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On March 15, 2026, the Third Sunday of Holy and Great Lent, the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew presided in chorostasia (that is, from the Patriarchal Throne rather than from the altar) at the Divine Liturgy in the Most Holy Patriarchal Church of Saint George in the Phanar. His All-Holiness has on numerous occasions explicated the central importance of the Cross in the life of every Christian believer.
Speaking in December 2025, His All-Holiness looked back over his lifetime of service to Almighty God and His Holy Church with joy and hope, and stated: “Without ignoring the many crosses, pains, and afflictions of daily life, we walk the path of our destiny, never forgetting that without the Cross there is no Resurrection. Through the Cross comes the salvation of humanity. Through the Cross come life, strength, and virtue. Through the Cross come the Resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of humankind. Through the Cross comes witness and martyrdom. This is our duty. All else lies in the hands of God, who writes history through us human beings, and who will not allow us to be tested beyond what we can bear.”
In a similar vein, on November 21, 2025, the Feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, the Ecumenical Patriarch presided at the Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral of the same name of the Most Holy Archdiocese of Constantinople in Pera, and once again recalled the power of the Cross as he spoke of the trials of the Christian community in Constantinople.
His All-Holiness said: “We celebrate because through the young Virgin Mary, the Cross entered the world — the Cross upon which her Son hung, erasing the record of our sins which He nailed to His wood. And we Christians of this City, who are ‘pressed by many temptations,’ tormented by ‘difficult illnesses and passions,’ oppressed and storm-tossed by ‘needs and tribulations,’ always throughout the centuries — and still today — have placed our trust in the Cross of Christ and in His Mother who intercedes for us.”
His All-Holiness likewise related the centrality of the Cross to the daily lives of the faithful in his Catechetical Homily at the Opening of Holy and Great Lent for 2021, in which he stated that Holy and Great Lent is a “divinely inspired journey, whose measure is the Cross and whose horizon is the Resurrection of Christ.” During this journey, believers have the opportunity to apply the words of the Lord in their daily lives: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
As they do so, they will begin to experience the power of the Resurrection, just as Great and Holy Pascha follows Holy and Great Lent. “The veneration of the Cross in the middle of Holy and Great Lent,” His All-Holiness explained, “reveals the meaning of this whole period. The word of our Lord echoes strikingly: ‘Whoever desires to follow me … let them lift their cross each day and follow me’ (Lk 9.23). We are called to lift our own cross, following the Lord and beholding His life-giving Cross, with the awareness that the Lord is the one that saves and not the lifting of our cross.”
Accordingly, the Ecumenical Patriarch continued, the Cross does nothing less than reveal the true meaning of existence itself. “The Cross of the Lord,” he explained, “is ‘the judgment of our criteria,’ ‘the judgment of the world,’ and at the same time the promise that evil in all its forms does not have the final word in history.”
His All-Holiness added that “in looking to Christ and under His protection, as the One who permits our struggle, while blessing and strengthening our effort, we fight the good fight, ‘afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed’ (2 Cor 4.8–9). This is the experiential quintessence also during the present period of the Cross and the Resurrection. We are on a journey to the Resurrection through the Cross, through which ‘joy has come to the whole world.’”
That is the only true and lasting joy, and as the Ecumenical Patriarch has explained, it only comes through following the Lord Jesus on the way of the Cross.
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