This means that something similar to the Ascension of Christ the Savior Himself must happen to the true followers of Christ. This is what the Lord has done for us! Comforting His apostles, the Savior promised them to send the Holy Spirit, Who would instruct them without Him. And, as we know, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles. But not only on the apostles, but on all believers.

And from that time on, it has been unceasingly abiding and will remain until the end of time in the Church of Christ, preparing people for the abodes of the Heavenly Father. Rejoicing in what the Lord has done for us, let us also make an edification for ourselves. Let us direct our spirit to heaven for the ascended Lord. In our spiritual perfection, let us rise above our passions and vices, let us ascend to the heights of virtue and purity.

Let us not be frightened by the narrow and thorny path to the Heavenly Fatherland. This path is no longer new! Our Lord and Saviour Himself passed through it. Thus, my beloved friends, in the light of the Ascension of Christ, our earthly path and our destiny are clear to us – to be partakers of the glory of God. Let us turn our gaze to heaven, to where Christ ascended. The Holy Church always calls us, and especially on this day reminds us that where the Lord has entered, there are eternal abodes of the righteous.

There is the joy of constantly seeing God! There is eternal life! As it was said at the beginning, on the day of the Ascension, the Lord parted from His disciples for a long time - until His second coming. But, having ascended to heaven, the Lord left His Church a precious spiritual inheritance – His blessing. The Lord, ascending, blessed the disciples and did not cease to bless until a cloud hid Him.

This all-affirming and all-sanctifying blessing of God was forever imprinted in the memory of the disciples. It was carried throughout the world by the holy apostles and preachers of Christianity. You and I feel it too. And we, dear ones, must know and remember that it is always alive and active, always filled with grace-filled power, always carries with it God's gift, and lifts our souls and hearts to God.

In this blessing is our joy and source of strength. Amen.   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 power, having become participants in 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 authority 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-Bearing Cross of the Lord to the world and having 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. This Cross ascended above the world for a short time, in order to hide in the earth for a long time by the malice of man. But this short time was enough for the Life-Giving Cross to conquer the world and give it life.

By a long and difficult path of humility the Lord Jesus Christ entered into His glory, but the humiliation of the Life-Giving Tree, on which He offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, lasted incomparably longer. The glory of the Crucified One had already filled all the ends of the world, and the Life-Giving Wood of the Cross, hidden in ignorance and ignominy, awaited its hour for another three centuries.