EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS - 14 SEPTEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 14th of September

THE FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS 

Our Divine Redeemer Jesus Christ is the spiritual King of our souls; and it is by the love and spirit of his cross that he must reign in them. By this happy instrument he has rescued us from the power of sin, and conquered death and hell. 

But do not our sloth and malice still hold out against him? Have the boundless excess of his love, and the omnipotent power of his grace, yet triumphed over our hearts? Is his holy cross planted there? does it daily grow and spread itself in our affections? 

The spirit of the cross, or of Christ crucified, is the spirit of that perfect humility, meekness, charity, patience, and all other virtues, which he preaches to us by his cross. So long as self-love, pride, sensuality, or impatience find any place in us, we are so far strangers to this spirit of Christ, and enemies to his cross. 

PRAYER:

O God, who willed that Your Only Begotten Son

should undergo the Cross to save the human race,

grant, we pray,

that we, who have known his mystery on earth,

may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever.

Amen. 

The discovery of that sacred wood by St Helena gave the first occasion to this festival, which was celebrated under the title of the Exaltation of the Cross on the 14th of September, both by the Greeks and Latins and at Jerusalem from the year 335. 

(All texts, apart from the prayer, from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 📷 c/o St Saviour's)