The Holy Cross of Christ

Please prayerfully consider with me these words of St. John of Damascus (A+D 676-749). John, sometimes called "Chrysorrhoas," or "streaming with gold" (i.e., "the golden speaker"), was an Arab Christian monk and priest in the late 7th/early 8th century:

Every action of Christ and all His working of miracles were truly very great and divine and wonderful, but of all things the most wonderful is His honorable cross. For by nothing else except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ has death been brought low, the sin of our first parent destroyed, hell plundered, resurrection bestowed, the power given us to despise the things of this world and even death itself, the road back to the former blessedness made smooth, the gates of paradise opened, our nature seated at the right hand of God, and we made children and heirs of God. By the cross all things have been set aright!

                               – John of Damascus, Book IV: Chapter 11