Will He allow us to honor the cross of the thief instead of the Cross of the Lord? God Himself will show us the Cross of our Saviour." All three crosses were brought into the house of a pious woman lying on her deathbed. After fervent prayer, the saint in turn placed the crosses on the dying woman. And only by the touch of the latter did the power of life enter the sick woman.

Those present at the miracle unanimously gave glory to the Cross of the Lord. But even this certificate was not enough for the glory of the Life-Giving Cross Tree. It pleased God's Providence that the glory of the Cross of the Lord should shine forth even to those who did not wish to acknowledge it, so that by the power of the Venerable Tree the unbelief and enemies of the Cross of the Lord might be crushed. Returning from the house of the healed woman to Golgotha, the Christians met a funeral procession.

Filled with faith, the pious Saint Macarius boldly applied the Cross of the Lord to the deceased, and the Cross of the Conqueror of death and hell, again breaking the bonds of death, gave life to the deceased. The news of the miracle, which shocked those present, flew around Jerusalem in the twinkling of an eye and gathered believers and non-believers to the foot of the Cross on Golgotha. And countless people wanted to see the miraculous Tree at least from afar.

Saint Macarius and Empress Helena, standing on a dais, raised the Precious Cross as high as possible on all four sides, so that all could bow down to it. The power of the influence of the Life-Creating Tree was so great that the Jews were baptized in great numbers, and among them was the elder Judas, who pointed out the place where the Cross of the Lord was hidden, who received the name Kyriakos in baptism and became bishop of Jerusalem by the mercy of God at the end of his life, and for a short period of his life in Christianity he himself ascended his martyric cross during the reign of Julian the Apostate.

Thus was accomplished the finding of the Cross of the Lord. Three hundred and twenty-six years after the crucifixion of the Savior, the Life-Giving Wood of the Cross of the Lord again became a preacher of the power and Divinity of Christ. "Worthily and righteously venerate the Cross of Christ," says St. Demetrius of Rostov, the Russian Chrysostom, in his homily on the Exaltation of the Cross, "for by this blessed Tree death was slain and life was granted.

By the Tree of Paradise we were slain, but by the Tree of the Cross we were made alive; we are the first to be expelled from paradise, the second we ascend to heaven; the enemy defeated us first, and the enemy defeated us second." After the discovery of the Life-Creating Cross of the Lord, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine gave orders to erect in Jerusalem a majestic and spacious church in honor of the Resurrection of Christ, which included both the Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha.

The temple was built for ten years and was consecrated on September 13, 335, and the next day the Cross of the Lord was erected in the temple, and on this day it was established to celebrate the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. And the Church for the first time on this day sang: "We worship Thy Cross, O Master, and glorify Thy holy Resurrection!"

From 614 to 628, the Venerable Tree was captured by the Persians. God's Providence preserved the Tree even there, in a foreign land. The pagans, amazed by the miracles that accompanied the ark with the Cross, did not dare to boldly touch the Christian shrine. The victory of the Greek Emperor Heraclius over the Persians returned the Cross to Jerusalem. Both the return of the Cross and its elevation over the Holy Sepulchre took place precisely on the day of the feast of the Exaltation of the Life-Giving Wood of the Cross of the Lord.

Thus, my beloved, three events of different times from the life of the Cross of the Lord illuminate this day. And I repeat as a reminder to you - this is the discovery of the Tree of the Cross, and the construction of the Church of the Resurrection of the Lord on Golgotha, and the bringing of the Life-Creating Cross into this church, and the last return of the Life-Giving Tree from captivity and its installation on Golgotha, in its original place.

Twenty centuries have passed since the greatest event of the Savior's sacrifice on the cross on Golgotha, when Christ ascended to heaven in glory. The Cross remained on earth, continuing to do the great work begun on Golgotha. And to this day the Cross lives as a living person, as a human being, taking upon itself both boundless love and equally boundless hatred.

And just as love and malice, faithfulness and betrayal confronted each other at the first Saving Cross of the Lord, so the Cross is destined to be a stumbling block at all times in the life of the world. For some, the atheists, it is a cruel and hateful field of suffering, leading to death. Sorrows and sufferings of earthly life are the lot of all earth-born.

For others, followers of Christ, the cross of the same sorrows and sufferings becomes a favorite field of supreme spiritual delight, a path of marching after the beloved Christ into eternal life to glory. The Cross continues to live in the world, some for salvation, others for greater destruction. The struggle between evil and good at the foot of the Cross continues for the sake of love or hatred for the One by Whom the Wood of the Cross was sanctified.

Let us not go into the depths of history for examples, let us take living examples of our days. What malice and rejection of the Cross are now manifested by all those who have departed from the Orthodox Church of Christ, and especially by Protestants and sectarians, who blaspheme the Cross of Christ, our sign of the Cross, and accuse the Orthodox of idolatry for venerating the Cross. The Cross is the guardian of the entire universe, the Cross is the guardian and affirmation of each person in the truth - does not exist for them.

And with the rejection of the Cross, they reject the very path of salvation, the path of the procession following Christ. And they become the plaything of demons on the way to perdition. And here is another example. In 1992, love for Christ gathered pilgrims from all over the world to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Bright Resurrection of Christ. And the holy fire in the lamps had not yet been extinguished, but in the hearts of the trembling miracle of the descent of God's grace and the joy of Paschal Sunday, and Paschal week, as a single day, rejoiced in the Church of God, and the blasphemous, impudent heart, breathing malice, was already preparing an act of terrible blasphemy.