Dear Friends in Christ,
During September, we celebrated our parish feast day, and a few days later, we celebrated the Holy Cross. We recalled the birth of the Virgin Mary, a miracle in and of itself, as her parents had been unable to conceive until they besought God powerfully in prayer, and then in a few short days, we were transported to Our Lord’s Passion, the culmination of His redemptive work. It is a lot to cover in such a short time!
We remember the Cross on two main occasions during the year; the Third Sunday of Lent, and on September 14/27. The commemoration of the Cross is an event that is rich in Old Testament parallels, but which also has been realized in Church history on three occasions as well. The hymns of the feast point especially to three events in the history of Old Testament Israel: Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea by signing a Cross (Exodus 14:21-29), Moses leading the Israelites to victory over the Amalekites by stretching out his hands in the form of a Cross (Exodus 17:10-14), and Moses curing the snake-bitten idolaters by means of a bronze serpent placed on a pole, in the form of a Cross (Numbers 21:8-9; John 3:14).