A summary of a reflection by His Eminence Metropolitan SABA (Isper), Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of All North America. The Archdiocese published the full text as “The Cross in Our Life, Part Three.”
Most believers think of the cross as pain and hardship. Metropolitan SABA writes that the cross produced by seeking pleasure apart from God is heavier and harsher than the others. A cross of trials, received in the name of Christ, brings steadfastness, patience, and grace, and it leads to resurrection. Pleasure sought apart from God leads to death.
He describes how this happens. Pleasure promises everything a person longs for, then fades and leaves him emptier than before. To escape that emptiness he returns to it with more force, until he is enslaved to it. He cites St. John Climacus (“The dog has returned to its vomit”) and St. Maximus the Confessor on “blind pleasure,” which looks no further than the moment and ignores our responsibility before God and our neighbor. He names addiction and the sexual revolution as examples of where that pursuit leads.
The problem, he writes, is not the body or matter but what the soul is seeking. A person overcomes this sorrow only when he is touched by the grace of God and enters into repentance, a “change of mind.” When he replaces his love for earthly things with love for divine things, he finds he has gained both, and hardships become crosses that set him free. He closes with St. Paul (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 and 6:9-10) and with the teaching of the Fathers that whoever is nourished by the Cross is nourished by the Tree of Life.
Read the full text on antiochian.org
Also printed in the October 2026 issue of The Archangel.
