On this day of the Triumph (or Exaltation) of the Holy Cross, the emphasis is on the Victory that Jesus accomplished by willingly going through such suffering, out of the abundance of His Divine Love. ‘This was Love’s great deed, that death should die, when Life itself was slain upon the tree.’ We sing these words at Evening Prayer. And at the Eucharist, earlier in the day, we echoed the words of St Paul: ‘God forbid that I should glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, our life and resurrection, by whom we are saved and set free.’   

This celebration can be an enormous encouragement in our own lives, reminding us that the negative experiences, great or small, that we all encounter as we go through life, can be the ‘flip-side’ of blessings that we do not yet see, if we can accept them trustingly from the hands of our loving God. Yes, he allows us to go through all kinds of troubles and difficulties; but we know that He loves us more than we can ever imagine, and that He is all-powerful. Whether or not we come to see – in this life - the ‘bright side’ of our dark experiences, we know for sure that if we trustingly unite them with the sufferings of Christ, our sorrows, like His, will be ‘seeds’ of blessings, - for ourselves, and indeed for many others whom we will only know about in the joyful light of eternity.