Today is the Forefeast of the Procession of the Honourable Wood of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord.  From the 1st August, the actual day of the Feast, through to the Dormition, and in the period of Our Lady’s Fast, a relic of the true Cross was processed on a daily basis through the streets of Constantinople for the faithful to venerate near their homes.  Today the veneration tends to take place with a procession just on 1st August itself.  Mindful that this is only tomorrow, we shall have the procession at the end of the Liturgy today and leave the Cross in the Church until the Feast of the Dormition for veneration by the people.

It is fitting that we are reminded of the centrality of the Cross in our Christian lives at all times but especially before the feast of our Lord’s Transfiguration on 6th August.  The glorification, that is God’s transformation of our humanity into the likeness of Christ can only come about through the sacrifice of the Cross, a cross, our cross, that we must take up daily in following Him.  This is worked out through self-giving love which, of course, is the very meaning of the Cross.  The Church fellowship or koinonia is the arena where that loving must be expressed and refined—and then in the world.

St Paul in the Apostle reading today from Romans gives us an excellent description of a cross shaped Church, a Church in which its members are being glorified through sacrifice, and even, sometimes and ultimately by martyrdom.  Let us hear his words again, a very short but vivid extract.  (Romans 12:6-14)

Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.  Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honour giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

I cannot imagine matching any of those calls to holiness and mutual service in love without the power of the cross to inspire and guide me.  We can and should venerate the cross by kissing it, by making its sign on our bodies and in our minds and hearts; but the truest test of the Cross’s centrality in our lives is the breadth and depth of our loving.  If we truly know by the power of Christ’s cross just how much God loves us in surrendering Himself to our sin and death on Calvary, then how can we not extend that self-sacrificing love to others … and especially to those who hate us.

We have been reminded this week of something we have always known but now have to confront personally.  Christians have been and are, for some at least, a hated race.  Fr Jacques Hamel (Memory Eternal!) died at the hands of two brutal assassins in a district of Rouen in France.  He was, of course, serving Mass at the time; doing what a priest always does – offering the Holy Oblation of Christ’s Sacrifice in the Eucharist for the good of all.  He completed that sacrifice in and by his own.  All churches now, indeed under government advice and instruction, will be taking steps to improve security, and we shall be attending to that this week.  I shall speak more about this at the end of the Liturgy.  For now, I want us to concentrate on the martyrdom of this elderly priest and learn from it. 

When confronted with evil, as St Paul taught in that epistle, we do two things.  We abhor it.  That part is not difficult, at least for decent people of all faiths and none.  The second part is more challenging: “(we) cling to what is good.”  St Paul reinforces this later in the chapter when he says: “overcome evil with good.” (12:21) Revenge can have no part in our way of life. 

This can be illustrated from a saint we commemorated on Friday, St Olaf, King of Norway (1030).  Interestingly, there is a Rouen connection here as well since Olaf was probably baptised as a 15-year-old prince in that city rather than in Norway itself.  (Remember that the Normans were originally just Vikings who had settled in northern France).  Evidently, he did not take his Christianity very seriously until, that is, he started raiding England with his mates.  It was the English Christians, led by King Alfred a generation earlier, who had formerly realised that these opportunist Viking thugs could not be tamed by military might alone.  They had to be evangelised; they had to be tamed and civilised by the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is how Olaf came himself came to be a true Christian and a wise ruler of his people, even making penance for the suffering he had formerly caused to the English. 

Now, however preposterous this might seem to some, particularly those outside our faith, the only way to deal with Daesh, IS or any other variant of Islamist jihadism is to preach the Gospel to them.  Of course, this is a fast route to martyrdom; but so what?  We shall not only be saving souls but also saving innocent lives and indeed nations.  However, the west has itself now become apostate to Christianity, rejecting it scornfully in its secularised institutions and in the very culture itself.  In this, it is in fact doing the Islamists’ job for them; under the guise of some sort of misplaced fake toleration.  The holy task of evangelising the jihadists, of preaching the Good News to them will consequently fall more and more to the Orthodox alone.  Of course it is not just to the jihadists that we must preach the gospel, but to anyone who will hear.  This also is how we venerate the Holy Cross, by witnessing to its power before men and not being ashamed or cowardly concerning the message of salvation.  Jesus Christ is for the whole world, the world for which He died in its entirety, not just a little club of frightened Christians who have been told that they must mind their own business.  Our business is the Gospel for all, without exception.

​So at this holy time of the Procession of the Honourable Wood of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord let us not neglect to take the Good News of salvation in Christ into the streets, towns, cities and countryside of our nation to save at least some who will hear and respond.  Then we can go about rebuilding Britain and Ireland as truly Christian nations.