A Discourse on Friday of the Middle Week of the Veneration of the Cross

We worship Your cross,

“Master, and we glorify Your holy resurrection”(Troparion to the honored cross)

The holy Church, bringing out from the depths of the altar, from the altar table, the life-giving cross of the Lord and offering it for the veneration and kissing of the faithful—what thought does it have? The thought that the true children of the Church, passing through the season of fasting and struggling against their multi-passionate flesh and with the devil, who during the fast especially kindles his arrows upon them, looking upon the cross and vividly picturing to themselves the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, endured by Him for our salvation in His most pure flesh—might be strengthened thereby in the struggle against their own flesh, its passions and desires, and that they not hesitate to crucify it in its passions and courageously struggle with the opponent attacking us with manifold temptations. Look, as it were, how the Lord speaks to us from the cross: I have endured for you with My most pure flesh, My most immaculate flesh, which was never touched by any sin—will you then refuse to crucify in your own flesh the various passions and desires? Will you not endure the bitterness of fasting? Will you not bear for a time the deprivation of delicacies to subdue the flesh, which the more you gratify and satisfy, the more it rages? Will you not bear the burning arrows of the enemy, when I have allowed him to pierce My divine flesh with every kind of arrow? Here, with such thoughts, the cross is brought out for veneration and kissing. Therefore, do not be discouraged by fasting and the struggle against passions and the devil; but courageously struggle, calling upon the One who suffered for us and conquered enemies with the cross—and be victorious. Amen.