CROSS, EXALTATION/TRIUMPH OF

 Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross:

After the death and resurrection of Christ, both the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem made efforts to obscure the Holy Sepulchre, Christ's tomb in the garden near the site of His crucifixion. The earth had been mounded up over the site, and pagan temples had been built on top of it. The Cross on which Christ had died had been hidden (tradition said) by the Jewish authorities somewhere in the vicinity.

According to tradition, first mentioned by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in 348, Saint Helena, nearing the end of her life, decided under divine inspiration to travel to Jerusalem in 326 to excavate the Holy Sepulchre and attempt to locate the True Cross. A Jew by the name of Judas, aware of the tradition concerning the hiding of the Cross, led those excavating the Holy Sepulchre to the spot in which it was hidden.

Three crosses were found on the spot. According to one tradition, the inscription Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum ("Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews") remained attached to the True Cross. According to a more common tradition, however, the inscription was missing, and Saint Helena and Saint Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, assuming that one was the True Cross and the other two belonged to the thieves crucified alongside Christ, devised an experiment to determine which was the True Cross.

In one version of the latter tradition, the three crosses were taken to a woman who was near death; when she touched the True Cross, she was healed. In another, the body of a dead man was brought to the place where the three crosses were found, and laid upon each cross. The True Cross restored the dead man to life.

In celebration of the discovery of the Holy Cross, Constantine ordered the construction of churches at the site of the Holy Sepulchre and on Mount Calvary. Those churches were dedicated on September 13 and 14, 335, and shortly thereafter the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross began to be celebrated on the latter date. The feast slowly spread from Jerusalem to other churches, until, by the year 720, the celebration was universal.

TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS – Feast

          This feast is not just about the Cross of the suffering and death of Jesus, but also about the triumph of his suffering and death. It tells us that there is something definitely triumphal about pain and death. Jesus’ death was not something high and dry; it was rather something transcendent and transforming. Why? How? Because Jesus died in God. The Father took him over completely. I don’t need to tell you what happens when God takes over completely. Yes, it is all bliss and glory, transparent glory and unalloyed happiness forever. That is your destiny and mine. Are you looking forward to it? I am.

          Listen to God the Father. “I am the Lord your God. All I have is yours. And the best I have is my Son, whom I sent to you; and you took him and beat him to death. Look what you did to my son, the most beautiful of the children of men. Now I’ll show you what I’ll do for my Son.” And God the Father collected the mangled body of Jesus and gave him the Resurrection and placed him at his own right hand. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and son of Mary, transcendent Lord and Redeemer of the world.

          Will you welcome him into your life? If you have, then you have entered the triumph of the Cross. You are there with Jesus in his bliss and glory already, and death makes no difference! From the moment you allowed God to take over your life, every pain and trial has taken on a redemptive meaning; every tear will water the root of the tree of eternal life. You must believe this, you must. There are no two ways about it.

The Apostle Paul expressed this newness in terms of belonging completely to the Lord who embraces every human condition: "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rom 14:7-8). Dying to the Lord means experiencing one's death as the supreme act of obedience to the Father (cf. Phil 2:8), being ready to meet death at the "hour" willed and chosen by him (cf.Jn 13:1), which can only mean when one's earthly pilgrimage is completed. Living to the Lord also means recognizing that suffering, while still an evil and a trial in itself, can always become a source of good. It becomes such if it is experienced for love and with love through sharing, by God's gracious gift and one's own personal and free choice, in the suffering of Christ Crucified. In this way, the person who lives his suffering in the Lord grows more fully conformed to him (cf. Phil 3:10; 1 Pet 2:21) and more closely associated with his redemptive work on behalf of the Church and humanity. ⁸⁷This was the experience of Saint Paul, which every person who suffers is called to relive: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his Body, that is, the Church" (Col 1:24).