Before saying Angelus, the Pope recalled the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, celebrated on September 14th, and the memory of our Lady of Sorrows, celebrated the day after, "two liturgical celebrations" that "can be visually summed up by the traditional image of Crucifixion". "But what’s the point asked Benedict XVI of exalting the Cross?". But Christians, explained the Pope, "don’t just exalt any Cross, but that Cross that Jesus sanctified with His sacrifice, the fruit and the evidence of a huge love", "to free man from the slavery of sin and death". So, "from being a sign of malediction, the Cross became a sign of blessing, from a symbol of death to the very symbol of Love that conquers hatred and violence and engenders immortal life". Like Mary on the Calvary, added the Holy Father, "partakes of the salvific power of Christ’s grief, binding her ‘fiat’ to that of the Son", "we too renew our ‘yes’ to the God who chose the way of the Cross to save us. It is a great mystery which is still going on, until the end of the world, and which also demands us to cooperate with it".
