The Solemnity of the Holy Cross
September 17, 2006

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

A few years ago, there was a piece in The Living Church about the recently-completed renovations at the Episcopal cathedral in Philadelphia; perhaps you saw it. The article was quite detailed, and it featured a series of “before” and “after” photos of the radically-transformed structure. In many ways, the new building was very much an improvement over the old. The limestone floor was breathtaking, and the new lighting system beautifully showed off the architectural arches that supported the resurfaced walls. But there was something missing. Nowhere to be seen, not on the altar, not on the walls, not above the pulpit, nowhere, was there a cross. No image of the device on which Christ died could be found anywhere in this cathedral church dedicated to Our Savior.

We're all familiar with attempts by the secular world to banish religious images from the public square; witness, for instance, the ongoing efforts to remove the Ten Commandments from court houses across the country. But here's an example not of some government bureaucrat cleansing a public place of Christian symbols in the name of “separation of church and state.” What we have here, rather, is the principal symbol of the Christian faith being deliberately removed from a building constructed specifically for the purpose of Christian worship.

It's almost thinkable, but it seems to suggest there is some uneasiness, some embarrassment, about Our Savior Jesus Christ on the part of those who run the cathedral. Unfortunately, that conclusion is confirmed by a visit to the cathedral's website, where the reader learns that what was once known as the “Cathedral of Our Saviour” is now simply called “Philadelphia Cathedral,” a place where the goal in not to bring people to salvation through the crucified and risen Christ, but to celebrate “the adventure of our journey with Jesus of Nazareth into unknown territory.”

Such antics notwithstanding, the Cross of Christ cannot be shunted aside so easily, for it stands at the very heart of our faith, as awkward and discomfiting as it might be to some. And it's nothing new for the cross to be a source of embarrassment. After all, in the ancient world, it was a means of a brutal, shameful death, the equivalent today of a hangman's noose. St. Paul recognized this when he declared: “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” The crucified Christ was a stumbling block to the Jews because the Messiah they expected was supposed to reign like a king, not be executed like a criminal. We see this expectation in the Gospel, when Jesus foretells his death only to be questioned by his listeners, “We've heard that the Christ will live forever, so how can you say that he'll be lifted up?” Being “lifted up” was a common expression for being executed by hanging or crucifixion).

As for the Greeks, they were far too sophisticated, with their various philosophical systems, for a crucified god to be anything other than simple foolishness, a silly fable suitable only for the unenlightened masses. Yet that is how God the Father chose to redeem mankind, for, as Paul concludes, “unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” The crucifixion is thus the symbol both of God's power over death and the ultimate inaccessibility of God's wisdom to the human mind.

The importance of the cross as a symbol of our faith in the crucified and risen Lord is highlighted in the feast we celebrate today. It originates with the excavations performed at the direction of Helena, mother of Constantine (the first Christian Roman Emperor) in the Holy Land. Her intention was to uncover the sites associated with the events of Jesus' earthly life. As a result of these excavations, several shrine churches were built, most notably the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which still stands in Jerusalem.

Also recovered amidst the digging was what was believed to be the remains of the True Cross, the actual wooden cross on which Christ was crucified. This relic was displayed for veneration when the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated in September, 335. From that day on, for nearly three centuries, the relic of the True Cross was venerated by the faithful who traveled from throughout the Christian world to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. But in the year 614, tragedy struck when the Persians, led by King Chosroës, invaded Egypt and the Holy Land, destroying Christian churches and monasteries, massacring and taking into slavery thousands of Christians (including the Patriarch of Jerusalem), and carrying the True Cross back to Persia as a trophy. There it remained, despite attempts to negotiate its return by Heraclius, the Christian emperor in Constantinople.

The story goes that Chosroës refused to return the supreme symbol of Our Lord's Passion unless the emperor would renounce his faith, something Heraclius would not do. When Chosroës fell from power, the emperor recovered the conquered lands and returned the captives to their home. One of his first acts was to carry the True Cross in solemn procession back to Jerusualem and restore it to its rightful place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 629. Since then, Christians have celebrated this event on September 14 as the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, or simply Holy Cross Day.

Like the Feast of Corpus Christi, Holy Cross Day has a counterpart in the Church's observance of Holy Week, namely Good Friday, when we commemorate the redemption of the world through Jesus' death on the cross. But just as Corpus Christi allows us to truly celebrate, with all the pomp that it deserves, the miracle of the Eucharist outside of Maundy Thursday (colored as it is by the solemn remembrance of Christ's Passion), so today we can joyfully celebrate the glory of the Cross without the somberness of Good Friday. For the Cross is not only an instrument of painful death, but also the means of our salvation. Despite the embarrassment at the Cross exemplified by the remodeled cathedral in Philadelphia, the Cross, in the words of St. Leo the Great, “is for all men a well of blessings and a cause of thanksgiving.” Through it, “weakness is turned to strength, shame into glory, and death into life.”

Just as the horrific events of September 11, 2001 were for the United States both an incredible tragedy and an opportunity for national unity and (for many Americans at least) spiritual renewal, so the Cross of Christ represents both the degrading, inhuman death of an innocent at the hands of a tyrant and the triumph over death by the Son of God that bought redemption for the human race. And so, regardless of whether or not the cross found by St. Helena was actually the cross on which Our Lord died, we rightly remember Emperor Heraclius' triumph over a Persian despot who had sought to stamp out the Christian faith. But more importantly, we celebrate the triumph of Our Lord Jesus Christ over all the powers of hell, a triumph accomplished on the wood of the Holy Cross.

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Rev. Jason A. Catania, SSC
XVth Rector of Mount Calvary Church