Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, a very ancient feast. Legend has it that our own St. Helen found the Lord’s cross on this date in the year 380. We have had this feast in the universal Church since not long after Helen’s discovery of the “true cross.” It does us well to recall that the cross we exalt is an instrument of torture and humiliation.
The Romans used crucifixion as a form of state-sponsored terrorism and advertisement. The message of a Roman cross was clear: don’t mess with us! This may be why it is nearly impossible to find iconography of the cross in earliest Christian art. And throughout the centuries, poets and artists have wrestled with the contradiction of this central symbol of our faith.
Mary E. Coleridge, for example, in her poem “The Cross,” writes:
I saw a cross of burning gold and jewels glorious to behold; Over it a golden crown, all the people falling down.
I saw an ugly cross of wood, on it there were stains of blood; Over it a crown of thorn, plaited for the people’s scorn.
Cross of gold, no fruit was thine, nothing but the empty shrine. Cross of wood, thou living tree, the true vine clung close to thee.
And John Donne’s poem entitled, “The Crosse” urges us to exalt the cross:
Since Christ embraced the cross itself, dare I his image, the image of the cross deny? Would I profit by the sacrifice and dare the chosen altar to despise?
It bore all our sins, but is it fit to bear the sin of scorning it?
Finally, lest we forget, the cross we exalt belongs not just to Christ alone. Larry Linville’s “Conclusion” to a monologue about Simon of Cyrene captures the truth:
Are you ready to bear your cross?
Must Jesus bear it alone, and all the world go free?
No, there's a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.
On this feast let us exalt in the cross of Christ and not deny our own.
-Timothy J. Cronin
(Stained glass window adorns Sacred Heart Church/ Saint Angela Merici Parish, Youngstown, OH)