The Exaltation and the Veneration of the Cross

The Church does not only teach the Cross; she venerates it, and the veneration is itself a doctrinal statement. This file sets out the three principal commemorations — 14 September, the Third Sunday of Great Lent, and 1 August — the theology of the veneration as defined at Nicaea II, and the paradox that the Church’s most exultant feast of the Cross is kept as a strict fast.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

What Is Deferred

The history of the finding of the Cross under St. Helena, the attestation of the relics, and the events at Jerusalem that lie behind the feast of 14 September are treated in the collection on St. Constantine and St. Helen, which pins each element to its earliest witness and does not accept the later legendary accretions (see The Attestation Ledger; The Elevation of the Cross Feast). The feast as one of the Twelve is treated in the feasts collection (see The Exaltation of the Cross). This file does not duplicate them; it treats the veneration theologically.

The Three Commemorations

14 September — the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross. The chief feast, one of the Twelve Great Feasts, at whose vigil the cross is brought out and elevated toward the four points of the compass while “Lord, have mercy” is sung a hundred times at each elevation. It is the only Great Feast of the year kept as a strict fast, because its subject is the Passion.

The Third Sunday of Great Lent — the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (Stavroproskynēsis). Placed at the midpoint of the Fast, when the effort has become wearying, the cross is brought into the middle of the church and venerated, and the hymn “Before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify” replaces the Trisagion. The rationale is stated in the propers: as travellers on a long road are refreshed by the shade of a tree, so the faithful are refreshed at mid-Lent by the tree of the Cross, and are reminded that the Fast leads to Pascha (The Lenten Triodion, the Third Sunday of Great Lent).

1 August — the Procession of the Precious Wood. A commemoration of Constantinopolitan origin, in which the relic of the Cross was carried through the city in August as a protection against the diseases of late summer; in the Slavic tradition it is joined to the lesser blessing of water and to the commemoration of the baptism of Rus’.

Beyond these, the Cross is venerated at every service in which the sign is made, at the dismissal of every Liturgy, and on Wednesdays and Fridays, which the octoechos assigns to the Cross throughout the year.

The Theology of the Veneration: What Is Actually Being Honoured

The dogmatic ground was settled in the iconoclast controversy, and the Cross was one of the test cases.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) defined that “the venerable and life-giving Cross” is to be honoured together with the icons of Christ, the Theotokos, the angels, and the saints, with veneration (τιμητικὴ προσκύνησις) and not with the worship (λατρεία) that belongs to the divine nature alone; and it stated the principle that governs the whole practice: “the honour paid to the image passes to the prototype” (Nicaea II, Definition; in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1; see The Seventh Ecumenical Council, 787).

Three consequences bear on the doctrine of the atonement.

The Cross is honoured because of what happened on it, not for itself. Wood is wood. What is venerated is Christ crucified, reached through the sign; the distinction is exactly the one Nicaea II drew for the icons, and the Cross was the least controversial instance of it — even the iconoclasts venerated the bare cross, which is why it is the one image that appears in the churches of the iconoclast period (see The Imperial Iconoclasm, 726–787).

Matter can bear grace. The argument for venerating the Cross is the same argument as for venerating icons and relics, and it is Christological: the Word took flesh, and matter is therefore capable of being a vehicle of the divine energies. St. John of Damascus makes the point in exactly this connection: “I do not venerate matter, but I venerate the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake” (On the Divine Images I.16; trans. Louth, PPS 24; see John of Damascus and the Defence). A theology in which the Cross were merely the site of a legal transaction would have no reason to venerate it; a theology in which the Cross is the point at which God in flesh transformed death has every reason.

The instrument of death has become the instrument of life. This is what the hymns mean by calling the Cross “life-giving” (zōopoios) — not that the wood confers life, but that what was an instrument of execution now names the source of life. The transformation is the whole point of the veneration, and it is inseparable from the paradox of the feast.

The Paradox of the Feast

That the Church keeps her most exultant celebration of the Cross as a strict fast is the most compressed statement of her doctrine available.

The hymns of 14 September are triumphal without qualification. The Cross is “the beauty of the Church,” “the establishment of the faithful,” “the weapon of peace and invincible trophy,” “the guardian of the whole world”; the troparion asks the Lord to save his people and “by the power of Thy Cross” to preserve them. And the same day is kept without oil or wine, because what is being celebrated is an execution (The Festal Menaion, 14 September, pp. 131–163; see The Exaltation of the Cross).

Neither register is allowed to cancel the other. The Church does not soften the horror into a symbol, and she does not treat the horror as the last word. The refrain sung at the veneration on Great Friday holds both in one sentence: “We venerate Thy Passion, O Christ: show us also Thy glorious Resurrection.” That is the doctrine of the atonement in a liturgical rubric.

Why the Liturgical Evidence Is Primary

There is a methodological point here worth stating plainly, because it governs how this collection weighs its sources.

The Church has never defined a theory of the atonement, but she has never stopped praying about the Cross, and lex orandi, lex credendi — the rule of prayer is the rule of belief — is not a slogan but an operative principle of Orthodox theology (see Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi). Where a doctrinal question is not settled by council, the Church’s settled prayer is the best evidence of what she holds.

Applied here, the evidence is consistent and it points in one direction. The paschal troparion says death is trampled by death. The Anaphora of St. Basil says the Son gave himself a ransom to death and descended through the Cross into Hades. The festal icon of the Resurrection shows the gates of Hades broken. The Great Friday veneration hymn already asks for the Resurrection. The Exaltation calls the Cross a trophy. In none of these is God the party to be appeased; in all of them the enemy is death and the outcome is life (see The Orthodox Assessment).

The Cross determines the shape of the Orthodox church building and its furnishings: the cruciform plan of the Byzantine church, the cross surmounting the dome, the cross on the altar table, the hand-cross with which the priest blesses, the cross traced in chrism at baptism and chrismation, the cross incised on the prosphora and cut into the Lamb at the prothesis, and the pectoral cross worn from baptism. The three-barred cross of the Slavic tradition — with the title-board above and the slanted footrest below, the latter often explained as pointing to the repentant and the impenitent thief — is a later development of the same iconography.

None of this is ornament. A tradition that regards the Cross as a completed transaction has no particular reason to carve it into its bread; a tradition that regards it as the door through which life enters the world puts it everywhere (see The Temple and the Iconostasis).

References

Second Council of Nicaea (787), Definition. In Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.
John of Damascus. Three Treatises on the Divine Images I.16. Trans. Andrew Louth, Popular Patristics Series 24. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.
The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (The Exaltation of the Cross, 14 September, pp. 131–163.)
The Lenten Triodion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1978. (The Third Sunday of Great Lent; the services of Great Week.)
The Pentecostarion. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1990.
Schmemann, Alexander. Great Lent: Journey to Pascha. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1969. (On the placement of the Sunday of the Cross.)