'What must i do to be saved?'

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourosh, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland, preached the following sermon on Sunday, 31 May 1981, at the Cathedral of the Dormition and All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, London, S.W.7. The text appeared in the cathedral parish News Letter, No. 132 (June 1981).

'What must I do to be saved?' (Acts 16.30) asked the gaoler when he had suddenly experienced the all-conquering power of God, and was seized with terror before the greatness of God. This same question is so often asked not from the depths of a shattering meeting with God, but from the depths, from the very bottom of despair: 'What must I do to be saved? I am a prisoner: who will lead me out to freedom? I am broken, who will make me whole?'

'What must I do to be saved?' is what all of us could and should say at least once in a lifetime – but then, of course, we should also listen to the answer: believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; that is the answer St. Paul gives. And what does that mean? What does it mean to believe in Christ? First of all – to trust Him; to accept His word as righteousness and truth, because He knows the way of life and we are groping in the dark. That is the first meaning; the second is to remain faithful. And this is what today's reading from the Acts of the Apostles is about; whether we ask this question because we have been struck by the nearness and greatness of God, or because we have been horrified by our orphaned loneliness without Him, we must, in order to find the way of life, believe in Him who points it, and remain faithful to that which we have once accepted in our heart and agreed to in our minds.

If we put this question to the Saviour: what must I believe in, what is this way of life? His first answer will be: love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself. That is the beginning of the whole thing. We can come to love God in two ways. In those moments when suddenly He is close to us, when His grace touches our hearts and fills them with warmth, tenderness, with confidence and hope and joy, it is easy to respond to Christ with love; but in those moments when we feel ourselves hopelessly lonely, love expresses itself not in joy but in miserably longing: where art Thou, O Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me? I cannot live in such loneliness, in such cold and darkness. Both states, however, show that our hearts are longing for life, either grieving over our loneliness or rejoicing that life has touched them.

But there is another commandment of Christ's which we should not forget if we wish to remain faithful: as He says in St. Mark's Gospel, 'If any man would come after Me (i.e. simply be with me, not get separated and lost in the crowd) let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.' To deny oneself does not mean to hate oneself; it means to recognise the fact that in ourselves we do not, and cannot possess life or fullness, that only if we can tear our gaze away from ourselves, our hearts from concern about ourselves and look around us at other people and respond with heart and mind and action to their needs; that if only we can turn our gaze to the Lord and look attentively into the depths of His beauty and love and truth, we shall be free of ourselves. Then we can set off on our journey; but the way is not easy, because to understand is one thing, but to change to the very depths is another. And so we must take up not only our destiny but our very selves, as Christ took up His cross, as a burden that cannot be put down, that will erode in us the last ties of self-love, of egoism, concentration on self. If only we could understand that it is these very things that constitute the cross under whose weight we are struggling towards life.

If we can do this, if we follow Christ who also carries a cross – carried it once triumphantly to the end – we shall be free, we shall be saved, we shall enter into life; because salvation begins with the rejection of evil, the rejection of what ruins us, and it blossoms into life, joy, the renewal of our whole selves.

Now let us, each one of us, consider this question: what must I, I personally, and not someone else, do to be saved? What must I get rid of in myself before I can get completely free of myself? Where does my heart draw me and what do I see as life, fulfillment, joy? Let us ask ourselves the question not once, but many times as we gradually mature and come to understand life and ourselves more profoundly. We shall then find a path of such freedom, such joy and life, about which Christ said that He had come to bring us life in abundance, life which gushes like a spring into eternity.

May God grant us to face this question like a spring into eternity, and find an answer; then we shall find the Eternal Kingdom already on earth. Amen.

Sourozh 1981. N.6. P. 1–3