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It isn’t often that the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
falls on a Sunday to pre-empt a Sunday of Ordinary Time. But, today
is September 14, the day when the universal Church recalls how “the
event of the cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything
toward life” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1085).
“Toward life” not “toward death,” that’s what’s
important. The cross teaches the way to build what Pope John
Paul II called
“the culture of life” and puts asunder “the culture of death.”
Perhaps many may be wondering: “What’s so important about the cross
that we Catholics are reminded each year to exalt it?” I think this
a reasonable question that I’d like to answer, if only because the
question itself may very well provide us an indication about why the
universal Church celebrates this feast each year.
To answer that question, let’s consider, first, what the cross is
and, second, what it is not. Then, we can consider what the
cross means and why the universal Church celebrates this
feast annually.
The cross is among the oldest
and
most universal of symbols. In preliterate societies, the cross in
various forms (e.g., a
“T,” a “+,”
or an “X”)
often represented “opposites” coming together in a “synthesis”—a
sort of pre-historical form of Ying and Yang
[.
In his book, Man and His Symbols, the eminent psychiatrist,
Carl Gustav Jung, demonstrated how preliterate people associated the
horizontal arm of this cross with the terrestrial and worldly, the
feminine and temporality, as well as with destructive forces,
passivity, and death. They associated the vertical arm with the
celestial and spiritual, the masculine and eternal as well as with
creativity, action, and life. Other preliterates viewed the cross
as symbolizing the four astrological elements of earth, water, fire,
and air, forming the cosmic axis from which radiated the spatial
dimensions of height, length, width, and breadth, as well as the
directions of north, east, south, and west. Jung’s point was that
crosses like these were symbolic, communicating something meaningful
to preliterate people.
The cross referenced in today’s first reading as well as the cross
Jesus made reference to in today’s gospel is likely the ancient
Egyptian T-shaped cross surmounted with a loop
 called an “ankh.”
We’ve probably all see this famous cross, most likely hanging as a
pendant around someone’s neck. To the ancient Egyptians, the
ankh symbolized human creative energies and the essence of
life. Yes, this cross was a fertility symbol.
After leaving Egypt in the Hebrew exodus, Moses apparently co-opted
the ankh, replacing the loop with a bronze serpent (Numbers
21:6-9) wrapped around the vertical axis. This symbolized two
things. The first: rebirth. This cross was believed to possess
power to heal any Hebrew who had been bitten by a poisonous serpent
and was otherwise destined to death. The second: authority. The
person exalting this cross stood in the place of and acted as God’s
representative.
(In fact, Moses’ cross resembles the rod of Asclepius which has
symbolized the healing arts throughout history by combining the
serpent, which in shedding its skin—a symbol of rebirth and
fertility—with the staff—a symbol of authority befitting the god of
medicine  .
The snake wrapped around the staff is widely claimed to be a species
of rat snake. Which came first is difficult to decipher.)
The cross Jesus died upon was likely a “high tau”
cross—similar to Moses’ seraph staff—because it was shaped like the
capital Greek letter tau (“T”) with an extension on the
vertical axis. The Romans used this kind of cross to execute
criminals. As a cruel instrument of execution, this cross consisted
of two beams of wood called the stipes and the patibulum.
The upright beam, called
the
“stipes,”
remained implanted in the ground at the place of execution. The
criminal carried the crossbeam, called the
“patibulum,”
across his shoulders to the execution site. This patibulum
generally weighed approximately 110 pounds.
Once the condemned criminal had completed his journey to the place
of execution—exhausted and chaffed from moving under the extreme
weight and discomfort of the patibulum—the criminal was then
laid on the ground with the patibulum beneath his shoulders
and his head hinged backwards. The criminal’s wrists were nailed to
each end of the patibulum by iron spikes five to seven inches
long. These spikes were driven in by hammer through the median
nerve as the criminal’s arms were stretched wide across the beam.
The arms were not stretched utterly tight; a small amount of
flexibility and movement had to be allowed to enable the hanging
process. The criminal, having been nailed to the crossbar, was then
hoisted up so that the patibulum could be attached to the
vertical stipes. A sign, called a
“titulus,”
was placed at the top of the stipes to identify the criminal.
With the criminal’s left foot pressed behind the right, another
spike was driven through the arches and heels going through the
lower portion of the upright beam. The knees were slightly bent so
that the body would be turned unnaturally sideways. The criminal
was allowed a small seat, called a sedile, which was nothing
other than a small board attached to the cross. The sedile
offered little assistance, actually causing more pain as the
criminal attempted to sit on it. As the criminal would writhe in
pain, each movement caused a counter pain and torment. As
excruciating as the agony that the criminal suffered was, Roman
crucifixion sometimes lasted for hours—even days—before the criminal
succumbed to the torture, and finally died.
The method for terminating the crucifixion required breaking of the
bones of the criminal’s
legs, called crurifracture, an act that would hasten the
criminal’s death. Why? With his legs broken, the criminal could
not push himself up and, as a result, would more quickly succumb to
suffocation.
Ultimately, then, the mechanism of death in crucifixion was
suffocation. To breathe, the criminal was forced to push up on his
feet to allow for inflation of the lungs. As the body weakened and
pain in the feet and legs became unbearable, the criminal was forced
to trade breathing for pain and exhaustion. Eventually, the victim
would succumb in this way, becoming utterly exhausted or lapsing
into unconsciousness so that he could no longer lift his body off
the stipes and inflate his lungs. From a medical
perspective, the criminal’s lungs would begin to collapse in areas
due to the shallow breathing, probably causing hypoxia. Due
to the loss of blood from the scourging, the criminal probably
formed a respiratory acidosis, resulting in an increased
strain on the heart, which would beat faster to compensate. Fluid
would also build up in the lungs. Under the stress of hypoxia
and acidosis, the heart eventually would fail.
For Christians, that is what a cross is: an ancient symbol of pain,
suffering, and death, and in this case, the death of God’s only
begotten Son. But, through the grace of God, that cruel instrument
of torture that was intended to end in the death of a criminal was
transformed into the vehicle begetting new life—like Moses’
cross—because, through his death on this cross, Jesus gave all of us
new life.
Understanding what a cross is makes it easy to say what a
cross is not. A cross is not some meaningless piece of gold
jewelry worn around a neck or hanging from a pierced ear lobe any
more than a wedding ring is just a circular band of precious metal.
Neither is a cross some meaningless decoration for some wall in a
house any more than a beautifully framed family tree is just another
wall hanging. It may very well be the case that the cross
symbolizes nothing to those who reduce it to such banality. But,
what’s important to remember is that trivializing the cross is not
primarily an affront to what the cross is but to what the
cross means.
It may well be the case today that many people and perhaps our
culture so trivialize the cross that we need to reconnect our hearts
with what the cross means so that its power might transform us by
what it symbolizes. This notion brought home to me by the story a
man wrote concerning one fateful day when he went to confession.
The seemingly odd penance the priest assigned him that day ended up
changing this man’s life.
How was this?
After making his confession, the man fully expected the priest to
assign the usual penance. You know: “Say five Our Father’s, five
Hail Mary’s, and five Glory Be’s….” That is what the man thought
the priest would say. Instead, the confessor asked the penitent,
“Have you experienced what it means to be saved by the cross?” The
penitent responded somewhat apprehensively not knowing what the
confessor was getting at, “Why, yes, Father.” “Good,” the confessor
responded. “Now, for your penance, I want you to go out into the
church, take your place in a pew, and stare at the cross for a few
minutes. Look at and note as many details as you can. Then, I want
you look straight at Jesus hanging on the cross and to say fifteen
times, ‘What you did means absolutely nothing to me.’ Can you do
that?” “Yes, Father,” the penitent responded, thinking this a
somewhat odd penance.
So, the man left the confessional, headed into church, and took his
place in the first pew. He started his penance as the confessor had
instructed, looking up at the cross and examining its details for a
few minutes. The man then looked at Jesus hanging on the cross and
said, “What you did means absolutely nothing to me.” The man felt
somewhat odd―a
sense of awkward shame―making
that statement, wondering why the priest would ever assign that
penance. Continuing to stare at the cross, the man made the
statement for a second and, then, a third time. But, for some
reason, making that statement became increasingly difficult. As he
continued to do his penance, the man found himself sobbing, barely
able to get the words out. He couldn’t even look at the cross.
Yet, the man persisted.
Somewhere around the tenth time he made the statement, the man
experienced a sense of peace and serenity quickening within. It
reminded the man of what he felt decades earlier when, as a
youngster, he would be playing with his friends, when his father
would be teaching him how to do something as adults do it, or when
the entire family was seated around the dinner table for Christmas
and Easter. As that sense of peace and serenity stirred and
stirred, the man found he could make the statement “What you did
means absolutely nothing to me” but now with a sense of irony,
because the man knew that the cross meant everything to him.
When the man completed his penance, he looked at his watch. Almost
two hours had passed! It sure didn’t seem like two hours. What
didn’t pass, however, were those strong feelings of peace and
serenity. And, each time he would come to church and take a few
minutes to stare at the cross, those feelings would stir anew,
reminding the man of what Jesus had done for this man by saving him
from his sins.
Knowing what the cross is, what the cross is not, and
what the cross can mean to each and every one of us is why
the Church universal believes it so important to celebrate the Feast
of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross annually. It is so very easy to
trivialize what the cross symbolizes because we may not know what
the cross is and what it means for a garden’s
variety of reasons, not the least of which is how so much of popular
culture abhors what the cross means.
To exalt the cross means to grab hold of the cross by focusing upon
it, lifting it high in our hearts, and allowing what the cross
means—what it symbolizes in terms of salvation history—to save us.
Not people in the past. Not people in the future. But, to save us
today. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us,
by looking at the cross, all many people might see is death. But,
when we exalt the cross, we recognize that its fruit is new life,
the life we once possessed but which died because we’ve sinned, the
very life the cross will renew within us through the grace of God in
Christ.
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HOMILY
