All the fears and confusions that we experience, all our difficulties, all our perplexities, all our lack of understanding of the spiritual life, our unwillingness to bear our cross, all our faint-heartedness, lack of faith, all our weakness come from the fact that we give our mind and heart over to the desecration of the devil. And those thoughts that the devil tries to plant in our minds and take possession of our hearts through the mind, he induces so that we reject the Cross. The devil constantly leads us away, and he is so cunning that he has already removed all of humanity from the Cross, because by the Cross a person is saved, and if he is removed from the Cross, then salvation becomes impossible.

If a person is given a long, painless, easy comfort, if he is given a life that is brilliant, beautiful, peaceful, happy, well-fed, and interesting, then he will perish for the Kingdom of Heaven. The striving for happiness, for a well-fed, calm, serene, painless and long existence – this is a striving for hell, it is a striving to get away from the Cross of the Lord, a striving to establish not the Kingdom of Heaven, but an earthly kingdom, to prolong earthly calm and happy well-being. This is a devilish undertaking, in which he has succeeded a lot, and all mankind is simply fascinated, it simply craves earthly happiness. And salvation is in the Cross. A cross, and on it a bloody Man, beaten, spat upon, betrayed and abandoned by everyone except His Mother, several women and one beloved disciple.

Therefore, in celebrating today's feast, the Church tries to put into our hearts the thought of the salvific nature of the Cross and the salvific nature of suffering. The Lord ascended to heaven through the Cross, and a Christian ascends to heaven only through the bearing of the cross. Suffering is good, the Church affirms. Therefore, if we are in suffering, in sorrow, in some kind of spiritual turmoil, in despair, and turn to God with prayer, then this prayer should not be for the Lord to deliver us. Many are confused by the fact that the church prayer contains a petition to "deliver us from all sorrow." But the point here is not at all to deliver us from the cross, but from our wrong attitude to sorrow, because a person who is rightly and Christianly constituted does not have sorrow, regardless of whether his body suffers, or he is abandoned, or he wants to eat or drink, or he has some difficult circumstances. Such a person endures sorrowful sufferings with good humor, and the saints even with joy. They grieve only for their imperfection.

Someone will say: but Christ grieved, didn't he? Yes, Christ grieved, and the Mother of God grieved, and many saints grieved and are grieving now. What sorrow in the Christian heart is pleasing to God? Only one is the sorrow of compassion, when the heart, seeing the sufferings of others, suffers for them; suffers when he sees that his neighbor deviates from the true path, deviates from the cross. And the sight of this, of course, is difficult to bear, it is impossible to see it without sorrow. Each of us knows from experience that the suffering of our children brings us more suffering than our own, and many mothers would agree to suffer themselves, if only their children did not suffer, precisely because compassion brings greater sorrow.

Therefore, sorrow is a natural property of our soul, but we, perverted by sin, who have lost the ability to love, which has been perverted in us into self-love, begin to grieve from the misfortunes that happen to us, and this is not Christian sorrow. And the Lord, having ascended the Cross, nailed our sorrow, committed from our sins, to the Cross and thereby gave us a sign that we can be cleansed from sin through sorrows, bearing our cross and following the commandments of Christ.

Why does the Cross of the Lord have such terrifying power for all the demonic, demonic army? Why, when we are besieged by some thoughts, obsessive thoughts, ideas or some other temptations, is it enough to calmly, with faith, make the sign of the cross - and our mind is freed, the devil departs? Why does the sign of the cross, as with fire, burn up every demonic delusion? What is the mystery here? Why can't the devil see the sign of the cross and constantly wants to destroy it in some way? Because the Cross reminds Satan and his minions of the supreme power of the Divinity's humility. The devil fell away from God through pride. The Lord defeated the devil with His humility. Humility is unbearable for Satan, so the sight of the Cross is unbearable for him - this greatest manifestation of the humility of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just imagine how He humbled Himself - from His birth to Golgotha, this was the path of the greatest humility. After all, He was God, one word of His would have been enough for this earth to disappear and a new one to arise; in another word, so that a new Adam, a new man, arises, and the whole history of the universe can be started from the beginning. But the Lord did not do this. He came, from the Almighty he became a man, he was born into the world as a little child, he was persecuted, mocked, misunderstood, betrayed, spat upon, beaten, killed, finally. What the greatest humility! What a way He shows us! What a salvific means for victory over the devil is indicated!

The main reason for all our sins, the main reason for the fact that we do not see God, that we do not endure sorrows well, that we are attached to the world, to the flesh, to food, to clothes and other nonsense, and only sometimes and somehow not in full force do we have a desire for the Kingdom of Heaven – the main reason for this is our pride and lack of humility in us. And success in humility, in fact, is the salvation of the soul, because humility is the main attribute of the soul of Christ. And that which in our life goes against humility is a procession against Christ. If we humble ourselves, then this is the path to Golgotha, this is the path to our ascension to heaven and the path of co-resurrection with Christ. This is what we need to learn. And by the fact that the Church lays out the Cross in the middle of the church and raises it on the domes, that the Church blesses us to wear the cross around our necks, that we make the sign of the cross, and even by the fact that purely phonetically "cross" and "Christianity" are very close in sound in our language – all this the Lord helps us to assimilate this grace-filled, salvific truth, the truth of the Cross, this mystery of Christianity deeply and firmly: that there is no other way to heaven than humility and voluntary acceptance of suffering.

But how to achieve the desired humility? How do you even understand what it is? The path to humility, the Holy Scriptures teach us, is through patience. We even have a proverb: "God endured and commanded us." And God's special providence, God's special love for us is expressed in the fact that although we all love comfort, love a serene, well-fed, calm life, love the good attitude of everyone around us, love politeness, praise, cleanliness, order, and all kinds of good external arrangements, despite this, each of us constantly has to grieve. To grieve bodily, to grieve spiritually, to grieve spiritually - with all the components of our nature; to grieve from misunderstanding, from betrayal, from the disobedience of children, from illnesses, from life circumstances, from the weather, from all kinds of cataclysms. And if we want to cultivate humility in ourselves, to attract this queen of Christian virtues, which is necessary for our salvation, we must endure all this.

All the saints were adorned with many and different virtues, but they were all united by one thing - humility. In the Kingdom of Heaven, among the countless multitude of saints, there is not a single person who does not have this virtue. In order for a person to ascend to heaven, he simply needs to humble himself, to acquire spiritual poverty. Therefore, enduring himself, enduring his circumstances, his sinfulness, and his illnesses, enduring it without murmuring, cutting off murmuring in himself, cutting off discontent, reluctance, overcoming his lusts, a person gradually, step by step, month by month, year after year, comes to this blissful state - he learns to endure, and through the teaching of patience gradually acquires humility.

Therefore, when something terrible happens to us, as it seems to us, we must thank God from the bottom of our hearts for the fact that He Himself gives us the opportunity to endure, because having endured this, we will receive another small grain of humility, which will be our next step to Golgotha, and through it to the resurrection together with Christ. And every time we stray, when we murmur, when we reject patience, we reject our salvation and flee from the Cross. Fleeing from the Cross, we flee from Christ, and therefore from the Church, and from our salvation, and from grace – from everything.

It is this blessed thought that must settle in our minds, and through the mind enter into our hearts, so that we not only theoretically, with our minds, but also with our hearts, accept all the salvific power of suffering. And here before us on the analogion is the most complete embodiment of this idea, the Cross that we really see, on which is a crucified man and God Jesus Christ.

The Church adorns this Cross with flowers, and kisses it, and worships it, and lifts it up, because only through the Cross, only through the voluntary and good-natured endurance of suffering, do we save our souls from sin and ascend from earth to heaven. Amen.

Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,