Homily

How is it that we come to celebrate this feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross? One reason is to remember the work of the Empress St. Helena, mother of Constantine. She travelled to the Holy Land in the years 326 to 328 founding churches at many of the places where important events in the life of Christ took place and also setting up relief agencies to help the poor. Always playing detective she kept interviewing people to try and discover the place where Jesus was killed and buried. She learned that the Emperor Hadrian had built a temple to the goddess Venus over the site where Christians used to go to see the tomb of the Lord in Jerusalem. So Helena had the temple torn down and began digging. She found the hiding place where large fragments of three crosses had been hidden. But which one, or were any of them, the Cross of Christ? One day they were praying with a woman who was very ill and touched the pieces of wood to her, and at the touch of one she was cured, so they believed this was the Cross of Christ. Helena built the Church of the Resurrection on that site, which is now known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The largest piece of the Cross remained in Jerusalem, but other pieces were sent out to different cities. So we remember the finding of the Cross in Jerusalem.

But even more important for this feast was an event which happened some 300 years later. The pagan Persian Empire moved against Byzantium and in the year 614 they conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Church of the Resurrection and carried off the Patriarch and the relic of the True Cross back to Persia. Fourteen years later the Byzantine emperor Heraclius regained Jerusalem and defeated the Persians, bringing the Patriarch and the Cross back to Jerusalem. The people of the city were so glad to have that piece of the Cross back that they demanded to see it so that they could pray to Christ in front of the piece of the Cross on which He died for our salvation. So the Cross was brought out and for hour after hour the faithful filed passed it, touching their eyes to it and kissing it. This became part of the regular cycle of the church year which would fall on September 14th. Ten years later when the Muslim Arabs conquered Jerusalem, this piece of the Cross was taken to Constantinople, and there the yearly exposition and veneration of the Cross was held in great ceremony every September and this celebration spread through the entire Church, as it still is with us today.

The term "Exaltation of the Cross" refers to part of the annual ceremony in Constantinople when the Patriarch would hold up high the piece of the Cross and bless the four corners of the earth with it. So the Ambon prayer near the end of Liturgy today takes that idea of raising up and putting down and uses it over and over again. The prayer proclaims that the Cross is a symbol of TRIUMPH, stating that "we show forth and we venerate it as the sign of the Lord's victory." The prayer describes Christ as the one Who, having suffered under the power of death, has now conquered Death, put it into chains and leads it around as His prisoner.

The prayer says that the Cross is our only boast as we pray to the Lord to subdue and crush all weapons of hatred and tyranny, and to cast down every hand that is raised against His Church, and I'm sure that includes not only those who are outside the Church, but also those who are within it. We ask Christ in this prayer to demolish every proud pretense that raises itself up against His knowledge, and to close every mouth that opens in blasphemy. Instead we pray that He enlighten every heart that is darkened by ignorance, and raise up all of our minds from any thoughts that would keep us from Him. After Christ was lifted up upon the cross, it seemed to all the world that His power and influence were finished, and as He was lowered into the tomb, His memory would soon also fade away like His mortal remains would fade away. But He rose up from the dead, and by His rising He casts down the power of death that had captured the entire human race, even as He lifts up to life eternal all those who are willing to carry their crosses and follow after Him as His disciples, as we heard in the Gospel today.

We all carry our own crosses here today as we continue to do our best to serve the Lord and follow Him. Objectively speaking some of us have very heavy crosses to bear, while other's burdens are not as heavy. It can be very, very easy to get caught up in the drama of our own suffering, and how difficult these things are for us, and we can dwell on them, magnify them, marinate in them, allow them to dominate us and imprison us in their own corruptive embrace. We can recount our miseries to others and replay them in our own minds, and lead ourselves deeper into the trap of believing we are defeated.

Objectively speaking our crosses are not all the same weight. But in the spirit that is not what counts. How heavy they seem to us depends very much on how willing we are to surrender ourselves to the Master, for certainly this is what he meant when he said that for those who were tired and heavily burdened, they should come to Him, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Our cross may be a huge burden, but it will not seem so heavy if we are close to Christ in love and in hope. Our cross may be lighter than the ones that many others carry and this should cause us to be grateful to the Lord, and show that gratitude by converting it into prayer and service for those who are heavily burdened, in the name of the Lord.

Every single time we make the sign of the Cross, we should mark ourselves as people who reject what the fallen world considers to be victory. Every single time we make the sign of the Cross, we should mark ourselves as people who follow only the Lord, Jesus Christ.

May the making of that cross, lead us every closer into the life of the One Who conquered for us, by His Cross.