Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross which commemorates the day in 335 A.D. when Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated. Built on the site where St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, is said to have found the true cross. Holy Cross is seen as a feast and symbol of Christ’s triumph over death.
Crosses in the courtyard outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which I visited in March 2011:
The Collect for Holy Cross day in the Church of England:
Almighty God,
who in the passion of your blessed Son
made an instrument of painful death
to be for us the means of life and peace:
grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ
that we may gladly suffer for his sake;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
