O Lord, save Your people, / and bless Your inheritance. / Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians / over their adversaries. / And by virtue of Your Cross, / preserve Your habitation. (Troparion of the Feast, Tone 1)
On the feast of the Universal Exaltation of the Holy Cross, His Eminence Vladimir, Metropolitan of Chisinau and all Moldova, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Nativity of the Lord in Chisinau.
Vadim Cheibas, the Metropolitan Secretary and Dean of the Cathedral, together with the priests and deacons, assisted the hierarch during the service.
Unlike other great feasts, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is celebrated with fasting, because it reminds us of the Passion and death on the cross of the Savior.
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Your Cross we worship, O Christ, and Your holy Resurrection we praise and glorify. “
Today we commemorate the exaltation of the holy and life-giving Cross; the cross on which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ suffered for our salvation…. The Cross, which was once a shameful instrument of torture and condemnation, but is now the holy sign of our deliverance from the condemnation of sin, of victory over death, sanctified by the priceless blood which flowed upon it from the hands and feet of Him who was pierced with the stake and stabbed with the spear.
Many healings and other miracles have been done and are being done both through the Lord’s Cross and its image. Through it, the Lord protects His people from all enemies seen and unseen. The Orthodox Church commemorates with great solemnity the finding of the Holy Cross, while also remembering the vision of the Cross to Emperor Constantine.
Today, when the efforts of the worldly rulers to establish order on earth remain fruitless, the world’s only weapon of hope remains that of which the Church sings: “The Cross is the defense of the whole world, the Cross is the beauty of the Church, the Cross is the power of kings, the Cross is the strength of the faithful, the Cross is the glory of angels and the wound of demons”.
Synodal Sector for Institutional Communication and Media Relations