You say commonly: so one cannot even have some joy, or allow oneself some pleasure. But do the main thing first, and then allow yourself this too. But as it stands, one person’s only concern is—today a ball, tomorrow the theater, then an outing and entertaining reading and conversation and various diversions—a transition from one pleasure to another. And about the main thing, about how to attain what every Christian ought to be, there is no thought at all. What fruit then can one expect from such a life? Can our inner relationship to God in Christ somehow ripen of itself despite these outward disorders? How can it ripen? Does a candle burn in the wind? Does life mature from taking poison? No. If you wish good for yourself: abandon comfort, enter upon the path of repentance of the cross, be consumed in the fire of self-crucifixion, harden yourself in tears of heartfelt contrition—and you will become gold or silver or precious stone, and in its time you will be taken by the heavenly Householder for the adornment of His most radiant and transcendent mansions. Amen.

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

Matthew
Matthew 26:393. Homily Three (3.3)
John
John 18:63. Homily Three (3.3)
Romans
Romans 6:232. Homily Two (2.3)
Galatians
Galatians 5:242. Homily Two (2.2)
Galatians 6:141. Homily One (1.1)
Philippians
Philippians 2:133. Homily Three (3.3)
Colossians
Colossians 3:33. Homily Three (3.4)

The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse

Saint Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894) is among the most beloved teachers of the spiritual life in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born on 10 January 1815 in the village of Chernavsk, in the Oryol province of central Russia, and given the name Georgy Vasilyevich Govorov. His father was a parish priest, and the boy was raised in the ordered piety of a country rectory. He studied first at the theological school in Livny, then at the Oryol Seminary, and finally at the Kiev Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1841. The ancient monasteries of Kiev, and above all the Monastery of the Caves, left a deep mark on him during those years.

In his last year as a student, in 1841, Georgy Govorov was tonsured a monk and given the name Theophan, after Saint Theophan the Confessor, a defender of the holy icons. He was soon ordained hieromonk and set on the path of teaching and administration in the Church’s schools: he served in the theological schools of Kiev, as inspector at Novgorod, and as an instructor in moral and pastoral theology at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy. For several years he lived in the Christian East, attached to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, where in Jerusalem, Constantinople, and on Mount Athos he studied, copied, and gathered the writings of the Fathers that he would later render into Russian. In 1857 he was appointed rector of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy.

In 1859 he was consecrated Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk, and in 1863 he was transferred to the ancient see of Vladimir. As a bishop he was known for gentleness, tireless preaching, and care for the education of his people, founding diocesan schools for girls in both dioceses. Yet the labours of administration drew him away from the inner life he most desired. In 1866, at his own request, he was released from the government of his diocese and withdrew to the Vyshensky Hermitage, a quiet monastery he had come to love while at Tambov.

At Vysha, Saint Theophan gradually gave himself wholly to prayer and writing. Beginning in 1872 he entered strict reclusion: he no longer left his cell for the monastery church, received almost no visitors, and lived for the remaining years in two small rooms, celebrating the Divine Liturgy alone in a chapel he had arranged. This seclusion, far from being idleness, became the most fruitful period of his life. From it flowed the works for which he is remembered: The Path to Salvation and What the Spiritual Life Is; his translation and great expansion of the Philokalia (the Russian Dobrotolyubie) and of other monastic writings; Unseen Warfare; his commentaries on almost all the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, together with expositions of several Psalms; and an immense correspondence, in which he answered, often at the rate of dozens of letters a day, the spiritual questions of people throughout Russia. In 1890 the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy conferred on him a doctorate in theology.

Saint Theophan reposed on 6 January 1894, the Feast of the Theophany whose name he bore, at the age of seventy-nine, and was buried at the Vysha monastery. In 1988, during the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church that celebrated the millennium of the Baptism of Rus’, he was numbered among the saints. His feast is kept on 10 January.

His significance for the Church lies in the way he gathered the whole ascetical and patristic inheritance of Orthodoxy and made it speak to ordinary Christians. He wrote not for specialists but for anyone seeking God, tracing with unusual clarity the movements of the heart, the discipline of unceasing prayer, and the long work by which grace and human freedom together bring a soul to salvation. In his Scripture commentaries this same pastoral aim is at work: he reads the sacred text through the eyes of the ancient Fathers and turns every doctrine toward the reader’s own inner life. For this the Russian Church honours him as a Father in her own age and a sure guide on the path of salvation.

Colophon

Three Homilies on the Bearing of the Cross
by Theophan the Recluse.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
Cross in the Forest (Kreuz im Wald, c. 1812)
by Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- Homily One
- Homily Two
- Homily Three
- Scripture Index
- The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse
- Colophon