Homily Four for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (St. John of Kronstadt)

By St. John of Kronstadt

“We venerate Your Cross, O Master,
and Your holy Resurrection we praise and glorify.”

What is the thinking behind the Holy Church bringing out from the depths of the altar the life-giving Cross of the Lord and offering it for the veneration and kissing of the faithful? The thought is that her true children - who go through the field of fasting and struggle with their flesh with its many passions and with the devil, who during the fast especially kindles his arrows in their flesh - gazing at the Cross and vividly imagining the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He endured for our salvation in His most pure flesh, be strengthened through this for the struggle with their flesh, with her passions and lusts, and so that they do not spare to crucify her with her passions, and courageously fight against the adversary, who is arrayed against us with manifold temptations.

Homily Nine on the Passion (St. Luke of Simferopol)

 

Homily Nine on the Passion

By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea

(Delivered on March 19, 1950)

Your hearts trembled when I read to you the terrible tale of the Savior’s death on the cross. This is necessary, it is useful for you: it is necessary that you always shudder when you look at the cross of Christ or remember it.

We need you to remember the vile and terrible images of the God-killers: high priests, scribes and elders (about which I told you last Sunday). It is necessary that you reject with your heart, as the most vile, the most unbearable for the human heart, the most terrible thing that has ever happened in the world, the accursed betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ by His own disciple.

Homily for the Middle of the Week of the Veneration of the Cross (St. John of Kronstadt)

By St. John of Kronstadt

"God forbid that I should boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14).

Last time, beloved, we heard with what praise the holy men of God spoke about the Cross. Now, together with the apostle and with them, I, a great sinner, want to boast in the power of the life-giving Cross: for is it possible for a priest, who performs all services and all mysteries by the power of the Cross and with the participation of the cross, not to experience its saving power on himself: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). And I would be very ungrateful before my Savior and Lord if I were silent before the ecclesiastical gathering about the miraculous power of His Cross, which has so often shown and constantly shows its power on me: “Keep the king’s secret well, but reveal the works of God gloriously” (Tob. 12:11).

Homily Three on the Sunday of the Cross: The Passion of the Savior

 

Homily Three on the Sunday of the Cross

The Passion of the Savior

By Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)

(Delivered in 1970)

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, the Holy Church, zealous for the spiritual success of its children, during the days of Great Lent deliberately invites our attention to the memory of the saving passion of Christ in order, on the one hand, to induce us to a living consciousness of the criminality and destruction of sin, which brought the God-man to the Cross, and, on the other hand, to tell us about the boundless mercy of God towards people, about the endless love of God the Father for us, who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Homily Three for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (St. John of Kronstadt)

By St. John of Kronstadt

Before our eyes the Cross of the Lord, whose power is often glorified in ecclesiastical prayers and hymns, is set up for reverent veneration and kissing. Beloved, I would like to tell you now a few words about its power, or about its miracles. Intending to speak of this, on the one hand, I see everywhere its miraculous power, and I do not know where to stop, what occasion to take as an example of the life-giving power of the Cross; I also see the great reverence that was given to the life-giving Cross by the ancients. On the other hand, alas! I see very few experiences of its power in the people of our time, and I immediately see the reason why it exerts so little of its miraculous power: precisely because the Lord performed so few miracles in His fatherland, i.e., because of ignorance, because of the lawless, non-Christian life of Christians. Thus, beloved brethren, the history of the Christian Church presents many experiences of the miraculous power of the Cross - because then there was more faith in people, more true Christians. The life-giving Cross is gloriously glorified even today, but today we see much fewer examples of its miraculousness, namely, only in those few people who live by faith.

Questions and Answers on the Presanctified Liturgy - Part 4 (St. Symeon of Thessaloniki)

 

 

By St. Symeon, Archbishop of Thessaloniki

 

Question 58

 

At the time of the Presanctified Liturgy, do we offer a portion of the divine bread or the whole?

 

Answer

 

The bread must not be a portion, but a complete bread, so that after being cut according to custom and broken, it can be given. It remains from the completed liturgy, and zeon is poured into the cup, not to complete anything - this is not why it is poured into the completed liturgy - but so that the dread cup may become lukewarm, and by this is meant, that with the death of Christ His life-giving body was inseparable and undivided from the divinity, as well as from the divine soul, and filled with the energies of the Holy Spirit. The warmth signifies that the life-giving Spirit did not depart from the life-giving body of Christ, nor was His divinity separated. And the water is an image of the Spirit, who is sometimes called water, and the warmth is an image of the fire of divinity, for it is said: "Our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29). That is why is added: “The warmth of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” So the divine gifts, being complete, do not receive more grace, but are intended only for us, so that we can be sanctified by them and by prayers.

 

 

Homily Two for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (St. John of Kronstadt)

By St. John of Kronstadt

Today, beloved brothers and sisters, I will offer you, with God's help, a discourse for today's apostolic reading. In it, the Apostle Paul speaks of the great High Priest who passed through heaven, Jesus the Son of God, and exhorts us to hold fast to the confession of our faith, that is, not to faint in temptations, sorrows, and persecutions for the sake of the faith, for we do not have a High Priest who cannot have compassion on us in our infirmities, but who, like us, is tempted in all things except sin, and, how "He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is also able to aid those who are tempted" (Hebrews 2:18); then the Apostle exhorts us to approach boldly to the throne of grace, that is, to the Lord Jesus Christ who sits on the throne, in order to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

And what else are you, brothers and sisters, doing when you often gather in this temple for public prayer, for approaching repentance of sins and communion of the Holy Mysteries, if not the very thing that today’s apostolic reading convinces us of. You approach the throne of grace with faith and hope in order to receive mercy from the Lord, forgiveness of sins in repentance and communion of the divine Mysteries of the body and blood of the Lord, sanctification, reinforcement for further life, or for further exploits, and the deification of souls.

Homily Two on the Sunday of the Cross: The Passion of the Savior

 

Homily Two on the Sunday of the Cross

The Passion of the Savior

By Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)

(Delivered in 1962)

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

"Oh, that my grief were fully weighed, and my calamity laid with it on the scales! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea" (Job 6:2-3).

So severe were the sufferings and illnesses of the great Old Testament sufferer - the righteous Job! But immeasurably harder and more terrible than the suffering of Job was the suffering of that great Man of suffering, of whom Job was only a prototype—the suffering of our Redeemer, the God-man Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that could make suffering unbearably cruel and impart unbearable severity to it - everything was united in the torment of the Sufferer of Golgotha.

Homily One for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (St. John of Kronstadt)

 

By St. John of Kronstadt

To facilitate the feat of fasting, the Holy Church established the elevation of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord in the very middle of Lent. He who truly fasts must inevitably endure the sorrow of the flesh, the persistent struggle of the spirit against it, and, to top it all, the machinations of the devil, who acts on our soul through various thoughts that bring great sadness, especially to those who are not yet firm and imperfect in the Christian life.

May the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, now carried for veneration and for heartfelt contemplation and kissing, comfort such fasters, and may their feat be made easier. May all those who do not fast with true fasting, and those who do not fast at all, not be deprived of its consolations. Let everyone come with faith and love, and let the Savior kiss him. May the divine Sufferer teach everyone from His Cross the important duty of a Christian - fasting and mortification of our sin-loving flesh.