In some places, basil is blessed and distributed to the faithful on this Feast as well as arranged as a bouquet at the foot of the Crucifix. The Feast today honours His Most Precious Blood and His Passion upon the Cross.
St. Albertus Magnus says: “A simple remembrance of Christ’s Sufferings is worth more than fasting on bread and water every Friday for a year and scourging one’s self unto blood.”
St. Augustine commented: “What price, what avarice, what anger can be cured otherwise than by the humility, the poverty, the patience of the Son of God? All these virtues are found in carefully meditating on that way of pain which Our Savior went and along which we should follow Him.”
Pope Clement XII and Benedict XIV have granted many indulgences to this devotion which may be applied to the poor souls in purgatory. Commemoration of the XIV Sunday after Pentecost is made in the Mass.
This is one of those few times when the Traditional Mass and the Novus Ordo celebrate the same Feast Day.
A Low Mass will take place on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross at St Francis of Assisi Church, Llay.