This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes

MORNING
Psalm 66 • Numbers 21:4-9 • John 3:11-17

EVENING
Psalm 118 • Genesis 3:1-15 • 1 Peter 3:17-22

There is a chant entitled Theos Kyrios, “God is the Lord,” which is chanted every morning in the Orthodox Church’s liturgy of the hours. The chant works its way through Psalm 118, with the refrain in between verses, “God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us; blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.”

The chant itself has been part of my spiritual life for years. Months before my mother passed away, she was hospitalized for a period; when I saw her in her hospital room, unconscious but in pain, I felt overwhelmed, and paced around the room. It was a little later that I realized the refrain from this chant was echoing in my head — the trauma of the moment buttressed by “God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us.”

This feast, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, has a long history, associated with the imperial Christianity of the fourth century. According to one legend, the mother of Constantine the Great, St Helena, makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to scout locations for a new church and to locate the holy Cross. Smelling the aroma of basil, she follows it, where it leads her to the spot where basil was flourishing where the crosses were buried. Upon excavation, a dying woman is healed when she touches the cross of Christ’s crucifixion, thereby revealing the power of the resurrection embedded in the wood which held the body of God.

The triumph and exaltation of the Cross is not beholden to imperial influence; its power rests in brokenness, from which victory emerges. The space and site of the Cross is from where the inexorable mercy of God flows, which we invoke every time we make the sign of the Cross over ourselves. As Moses lifted the bronze serpent in the wilderness to heal the wounded, the Cross is exalted because it was Christ who was lifted up on it, raising us up with him, to restore, heal, comfort, and enfold us in a love that is engrained in the depths of God — “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalm 118:23).

Written by Nathan Haydon

Nathan earned his PhD studying medieval literature, especially Old English literature and theology. He’s a Benedictine oblate, a candidate for Holy Orders, and he loves coffee, beer, and cats, and sometimes enjoys drinking coffee and beer at the same time while playing with a cat.