September 9 (22), 1991

Homily on the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

O many-sung Tree of the Cross! O life-giving Tree of the Cross! O Three-Blessed Tree of the Cross! O honorable Cross, the all-joyous sign of our redemption! Show us, sinners, the path of salvation.

Our friends! "... the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18). And yesterday we visibly touched this force, with the participants of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord. The Life-Giving Tree floated past each of you, brought out of the Holy of Holies, from the earthly sky, from the altar of the Lord. It sailed, and rose to the heights, and descended to the earth, to rise again, overshadowing all the cardinal directions, so that everyone would see, understand, and feel the power and authority of this great sign of victory.

It was not by human invention that this wondrous feast entered the world, which absorbed three events of different times in the history of the Life-Giving Tree, and it has not been preserved in the world for seventeen centuries by human efforts. The Gospel reading of the feast points to the power that constantly and autocratically possesses the changeable and inconstant world. The power and power of the Cross is the great sacrifice – the sufferings of the Savior on the Cross, beginning with His unrighteous condemnation to death to the piercing of the rib of His most pure body, from which flowed blood and water, nourishing the world into Eternal Life. And the Gospel ends with the assurance that the truth of this terrible story is attested to by an eyewitness of that sacrifice on Golgotha and is transmitted so that the listeners will believe.

The Orthodox Church, born on the eve of the appearance of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord to the world and become, in the person of the Apostles, an eyewitness to the great feat of love, even unto death and death on the cross, has since accepted the sign of the Cross as a salvific symbol for the faithful, and not only as a symbol, but as a saving power by which enemies are defeated.

Testimonies about the veneration of the Cross of the Lord have been preserved in the apostolic writings that have come down to us and in the writings of the teachers of the Church. And the living examples of this power, appearing at all times, brought to life a special rule of veneration of the Cross, established at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which took place in the year 680 in Constantinople.

Its 73rd canon reads: "Since the Life-Creating Cross has shown us salvation, it behooves us to use all diligence, so that honor may be given to him through which we have been saved from the ancient Fall."

The first is the terrible and glorious Cross of the Lord, which from an instrument of execution has become an instrument of power and glory. This is the Cross that lifted up from earth to heaven the innocent and voluntary Sufferer Christ the Savior and with Him nailed the sins of the whole world. The Cross, watered with His pure blood and with it washing away all sinful defilement. A cross that absorbed a multitude of malicious glances, mockery and blasphemy. The Cross, at the foot of which only two people were weeping: the Mother of the Crucified One, by Whose very heart the weapon of the Cross passed, and the only disciple whose love was not frightened away by the horror of suffering.