While Good Friday is the feast of the Passion of Our Lord and therefore, in a real sense, the Feast of the Holy Cross, nevertheless today's feast still has its particular significance. The Feast commemorates two distinct events. The first is, of course, the crucifixion and death of Jesus on the cross. St John's Gospel sees the crucifixion as a "raising up" or exultation of Jesus on the Cross, for John contemplates Jesus' passion, death, resurrection and ascension to the Father's side as a single mystery, though he does not deny that the events took place in time and therefore followed one another in a sequence. Faith looks beyond the separate events to see the total integral mystery.

The second event commemorated in today's feast belongs to the time of the Church rather than to the life Jesus. On September 14 in the year 335, the wood of the Cross, which had been found not so long before, was shown to the people, as a potent visible reminder of the mystery of our redemption. This rite of showing the wood of the Cross finds an echo in our Good Friday liturgy but also gave rise to this special feast day.