The Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross

Categories: orthodox-life, parish-life, feast-days

Date: 13 September 2008 13:31:20

Troparion - Tone 1:
O Lord, save Your people,
And bless Your inheritance.
Grant victories to Your people
Over their adversaries.
And by virtue of Your Cross,
Preserve Your habitation.

Kontakion - Tone 4:
As You were voluntarily raised upon the cross for our sake,
Grant mercy to those who are called by Your Name, O Christ God;
Make all Orthodox Christians glad by Your power,
Granting them victories over their adversaries,
By bestowing on them the Invincible trophy, Your weapon of Peace.

Matins' Gospel: John 12:28-36
Epistle: St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 1:18-24
Gospel: John 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30

Today [September 14; the Orthodox day begins at sunset] is the Great Feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross. The Divine Liturgy, whose text is usually fixed excluding readings and any hymn for the Feast of the Day, changes a bit more, most noticeably with different antiphons and with the Trisagion replaced with:

Before Your Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Your holy Resurrection we glorify. (x3)
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
And Your holy Resurrection we glorify.

Before Your Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Your holy Resurrection we glorify.

After the service, the faithful make prostrations before and venerate the Cross, which is placed in the centre of the Church.

The Cross, central to Christianity, is also so in Orthodoxy: however, it is never separated, cannot be separated even, from the Resurrection -- or from the entirety of Christ's life. As you can see from the above hymn, the Resurrection is mentioned in the same line as the Cross: and it is so not only in Orthodoxy hymnography but Orthodox thought and theology too. On Holy and Great Friday, while we sing of the Cross, the cry "Show us also Your glorious Resurrection!" is sung too. Even at the Great Feast of the Nativity of Christ [Christmas], the icon of the Feast recalls the death and burial of Christ: his manger and swaddling clothes resembling a tomb and the linen shroud.

Tonight I had a foretaste of this Feast, attending the Saturday evening English Liturgy at the beautiful St Stylianos Church [which is a "tri-hypostatic church" as I learnt from their website: apart from the main Altar dedicated to St Stylianos, it also has two Chapels dedicated to Ss Peter & Paul and St Gregory Palamas]. St Stylianos is a parish in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia: each month a different parish is having Saturday Divine Liturgy services in English. I had not visited St Stylianos' before, and it was a great pleasure to. There were a few of us visiting, though we call came without knowing each other, and we were all made to feel very welcome. The chanting, by the sole chanter there tonight, was superb, and aided greatly in lifting us up to heaven in worship of the blessed Trinity. It was a blessing also to catch up with a priest and his wife whom I know after the service, as well as the priest of the parish and some parishioners.

And the day remains warm...it is 22:30 and still around 23°C. Summer is well and truly approaching.

A blessed Feast Day to all!