THE TRIUMPH OF THE HOLY CROSS September 13, 2026

The feast of the Exaltation or Triumph of the Holy Cross this Monday celebrates an important aspect of Our Lord’s crucifixion, - that far from being a defeat for our Lord, it was a defeat for sin and death. On Good Friday the crucifixion is, rightly, a source of great sorrow to us, when we remember that our sins have brought such suffering on Our Lord. But today we rejoice in the benefits Christ has won for us by enduring His cross.

     The imagery of the Cross is closely connected with the Fall of our first parents. The cross is sometimes described in Scripture as a “tree”, since it was made of the wood from a tree. Now it was from a tree that Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit and so brought ruin on our race. The Triumph, or Exaltation, of the Cross celebrates Christ’s undoing of the evil effect of Adam’s sin of disobedience by His own obedience to His Father’s Will.

      Christ humbly accepted God’s decree that Salvation for the human race would effectively come from the same tree as had brought our original disaster. The wood of disobedience and defeat became the wood of obedience and victory.

     The Preface of the Mass, which opens the Eucharistic Prayer, makes this clear in addressing our heavenly Father: “You decreed that man should be saved through the wood of the cross. The tree of man’s defeat became his tree of victory; where life was lost. There life has been restored.” So we pray: “We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee; because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world”. 

                                                         ~ Fr. Paul Dobson.