October 7, 2016
New York City: Metropolitan Hilarion leads Rite of Exaltation of the Cross & Festal Liturgy in Synodal Cathedral

On Tuesday the 26th and Wednesday the 27th of September, the great feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord, Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America & New York led the divine services in the Synodal Cathedral of the Sign in New York City. In accordance with Church tradition, at the Great Doxology, the bringing out of the Cross was performed, followed by the Rite of Exaltation, in which His Eminence lifted up the Cross five times (commemorating the miraculous event when Patriarch Macarius of Jerusalem, upon discovering that the Cross found by the Holy Empress Helen was the True Wood of the Cross, elevated the Holy Cross for veneration by the people), and with it blessed the faithful. Meanwhile, the priests poured sweet-smelling rose water over the Cross.

The First Hierarch was co-served by Abbot Cornelius (Apukhtin; cleric of Nativity of the Holy Mother of God Church at the New Kursk Root Hermitage in Mahopac, NY), Hieromonks Zosimas (Krampis; cathedral cleric) and Theodosius (Dyuka), and Archdeacons Niсolas Mokhoff, Vadim Gan, and Dionysius Lvov (cathedral clerics).

Upon completion of the Liturgy, many parishioners communed of Christ’s Holy Mysteries.

Media Office of the Eastern American Diocese