(Above, icon of the finding of the Cross. Below, Vigil for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross at St. John’s Church.)
An homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 7535/2026, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Let us consider an ancient prophecy of the Cross from more than 2,600 years ago. In the Orthodox (Septuagint) Bible, the Prophet Habakkuk exclaims:
“ O Lord, I have heard thy report, and was afraid: I considered thy works, and was amazed: thou shalt be known between the two living creatures, thou shalt be acknowledged when the years draw nigh; thou shalt be manifested when the time is come; when my soul is troubled, thou wilt in wrath remember mercy.”
Saint Augustine wrote that the “two living creatures” mentioned in Habakkuk’s prophecy of Christ can be understood as the two thieves crucified on either side of our Lord. One, the Wise Thief, sought Jesus’ mercy and received it according to Scripture and Tradition. This is why the so-called foot rest on our Russian Cross, as seen also above our temple, tilts upward to the Right of Christ. “Today you shall be with me in Paradise,” says our Lord, Who through His Cross reopened Paradise for all of us.
This is why also the Wise Thief, known in Russian Orthodoxy as Saint Rakh, historically was portrayed in iconography on a door of the iconostasis to the north of the royal doors. He was depicted as being in Paradise, the meaning of his name in Slavonic. He showed entry into Paradise through Christ, symbolized as an entrance through the iconostasis into the Church altar area, the fulfillment of the old “holy of holies” in the Old Testament Temple, which opens for believers at the time of the Eucharist. The second figure crucified beside our Lord on the other side, the foolish thief, reviled and blasphemously ridiculed Christ. The two thieves represent all of us and each of us, in the conflict between emptying ourselves in Christ versus wrongly asserting ourselves.
Saint Augustine secondly at the same time said the “two living creatures” could represent Moses and Elijah with our Lord at the Transfiguration, with them personifying the law and the prophets. This too relates to our feast today, the Exaltation of the Cross. For today’s feast comes 40 days after the Feast of the Transfiguration, following a traditional timeline for the Crucifixion. The Feast of the Transfiguration is understood by Church Fathers as a day when Jesus Christ showed His glory to His closest disciples, so that they could remember and not be overwhelmed by the Crucifixion to come. Later, the Church deemed the Feast of Transfiguration too joyous to be celebrated during Great Lent, and so it was moved to the harvest time of the season of the fast leading up to the Dormition, which is known as the Summer Pascha. So today’s commemoration of the finding of the Cross under St. Helen and the recovery of the Cross from the heathen Persians was moved to today, 40 days after the Transfiguration. We have in effect a sense of Holy Week here that straddles the beginning of the Church Year. It is a reminder too, so near the Nativity of the Theotokos, of the prophecy by Righteous Simeon to her as a new mother aged 14 that a sword also would pierce her heart—meaning that she would participate in the sorrow of the Crucifixion of her Son, becoming an intercessor for us.
Finally, St. Augustine also said that Habakkuk’s prophecy of “two living creatures” on either side of our Lord could be interpreted in terms of the Old and New Testaments. Our Lord fulfilled both combined in synergy. He fulfilled the Old Testament law and prophets, in His New Testament, as fully God and fully man. The Cross also symbolizes the coming together of the transcendent or divine, with its vertical bar, and the incarnational or human in its horizontal bar. Maybe one could speak also of the coming together of Greek or Gentile wisdom with Old Testament wisdom, since the New Testament was composed in Greek, and the old originally in Hebrew, although it survives most authentically in the Greek Septuagint. The crossing so to speak in that sense indicates the Byzantine aspect of Orthodoxy mixing Greek with biblical terminology and culture, from which Russian Orthodoxy takes her role as the outgrowth of the so-called “Third Rome” of the Christian Roman Empire of the Greek-speaking world.
It could also be said the two creatures, related to this, symbolize the Word and the Son, if the Word is taken as the divine and the Son as the human (although the phrase Son of God can also refer of course to the divine). This coming together of the two natures, fully God and fully man, must be understood however as unconfused and undivided, as the Church teaches, two natures in one Person.
In any case, the Cross, bringing together the transcendent and the incarnational, is the answer to the greatest mystery of classical philosophy, of Plato’s emphasis on the ideal and Aristotle’s emphasis on the organic. They both come together and are fulfilled in the Word made flesh and crucified and Risen.
But ultimately the Cross most of all indicates Christ’s giving of His life for us, of course. The footrest in the Orthodox Cross significantly indicates the outreach from our Lord’s sacrifice to us as saving grace, in His love.
St. Theophan the Recluse, a major saint of 19th century Russia, spoke of the inner meaning of our major feast today in these terms: https://orthochristian.com/48848.html
“The Exaltation of the Lord’s Cross has arrived. Then the Cross was erected on a high place, so that the people could see it and render honor to it. Now, the cross is raised in the churches and monasteries. But this is all external. There is a spiritual exaltation of the cross in the heart. It happens when one firmly resolves to crucify himself, or to mortify his passions—something so essential in Christians that, according to the Apostle, they only are Christ’s who have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts (cf. Gal. 5:24). Having raised this cross in themselves, Christians hold it exalted all their lives. Let every Christian soul ask himself if this is how it is, and let him hearken to the answer that his conscience gives him in his heart. Oh, may we not hear, “You only please your flesh in the passions; your cross is not exalted—it is thrown into the pit of the passions, and is rotting there in negligence and contempt!”
“When the Lord was taken down from the Cross, the Cross remained on Golgotha, and then it was thrown into the pit that was in that place, where this instrument of execution was usually thrown, together with other refuse. Soon Jerusalem was razed and all of its edifices were leveled to the ground. The pit containing the Cross of Christ was also filled over. When the pagans rebuilt the city (the Jews were forbidden to come near the place where it was), it happened that on the place where the Cross of Christ was hidden, they placed an idol of Venus, the pagan Goddess of fornication and all manner of lusts. This is what the enemy suggested to them. This is how it is with our inner cross. When the enemy destroys the spiritual order in the soul, this is our mental Jerusalem, and then the spiritual cross is thrown down from the Golgotha of the heart and is covered over with the garbage of the affections and lusts. Lustful self-pleasure then rises like a tower over all our inner peace, and everything in us bows down to it and fulfills its commands until grace shines upon us, inspiring us to cast down the idol and lift up the cross of self-crucifixion.”
This is why we as Orthodox Christians wear a Cross. Laity wear the Cross next to their skin under their shirt, so it is close to the heart and it is worn in humility that we bear the Cross as such. I did this for 24 years after my baptism into the Orthodox Church. But the last three years of my life, since being ordained as a priest, obediently I now wear a Cross outside my black robes as a priest, publicly around my neck. Why? Purposely to be a fool for Christ, as a sinful Priest who is in the public role of handling the bloodless sacrifice, as a shepherd unworthily representing our Bishop and ultimately our Lord, yet all sinfully in black. For the great human temptation is pride, which led Judas to betray our Lord. Wearing a Cross publicly means I am accountable for my role in the Church and my behavior, and also that I am marked as a target to be killed for others in times of persecution, so that others may be able to escape, which is part of our Russian Orthodox tradition too. It also marks me, like a red light on an old-fashioned emergency phone box, as an Orthodox priest in public for those who are in urgent spiritual need or may try to find the true faith. But we all do and must bear the Cross we receive at baptism as Orthodox Christians in our heart. To do that in the most authentic way we must start by recognizing our own sins first and foremost of all, so that we can follow our Lord. Crucifying our old self, taking up our Cross, we remember how John was the only one of the Apostles who did not meet a violent martyr’s death like our Lord. That is because he did not run from the Crucifixion initially as did the others. He kept with our Lord until the end and embraced the Cross in that way.
But for all the Apostles came the bright morning of the Resurrection. And remember brothers and sisters, every Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the Day of Resurrection, when we are blessed to partake of our Lord’s sacrifice and make ourselves a sacrifice of our lives for Him. Today too is the day of Resurrection. Thus the Cross is the Ladder for us to climb to obey our Lord’s New Commandment, to love one another as He loved us.
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!