Troparion - Tone 1

O Lord, save Your people,
and bless Your inheritance.
Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians,
over their adversaries.
And by virtue of Your Cross
preserve Your habitation!

Kontakion - Tone 7

Now the flaming sword no longer guards the gates of Eden;
it has mysteriously been quenched by the wood of the Cross!
The sting of death and the victory of hell have been vanquished;
for You, O my Savior, have come and cried to those in hell:
Enter again into paradise.

Like to the Sun

Like to the sun did the Cross appear in the world, and all men were filled with its light, and running as towards a star, they viewed it as the cause of good raised up by hands divine; hymning it they said:

Rejoice, dawn of the spiritual Sun!
Rejoice, unfailing fount of myrrh!
Rejoice, summoning of Adam and Eve!
Rejoice, death-blow to the princes of hades!
Rejoice, that in being exalted, thou dost now also exalt us!
Rejoice, that in being venerated, thou dost sanctify men’s souls!
Rejoice, the world-proclaimed report of the Apostles!
Rejoice, most plentiful strength of Martyrs!
Rejoice, O Cross, reproach to the Jews!
Rejoice, thou praise to men of Faith!
Rejoice, thou through which hades was cast down!
Rejoice, thou through which Grace did rise up!

Rejoice, O Tree most blessed!

~ Akathist Hymn to the Cross, Ekos 4

A ladder as lofty as Heaven is the Cross of the Lord become, leading up all from earth to the height of Heaven, that they might always dwell together with the choirs of angels, abandoning things present as though they were not, and knowing how to chant: Alleluia!

~ Kontakion 6

Obedient Unto Death

Christ’s Incarnation is already an act of salvation. By taking up our
broken humanity into himself, Christ restores it and, in the words of
another Christmas hymn, “lifts up the fallen image”. But in that case
why was a death on the Cross necessary? Was it not enough for one of
the Trinity to live as a man on earth, to think, feel and will as a
man, without also having to die as a man? …

… The Incarnation, it was said, is an act of identification and
sharing. God saves by identifying himself with us, by knowing our
human experience from the inside. The Cross signifies, in the most
stark and uncompromising manner, that this act of sharing is carried
to the utmost limits. God incarnate enters into ALL our experience.
Jesus Christ our companion shares not only in the fullness of human
life but also in the fullness of human death. “Surely he has borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4) — ALL our griefs,
ALL our sorrows. “The unassumed is unhealed”: but Christ our healer
has assumed into himself everything, even death.

Death as Victory

… “Love is strong as death… Many waters cannot quench love” (Song
of Songs 8:6-7). The Cross shows us a love that is strong as death, a
love that is even stronger.

St. John introduces his account of the Last Supper and the Passion
with these words: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he
loved them to the end” (13:1). “To the end” — the Greek says eis
telos, meaning “to the last”, “to the uttermost”. And this word
telos is taken up later in the final cry uttered by Christ on the
Cross: “It is finished”, tetelestai (John 19:30). This is to be
understood, not as a cry of resignation or despair, but as a cry of
victory: It is completed, it is accomplished, it is fulfilled.

What has been fulfilled? We reply: The work of suffering love, the
victory of love over hatred. Christ our God has loved his own to the
uttermost. Because of love he created the world, because of love he
was born into this world as a man, because of love he took up our
broken humanity into himself and made it his own. Because of love he
identified himself with all our distress. Because of love he offered
himself as a sacrifice, choosing at Gethsemane to go voluntarily to
his Passion: “I lay down my life for my sheep… No one takes it from
me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:15, 18)…

The Cross, understood as victory, sets before us the paradox of
love’s omnipotence. Dostoevsky comes near to the true meaning of
Christ’s victory in some statements which he puts in the mouth of
Starets Zosima:

“At some thoughts a man stands perplexed, above all at the sight of
human sin, and he wonders whether to combat it by force or by humble
love. Always decide: ‘I will combat it by humble love.’ If you
resolve on that once for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving
humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things, and
there is nothing else like it.”

Christ is Risen

Because Christ our God is true man, he died a full and genuine human
death upon the Cross. But because he is not only true man but true
God, because he is life itself and the source of life, this death was
not and could not be the final conclusion.

… God himself has died and risen from the dead, and so there is no
more death: even death is filled with God. Because Christ is risen,
we need no longer be afraid of any dark or evil force in the universe.

~ from Bp Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, ch. 4

The Cross and the Tree of Life

In his Hymn on Paradise IV.1, Mor Ephrem writes:

The Just One saw how Adam had become audacious
Because He had been lenient
And he knew that Adam would overstep again
if He continued thus:
Adam trampled down
that gentle and pleasant boundary,
so instead God made for Adam
a boundary guarded by force.
The mere words of the commandment
had been the boundary to the Tree,
but now the cherub and a sharp sword
provided the fence to Paradise.

It was only with Crucifixion that the Tree of Life is finally revealed to mankind. In the Hymn on Virginity XVI.10, St. Ephrem writes:

Greatly saddened was the Tree of Life
When it beheld Adam stolen away from it;
It sank down into the virgin ground and was hidden
—to burst forth and reappear on Golgotha;
humanity, like birds that are chased, took refuge in it
so that it might return them to their proper home

The chaser was chased away, while the doves that had been chased now hop with joy in Paradise.

The Cross that was erected on Golgotha is thus the symbol of the Tree of Life. We find this theme in a [hymn] from the Order of the Veneration of the Cross (p. 96):

Planted in the midst of Paradise,
in Eden, is the Tree of Life
The world bore the Fruit of Life
The cross became its symbol

~ from an article in Shroro, the Syriac Orthodox Christian Digest. The whole article is well worth reading.

The Dream of the Rood

It begins:

See! I will tell - the fine dream
that came on me - at mid of night
when speaking folk - retire to rest.
I seemed to see - a wondrous tree
lifted aloft - light-encompassed,
of trees the brightest. - Sign-post, entirely
gold-covered. - Gems standing
resplendent on earth’s face, - and five there were
on the cross-beam. - There they saw the Lord’s Angel
all those fair from the first fashioning. - No gallows of foulness this,
beheld by the gaze - of holy spirits,
those above earth - and this great creation.
Wondrous the Tree of Victory! - But I, sin-stained,
wounded with wrong-doing. - The Glory Tree I saw,
robed in radiance, - shining in splendour,
girded with gold, - gleaming gems
fittingly decking - the Master’s Tree.
Yet through that gold - I did discern
the malice of wretches; - suddenly it started
to sweat blood from the right. - Grief engulfed me,
fear at that fair sight. - That burgeoning Sign I saw
enrobed, abloom with colour, - sometimes soaked,
drenched with flowing blood, - sometimes jewel-decked.
And I, lying there - a long while,
gazed grieving - at the Saviour’s Tree,
‘till at last I heard it - making a sound.
A word it began to speak, - that worshipful wood:

~ Read the rest at Arimathea