The exaltation of the Cross

(By Rev. James McTavish FMVD)

“In this sign conquer”

Every army would traditionally have a battle standard. This would be hoisted in the air and paraded in front for the advancing men to inspire them and hopefully lead them to victory. Loss of the standard was an omen that the battle was all but lost. When Constantine, before he became Great, was about to go into a difficult affray he looked up into the sky and saw a glowing cross in the sky with these words “In this sign conquer”. He had all his men paint the cross on their shields and they subsequently won the decisive battle. This vision of the cross was instrumental in his conversion and he went on to become Constantine the Great, convoking the first ecumenical Church councils (325 AD in Nicea, which gave us the basis of our creed today), building basilicas and getting things in motion for Christianity to become the religion of the Roman empire by 380AD. Going into the battle of each day we need to raise high a battle standard. We are lucky to have the cross of Christ. In this sign we can conquer because it was Jesus who conquered death for us first. Fixing our eyes on Him we can overcome. 

We too can pick up wounds in the good fight but in the cross we can find healing. Often pharmacies or apothecaries have a pole outside them with a snake wrapped around it. This imagery is explained in the first reading. The fiery serpents which killed the people of God become their salvation when Moses mounts them on a pole. What once killed the people now becomes the source of their salvation. The image of the snake mounted on a pole is used in medicine to represent healing. Jesus uses the same image and announces that as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert so too he will be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

Now life is full of crosses – challenges, difficulties in the relations with others, addictions (sometimes we impose the cross on ourselves), uncertain situations. Today’s feast is the exaltation of the cross. It is not a celebration of meaningless suffering. We are not masochists. What we do celebrate is the transforming power of the cross. Why is it hard to think of exalting the cross? One reason is that our flesh kicks. Only the Spirit can help us understand. One thing that happens is we suffer from selective memory loss. We forget. We forget the reason why we had to go through a suffering, we forget the grace we received, we forget the fruit that we obtained, in short, we remember the Good Friday part of the story but forget the Easter Sunday. In Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, to say someone is sad you say that he or she has a “Good Friday face”! When the disciples going to Emmaus were complaining about the suffering endured by the Lord he reproached them for being foolish and slow to believe. “Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer before enter into his glory”. To get to where we are now we have had to suffer but also we have experienced the new life of the resurrection. If we allow this selective memory loss to continue we will never truly exalt the cross. 

Lord Jesus, we know that we need to embrace your cross but many times we listen to our fears, more than we listen to your words. You told us “In this world you will suffer. But be brave I have conquered the world” (John 16,33). Help us to trust in your ways which are not our ways. Help us to remember how you have always been with us and never abandoned us and how often we have needed that cross to wake us up out of laziness and mediocrity, to shake us out of a spiritual torpor of self-sufficiency and that there is no true following of you if we are not embracing the cross. Let us celebrate this feast. Let us exalt the cross, and lift it up high. Let us march into the battle of each day, parading and exalting the cross in our hearts and in our lives.