Sermon on the Adoration of the Life Giving Cross

The Word of Saint John of Kronstadt on the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross

My beloved in Christ brethren! We celebrate today the feast of Elevation of the Holy and Life-giving Cross of our Lord. When the Patriarch Macarius, one and a half thousand years ago elevated, in the presence of the empress Helene and a multitude of people, the Life-giving Cross of our Lord, the same Cross, which had been recovered by the empress, then the empress and all the people, looking at it with devotion and as though seeing the Savior, hanging from it covered with blood, and in inexpressible sufferings living the last hours of his life, full of suffering for our sake, would fall down with fear and love and cry out in one voice: Lord, have mercy!
Brothers and sisters in the Lord! Now, in front of us is the cross of our Lord, let us recall and imagine, as vividly as we can, the Lord of glory, who had been crucified for our sake, and let us shed tears for our sins, with which we crucify our Lord day after day; let us shed tears about our disobedience to our Lord, about our earthly and material reasoning and the neglect of the heavenly things, about our multitudinous mundane passions, about our lack of love toward God and the neighbor, about our self-love and all other passions, proceeding from it, about our love of idleness, laziness, and from all our heart, with tears, let us say: Lord, have mercy on us! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who has shed your Blood for the sake of our salvation, have mercy on us, who lack faith, who are proud, evil, envious, money-loving, avaricious, world-loving, carnal, gormandizers, lazy and negligent – and especially, in our salvation, depressed, low-spirited, grumbling, and turn all our hearts to Thee, our Life-giver, so that we no longer love or seek anything in this world, but Thee, and the eternal blessings of Thy Kingdom, acquired for us by Thy blood. Lord! With your fear, like with nails, heal our flesh. Lord! Turn away our hearts from anything worldly,. Amen.