The Exaltation of the Precious and Life-creating
Cross day in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
Today, we celebrate the
exaltation of the precious and
life-creating(giving) Cross day in the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church
The feast is extraordinary holy and beautiful, the priest brings
the life-giving cross from the Altar and brings the Crucifixion
cross on a table in the center of the Church.
While the priest's crossing the temple with the precious
life-giving cross in a small metal dish raising the cross over his
heads, he sing the so called Troparion of the cross as you can read
below:
Save, O Lord, Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance,
granting unto the faithful victory over adversaries, and by the
power of Thy Cross, do Thou preserve Thy commonwealth
Further on the song,"Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, O
Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify" is sang three
times.
The priest blesses all the present clergy and layman in the the
Church and leaves the life-giving cross for veneration.
Then we all the layman do line-up kiss and bow infront of the cross
which brought salvation to us Christians and opened us the doors
Christ.
As far as my understanding goes (though I'm not a competent
person), today's exaltation of the cross is minor feast and is
different from the day of the so called Universal Exaltation of
the Precious and Life-creating cross
The feast by God's grace is one of the very blessed ones in the
orthodox church and thus is an enormous joy for all us the orthodox
christians.
Next to kissing the layman in the church are also offered to take a
small branch of basil (a symbol of royalty) and better said as
another blessing.