The Feast of the Cross

In today's Gospel reading, of course, Christ is speaking about his works, and he's pointing to the main work that he would be doing, which is his death on the cross.

And the epistles, as you heard this morning, are related to our life of sacrifice and also the mystery of the cross.

The mystery that whatever God revealed to us in the cross is revealed to those who want to believe.

And it will be seen as foolishness to those who don't.

So there are many things that we can, of course, say about the cross.

We sign ourselves with the cross and we sign other things.

We hang the cross in our churches and our homes.

And so today I want to reflect on the cross is our weapon and our hope.

Because you will notice that in the doxologies and in many of the chants, we say the cross is our weapon, the cross is our hope, the cross is our confirmation in our trials and sufferings.

And actually the text of that doxology, so as a reminder, we have six domes on each side of the church.

Six here, six here, and they are the visions of heaven.

The visions of heaven in the Old Testament, the visions of heaven in the New Testament.

The cross, the death of Christ on the cross was prophesied in the Old Testament and of course is known in the New Testament.

So therefore the cross domes are on both sides.

The bands in the domes are related to the Feast of the Cross.

And you will find that the bands are the different doxologies from the Feast of the Cross.

And so they are paired with an icon that is adjacent to it.

So for example, the one of St. Stephen, because he was a consecrated deacon and he offered incense.

So the prayer is the doxology that is related to This is this dome.

I won't go through all the domes, but the one back there... next to Revelation, which is St. John, that dome in Revelation has a vision of God defeating evil, Christ defeating evil.

And so the band in the adjacent dome, the last dome, is that the cross is our weapon, the cross is our hope, the cross is our confirmation in our struggles and sufferings.

So if you forget the doxology of the Feast of the Cross, you could just go see the domes.

So in our lives, there is the cross of Christ that we look at.

And in our homes, we need to have a cross in different places.

We should have a cross next to our front door and we should have a cross in an area that I am commonly, I sit so that when I sit, I see that cross, okay? So two places we should always have a cross in the house.