September 14 is the celebration of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Exaltation: we highly praise and extol the cross of Christ. I don’t know of any other religion that honors an instrument of torture by which their leader was killed. For Christians, the cross signifies more than the death of Christ; it is the instrument of our salvation. We know the end of the story. Christ conquered death and rose in triumph. The cross has become a way that we identify ourselves. We wear crosses as jewelry, and we sign ourselves with a cross throughout our lives.
This feast is not a mini-Good Friday. Good Friday is celebrated within the context of the Triduum and looks at the whole passion and death of Christ. On this day, we do not reenact the adoration of the cross from Good Friday.
Today’s preface helps us understand the meaning of the feast: “For you placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the Cross, so that, where death arose, life might again spring forth and the evil one, who conquered on a tree, might likewise on a tree be conquered.” The day is about redemption, about the eternal life given to us because of the cross. God did not condemn the world because of sin. God had another plan fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The feast has a long history going back to the fourth century. The mother of the emperor Constantine, St Helena, was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She was thought to have found the cross of Christ on September 14, 320 AD. She had a church built on the spot and the cross was displayed and venerated there. The feast also remembers the dedication of the shrine built on Calvary by Constantine and, later in history, the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher constructed on the site of Jesus’ tomb.
Take some time this week to consider your relationship with the cross of Christ.
1. What does the cross mean to you? Think about this: It is an instrument of torture and death. How strange to use the cross as one of our central symbols; how strange to choose to put that cross on our churches, in our homes, in our classrooms, and in our hospitals. How strange to use that cross as jewelry, sometimes plain and sometimes fancy – sometimes encrusted with jewels.
2. What do you think about when you sign yourself with the cross?
3. What cross do you carry in your life? How can you get help with that cross? How is Jesus helping you carry the cross?
Questions 1 and 2 from page 38 of Participation of the Heart: Deeper Engagement in the Mass.
