Bishop Ioan Casian: The Cross offers a perspective for the Church Year and our entire lives

“It shows us the perspective from which we should view at least the Church Year that is beginning, if not our entire lives,” Bishop Ioan Casian of Canada said in a reflection on the Holy Cross.

The bishop celebrated the Divine Liturgy on Monday at the Cathedral of Sts Constantine and Helen and St Paraskeva in Edmonton, Alberta, where he explained that placing the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross near the beginning of the Church Year sets before the faithful the centre of Christ’s saving work.

“The Church reminds us of the essential, important and defining moments of our Christian tradition and our spiritual life. Beyond the historical dimension of the feast, at its centre remains the fundamental truth of the Christian faith: Christ is the One who sacrifices Himself for us on the Cross.”

The Bishop of Canada also explained that salvation history gradually reveals the limitations of human beings attempting to find their own way to God.

“This long period until the incarnation of Christ the Saviour was necessary so that humanity might experience both blessing and its own weakness. Humanity had to reach the point of realising that, by itself, it had no possibility…