“This holiday symbolizes the great revival - the acquisition and erection - of the greatest shrine”translated

On September 27, 2026, on the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, the feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Sretensky Church of the Deposition of the Robe Convent in Suzdal. At the end of the service, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church addressed the believers with the First Hierarch’s word.

Your Eminence, dear Bishop Nikander! Dear bishops, fathers, brothers, mother abbess, sisters!

I cordially congratulate everyone on the great twelfth feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord! This holiday symbolizes the great revival - the acquisition and erection - of the greatest shrine that was given to the human race - the Cross of the Lord.

This holiday should help us, people who have gone through difficult years of persecution and godless authorities, to understand how these events are connected.

That distant event—the discovery, the erection of the Lord’s Cross—was of great significance. After all, probably at that time few people believed that the Cross could be found at all.

It is known what was happening around Golgotha: crosses were thrown from it, which were instruments for killing people. All this was then overgrown with a pile of earth. Few could...