The Cross September 14 Today the Cross is exalted, lifted up, elevated, in a call for us to remember, and to reaffirm the cross in our lives as a center point. Our North Star for guiding us to the heavenly kingdom. As such we recognize that the feast today is a commemoration of a very important woman in the history of The Church. St. Helen, the mother of St. Constantine the Great. As the mother of the emperor she had great influence and great wealth. In her old age she had many choices regarding her influence and wealth. She could have decided to travel the world, to retire to a fabulous estate and indulge in all the world has to offer. She could have taken up some fun hobby, or become a cruiser, and spend her time on a luxurious yacht. But she was a very sincere, pious follower of Jesus Christ and she determined to use her influence and wealth to find the true cross of Christ, and to advance the Kingdom with her wealth. She took on a very arduous trip from Constantinople to Jerusalem. She made extensive inquiries as to the locale of the cross, thinking that surely someone would remember, or there must have been a record of where the Savior was crucified. Eventually she did find it and the feast today is a remembrance of this heroic feat, and it is also about God revealing the True Cross of Christ to His Church. This is the source of this Feastday, and the joy it brings to us all. The Roman Empire was innovative. They devised ways of putting down rebellion that we effective. They created the best torture device that had ever been created at that time. It was very effective at torture and execution of criminals. It was great for discouraging crime because it offered a public deterrent effect as well. Everyone watched and learned how horrible it was. It was called The Cross. There were times when crosses lined the streets. As people walked between cities they would see the criminals hanging in agony, for days, sometimes weeks. There was no hope for anyone sentenced to die this way. It worked because it was a shameful way to die. It was very public and the name of the criminal was put above his head. It was the Roman Curse. Today we honor and give glory to God for the Cross—this instrument of our salvation. We hear in the hymns of this feast day: “The Cross is the guardian of the whole world. The Cross is the beauty of the Church. The Cross is the might of kings. The Cross is the confirmation of the faithful. The cross is the glory of the angels…and the wounding of demons.” Jesus turned the Roman curse into His Glory. The Cross is everything for us! We bring it out to the center of the Church. We decorate it with beautiful and fragrant flowers. We bow down low before its life-giving wood. In all of these outward movements, we give Glory to God for the Cross. But that is not enough. Will we be able to exalt the Cross in our own lives? Has the Cross’s meaning penetrated the very fabric of our being? This feast day is one that is unknown to many in the modern Christian world because you will not find it anywhere in Holy Scripture. It is found rather through Holy Tradition—in the history books and in the hymnography of the Ancient Church. When our Lord was taken down from the Cross, the instrument of His death remained on Golgotha for some time before it was eventually thrown down into the trash heap near the spot of the crucifixion. A few decades later, after the city of Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70, Emperor Hadrian gave orders to build a temple over the land where the cross was buried. The temple was to be built to the Roman Goddess Venus who was the Goddess of fornication, lust, and desire. So imagine if you will, for several hundred years, on the very spot that the True God gave His life for the human race, watching invisibly, as His own creation offered sacrifices to the Goddess of the Passions just a few meters above the Cross of Christ. When we come into an Orthodox Church, we see the cross of Christ depicted literally everywhere. It is on the Altar table, on the top of the Royal doors, even on the fabric of vestments. Many of our Churches are even designed to be constructed in the shape of the cross, leaving the faithful to worship in the very center of it. The Cross is everywhere. It is raised. It is prominent. It is exalted. Can we claim the same thing with our own spiritual crosses? How much is the cross exalted within us? Does our Lord’s love take precedent in our own lives, above everything else in this world? Or is it sometimes buried, neglected, and “thrown into the trash heap” as we occupy ourselves with earthly concerns? After Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which stopped the persecution of Christians throughout the empire, his mother St. Helen went to Jerusalem to find the Holy Places that had been decimated and buried by the pagans. After years of searching, she met with an elderly Hebrew man named Jude who told her that Golgotha was buried beneath the temple of the Roman god of the passions. The entire Christian world celebrated and rejoiced at the finding of the true cross! It was lifted up and exalted on high. One year later, Emperor Constantine ordered that the area surrounding Golgotha and the Empty Tomb be enclosed in a massive Church that was finished nine years after the finding of the Cross. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher (although it has been rebuilt several times throughout history) still stands today over those sacred sites, welcoming Christian pilgrims from around the world. The history of the Cross reminds us of the one thing that is needed in order to dig through the trash heap of our passions and to dig out the spiritual cross that is within us—effort. Being a half a world removed from the Holy Places that St. Constantine and Helen preserved for us, we do not have the benefit of walking into the Holy Sepulcher and physically experiencing the energy that radiates from the tomb of Christ. Rather, we gain true knowledge of the power of the Cross by doing what our Lord tells us today in the Gospel: Denying ourselves of our own selfish wants and desires, taking up our hardships, sufferings, and doubts, and following after Him. God’s purpose in this world is to re-create beings who are like him, who freely, willingly, choose love, choose the good, choose him. And love cannot be forced. So Christ came to us and loved us to the end. – “Greater love has no man than that he should give up his life for his friends.” John 15:13 – and said “Come, follow me.” The apostles and the early Church continued Christ’s approach. They set the example and loved people into loving God. “Look how these Christians love one another.” Where is the Kingdom of God to be found on earth? In one place alone: “The Kingdom of God is at hand” where Jesus Christ is at hand. And he is at hand where he promised: in his One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church – the Church as it was in apostolic times. By the word of the Lord, “death will never prevail against my Church” Matthew 16:18, because she is his Body. Today the call goes out again. Come to the Cross. Give up your whole life to Him. Embrace this instrument of shame, embrace the Jesus who hung upon it. Live no longer for yourself but come and ask Him to be the Lord of your life. The Lord said, Let him who would come after me, deny yourself, take up the cross and follow me. This is what we do. Every year, every month, every day, every hour, every minute. As you again plant the Cross in your hearts again today, as we plant it again in the center of this Church, let us replant a commitment to this holy house and to the One who dwells in it. What legacy will we leave behind? What will we leave to the next generation of believers? When we sing these songs today, sing them with fervor and spirit, with a new dedication in your hearts. When we bow down before the Cross, bow your heart as well and whisper your dedication to following Christ our True God. When we leave this holy house today, remember to always have the Cross before your eyes and in your hearts, that we would be true Christians.