The Cross of Christ

A sermon for the day of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross of the Lord

We venerate Your Cross, O Master, and glorify Your holy Resurrection

The Orthodox Christian world is now offering solemn veneration to the Life-giving Cross of the Lord. During the all-night Vigil you gazed with compunction of soul upon its fivefold elevation, with the singing of the frequently repeated penitential prayer Lord, have mercy, as the rector lowered the Cross down to the ground and then gradually raised it up again until it stood upright in the hands of the celebrant performing the rite.

This elevation is made toward the four quarters as a sign that the Lord by His Cross redeemed the whole fourfold world: east, west, north, and south; and afterward once more—toward the east, as a sign of the redemption of man of the five senses, who unceasingly sins with his five senses.

What was the origin of this solemn rite? — Its beginning was the finding of the original Cross of the Lord by the Empress Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine; at its finding the miracle of the raising of a dead man took place, and the whole people, gathered in great numbers from Jerusalem and the surrounding places, wanted to see it and to offer it reverent veneration. Then the people, seeing it on an elevated spot in the hands of Patriarch Macarius, who elevated it toward all four quarters, bowed down, and many times over, in compunction and awe, cried out: Lord, have mercy! — Such is the origin of the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. At this time there are also brought to remembrance the miraculous appearances of the Cross in the sky: one, to the Emperor Constantine and his army, with an inscription around it: By this, conquer; and another, in the time of Emperor Constantius and the holy Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, in radiant splendor, seen by all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The Church also commemorates the solemn deliverance in the seventh century of the Cross from Persian captivity, and its solemn bearing into Jerusalem by the Emperor Heraclius, barefoot and dressed in humble garb, without the purple mantle and without the royal crown. Such is the worldwide glory of the Cross after its three hundred years in the depths of the earth and beneath the pagan shrine. Thus heaven itself bore witness to the glory of Him Who was crucified on the Cross, to the holiness and majesty of His Church, which for three centuries was under the cross of persecutions, and to our holy duty of honoring the Cross and venerating it in spirit and truth, even as the holy Prophet-King commands us to venerate it: Lift high the Lord our God, and bow down before His footstool, for it is holy[1].

It is not in vain that we venerate the Cross of the Lord, depict it upon ourselves, and bow down before it: for it is Divine power, preserving and saving us in life and after death. The Church unceasingly preaches of its power and life-giving nature, which were manifest in former ages and are even now at work among the faithful: it healed every kind of illness, raised the dead, drove the legions of demons away from people, quenched the passions in human hearts, and brought wondrous victories in wars against unbelievers. The Cross is the Divine glory of Christ, who by it redeemed the world that had fallen into the depths of perdition, destroyed the curse of mankind and obtained for it the blessing of the heavenly Father, conquered our death and granted resurrection from the dead to all. Who could recount all the wonders and powers of the Cross, which were at work both in the generations of old and in the most recent, and all its beneficent workings in the world? By the sign and power of the Cross all the Mysteries of the Church are celebrated; water is sanctified, and all the elements, and all the faithful who receive it with faith or sign themselves with it; we wear the cross upon our breasts, and through it are kept from many temptations and from the enemy’s wiles; the holy Church signs us with the cross even after death, when she sings the funeral hymns over us; a cross is also placed upon the graves of those who died in communion with the Church, and it is withheld only from the graves of open apostates and of suicides, who consciously and of their own will laid hands upon themselves. And this is because in the cross, when it is used and depicted with faith, there acts the Divine, saving power of Christ crucified, which unceasingly makes manifest His Divine authority over the whole world, over all nature, and over all the hosts of the enemy; it shows that Christ God redeemed the whole world by His Cross from sin, curse, and death—that He has authority over life and death, and that He is the resurrection and the life and the God of all[2].

In the present faithless time, a time of fermenting minds and of the corruption of hearts and morals, the Cross is held in contempt by many, as is the Lord Himself who suffered and died upon it as a voluntary sacrifice for us; and just as in ancient times He was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks[3], so now to the wise men of this age grown altogether foolish He is a stumbling block and foolishness. Such indeed is that fool, who has won an unkind worldwide renown—Leo, the roaring lion, who attacks the Church of God with all his followers. He has risen up against God Himself, against His wise, all-good, saving Providence, against the everlasting Gospel, against sound reason, against the convictions of all believing mankind, against history, and against all the facts handed down to us by the most trustworthy witnesses, for the most part eyewitnesses. It is useless to try to convince these willful blind men, who have blinded themselves with boundless pride; they cannot repent, for they do not wish to see the truth: they will perish in their pride and obstinacy, as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram did in the time of Moses[4]. But for a believing man the Cross is constant salvation, protection, deliverance, victory, and peace. Sinning daily both willingly and unwillingly, subjected to various sharp temptations from invisible and visible enemies and from our own passions, where—in whom and in what shall we find help and salvation? Only in Christ and in the Cross—only in the Sacrifice, measurelessly great and all-redeeming, offered for us on the Cross; only by the Cross are we daily saved from the wounds dealt by the demons and from every storm of the passions, when with faith and true repentance we take refuge in Christ. The Cross is our life, our salvation, our strength, our glory, our victory; our unceasing renewal, our reconciliation with the justice of God, which righteously strikes down all senselessly daring and obstinate sinners.

The Cross is the guardian of the whole universe; the Cross is the beauty of the Church; the Cross is the might of kings; the Cross is the confirmation of the faithful; the Cross is the glory of angels and the wound of demons (the Exapostilarion of the feast).

Without the Cross there is salvation for no one. Let us then zealously honor the Cross of Christ and with love venerate the One crucified upon it, the Author of our life, mindful of His everlasting covenant with us from the Cross: love one another. Amen.