This week, most Orthodox and all Catholic Rite churches will celebrate the Exultation of the Cross. It marks the finding of the True Cross in 327 and the dedication in 335 of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. This feast marks something more than simple history. This feast gives us a chance to reflect on the meaning of the Cross, and ask the question of whether we are willing to take it up in our lives.
Before His death, Jesus spoke of the Cross explicitly and implicitly. He spoke to Nicodemus of the Son of Man being lifted up, and referenced the episode of the bronze snake mounted on a pole. He invited the disciples to take up their cross and follow Him. He prophesied His death on a cross. They would have understood exactly the reference. While not necessarily an everyday occurrence, crucifixion was common enough in Roman-occupied Israel. It meant death, humiliating and literally excruciating. Jesus was to transform it. He embraced the cross, submitted himself in humility. Dying on the Cross, He put death to death, and robbed hell of its false claim on those who obediently submit themselves to God. In rising, He gives life to all who believe. Jesus Christ models for us that we who are sinners need to die to ourselves. More importantly, by the Cross, He gives us the only means of salvation and eternal life.
We are invited to take up our cross. Too often, we ‘reduce’ the cross to something that frustrates or troubles us. Jesus does not want us to reduce the cross to only something like sickness or cancers, or a difficult family situations, or whatever else, as difficult as those things are. He wants us to carry our cross in the whole of our life - to submit our entire lives, not just those difficulties. He wants to be Lord of our entirety. Certainly, the Cross of Jesus transforms those difficulties, but He wants His Cross to transform us. He wants us to follow Him so closely that when others see us, they see Christians who embrace our own dying to self and seeking to exult Him. As Christians, we cry out everyday of our lives, as we carry our own cross, "We exult you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world."
