Sunday after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

On the day we remember the Cross, we must pay particular attention to what Divine Love is. God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son unto death, so that no-one, no-one should be forgotten and left aside.

But if that is true, how should we look at one another and treat one another? If each of us is so meaningful to God, if He loves him to such an extent that His life is given, His death is accepted - how should we treat our neighbor?! There are people whom we love in a natural way, who are akin to us in mind, in emotion, in so many ways - but is that love? Does that mean that we love this person as the most precious person in the eyes of God and the most precious person in my eyes, because I want to be with God, share His thoughts, His attitude to life?

And how many there are whom we treat with indifference: we wish them no evil - they don’t exist for us! Let us look around, here, in this congregation, now and week after week, and ask ourselves, “What does this person mean to me?” - Nothing; just someone who attends the same church, who believes in the same God, who receives the same communion - and we forget that those who have received this same communion have become part of the body of Christ, that God Himself lives in them, and that we should turn to them, look at them and see in them the temples of the Holy Spirit, an extension of the Incarnation.

Let us ask ourselves severe, pertinent questions about the way in which we treat our neighbor and we see our neighbor. Let us devote a whole week perhaps to thinking of one person after the other and ask ourselves, ‘Is there any love in me for this person?’ Not a sentimental love, but the kind of love which in the light of God makes this person precious, - precious to the point that I should be prepared, ultimately, yes, to give my life for this person. This is not asked day after day, but what is asked is that we should give some warmth, some compassion, some understanding, some recognition to the existence of this person. And when we come to confession next week, let us bring that, among other things, to God: does my neighbor exist for me? Who is he to me? To God he is everything; if he is nothing to me, where do I stand before God? Amen.

- Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom)

THE LEGEND OF THE TREE OF THE CROSS

The Tree of the Holy Cross and the site where it grew are sanctified in ecclesiastical sources. In legends and ancient tradition they are linked back to the biblical patriarch Abraham or earlier still to Seth, the son of Adam, planting a twig by his father’s tomb.

The legend recounts that the three Angels who visited Abraham (Genesis 18) left him their staffs before proceeding to Sodom. After Lot sinned with his daughters at Sodom, he confessed to Abraham who instructed him to plant the staffs in the environs of Jerusalem and give them water from the Jordan River – their blossoming would signify that God accepted his penance.

Lot planted the staffs in the valley outside Jerusalem where the Monastery of the Cross stands today. His unceasing attempts to haul water from the Jordan were stymied by Satan for 40 years before he finally managed to water the staffs, and they immediately blossomed and grew into a triplet pine/cypress/cedar Tree. During King Solomon’s reign, the Tree was felled for timber in the building of the Judaic Temple, however, the beams would fit nowhere and were cast aside as cursed – the very ones that would make Jesus Christ’s Cross in later times.

The Fathers Speak…

Abba John used to say that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but all watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in all of them.

- The Desert Fathers

Blessed is the one who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and beginning of all that is good and beautiful. Love sinners but hate their works; and do not despise them for their faults, lest you also be tempted.

- St. Isaac the Syrian