Saint Constantine the Great (21 May) was preparing to march on Rome to confront his rival Maxentius when the sign of the Life-giving Cross appeared to him in the midday sky, surrounded with the inscription: "By this sign you shall conquer" (en touto nika). He, therefore, had his standards adorned with the Sign of the Cross and won a brilliant victory that enabled him to assume power over the entire Roman world (Empire) and to assure the triumph of Christianity.

Introduction

Twenty centuries ago the Cross was an instrument of dishonorable punishment and of frightful death. The pagan Romans condemned violent convicts to the punishment of crucifixion.

Today the Cross is paramount in the whole life of pious Christians, and of the whole life of our Church, as instrument of sacrifice, salvation, joy, sanctity and grace. As Saint John Chrysostom writes, "this cursed and abominable symbol of the worst punishment now has become a desirable and beloved.

Your birth, O Theotokos, brought joy to the whole world, for from you dawned the Sun of Righteousness, Christ Our God. Freeing us from the curse, He gave us His blessings. Abolishing death, He granted us Eternal Life.

s God's grace received only by members of the Church or can there be grace outside the Church? Are only Orthodox Christians saved? Before we address these questions, let us explain briefly what grace is. "Grace is the Uncreated Divine energy or power of the Holy Trinity, given to us from God the Father, through God the Son, by God the Holy Spirit." The Holy Trinity always acts in creation through a common action. Without God's grace there is no salvation, no spiritual life, no eternal life.

It would be wrong to think of Orthodoxy simply as the cult of Christ's Divine glory, of His Transfiguration and Resurrection, and nothing more. However great their devotion to the Divine glory of Our Lord, Orthodox do not overlook His humanity. Consider for example the Orthodox love of the Holy Land: nothing could exceed the vivid reverence of devout Orthodox Christian believers for the exact places where the Incarnate Christ lived as a man, where as a man He ate, taught, suffered and died. Nor does the sense of Resurrection joy lead Orthodoxy to minimize the importance of the Cross. Representations of the Crucifixion are no less prominent in Orthodox Christianity than in non-Orthodox churches, while the veneration of the Cross is more developed in Byzantine than in Latin (Roman Catholic) worship.

As we have seen, the fact that the human person is in God's image means among other things that we possess free will. God wanted sons and daughters, not slaves. The Orthodox Church rejects any doctrine of grace which might seem to infringe upon human freedom. To describe the relation between the grace of God and human freedom, Orthodoxy uses the term - co-operation or synergy (synergeia); in Saint Paul's words: "We are fellow-workers (synergoi) with God" (I Corinthians 3:9). If we are to achieve full fellowship with God, we cannot do so without God's help, yet we must also play our own part: we humans as well as God must make our contribution to the common work, although what God does is of immeasurably greater importance than what we do. "The incorporation of humans into Christ and our union with God, require the co-operation of two unequal, but equally necessary forces: Divine grace and human will." The supreme example of synergy is the Mother of God.