Exaltation of the Holy Cross

This is the only one of the Twelve Great Feasts kept as a strict fast day. The joy of it is of a particular kind: what is celebrated is an instrument of execution.

By the fourth century the place of the Crucifixion had been buried and built over — a pagan temple stood on Golgotha. In 326 the empress Helen, mother of Constantine, came to Jerusalem to search for the Cross. Digging beneath the temple uncovered a cave, and in it three crosses: Christ's and those of the two thieves, with the inscription fallen away. Which of the three? Tradition says each was brought in turn to a gravely ill woman — in another account, to a funeral procession — and at the touch of one of them healing followed.

So great a crowd had gathered that few could come near. Patriarch Macarius therefore climbed to a high place and began to lift, to exalt, the Cross above the people, turning to every side, while thousands answered him with a single phrase: Lord, have mercy. That is where the name of the feast comes from.

A second memory

On the same day the Church recalls the return of the Cross from Persian captivity in 629. The emperor Heraclius carried it into Jerusalem himself in imperial robes, and at the city gate could not take a single step until he had laid aside crown and purple and walked barefoot, as an ordinary man.

How it is kept

September 27 (September 14 on the old calendar). At the vigil the priest carries a flower-adorned cross out of the altar and lays it in the middle of the church; in cathedrals and monasteries the rite of exaltation is served. The cross remains for veneration until October 4. The day is a strict fast whatever day of the week it falls on: the feast remembers not a triumph but a crucifixion.

O Lord, save Your people and bless Your inheritance; grant victory to Orthodox Christians over their adversaries, and by virtue of Your Cross preserve Your habitation.