25th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the Finding of the True Cross—and today we commemorate how St. Helen—sixteen hundred years ago—the mother of the Emperor Constantine—traveled to Jerusalem to find and venerate the place where they crucified Our Lord.
Why did Helen undertake such an adventure? I am thinking that maybe she felt some residual regret at what her ancestors did to the spotless body of the Son of God. Maybe she thought that now they were Catholic to make up for what they did and venerate the cross on which Our Savior died.
Of course Helen had to find the hill of Golgotha first, and that was a problem because the location had been more or less forgotten for three hundred years.
A “New” Jerusalem
You see, after the Fall of Jerusalem—around about 30 years after Jesus died and rose, most of the city was leveled and most of the remaining Jews and Christians were driven out. Now, by the time that Helen comes to Jerusalem, only a few of the old citizens of Jerusalem—still remembered all the stories about Jesus and they told Helen that according to legend, the very place where the Messiah was crucified was now the temple. You see in order to obliterate the last trace of this Hebrew Messiah nonsense, the Romans built a temple to Venus, the goddess of Love—on Golgotha—on the very spot where Jesus died.
And so if she were to find the True Cross, she would have to tear down the Temple and dig there.
You know the rest of the story. Helen brought her team of archaeologists and excavators. They dug and found three crosses. Not knowing which was the true Cross
of Christ and which belonged to the two thieves who were crucified with Him, they brought a woman who had died, and they lowered each cross upon her that it might touch her.
At the lowering of the third cross—as if to prove the life-giving power of the cross—the woman was brought back to life. Helen knew that while all the world would have said this was just an old dirt-encrusted rotting piece of bloody wood it was in truth the instrument upon which Jesus saved us from eternal death. The woman was brought back to life as if Jesus Himself were there in person.
Look at the exquisitely beautiful irony—the means by which Jesus was killed becomes the means by which we receive life to the full; and then to prove it—the cross becomes the means by which this dead person is brought back to life. Ahh. There is something about the Cross.
Crucifixion
Now Crucifixion is a horrible way of killing someone. (And I say that in the present tense, because the Islamic State—when it is not beheading and shooting Christians, it is crucifying them.) Even though the Phoenicians invented this combination of torture and execution—it was the Romans who perfected it. They figured out just the right angle to put the arms and feet for the most painful death possible.
You see what happens in a crucifixion is that the victim is stripped of his clothes—pierced with nails and bound with ropes—his arms at just the right angle—so that after maybe 18 hours of alternately struggling to breathe and avoid the pain he finally slumps down, his lungs fill with air and he dies—of asphyxiation.
You can well imagine how in those early days Christians were horrified at the thought of the bloody death of their sweet savior.
They would have looked at the image of the Crucified Christ on a Cross, the same way that we would look at a man strapped to an electric chair—his head and arms bound by electrodes—smoke coming from his ears.
The early Christians can be excused if they didn’t think of holiness and sweetness when they thought of the cross.
With the passage of time, though, we have come to understand that Jesus’ suffering and death means love and ultimately life and life to the full.
Yes, we know that there is horror and tragedy and bloody suffering in the idea of the Cross. Crucifixion as a means of capital punishment brought death to thousands. Yet this Cross—this time—brought eternal life.
Every other crucifixion was an execution. This one was a sacrifice, the Supreme Sacrifice of the Son of God— to forgive the sins of His people. God loved us so much that He would die for us giving us Eternal life in the bargain.
Of course, this is always the way of true love. Love—if it is totally
selfless—if it is totally self-giving—if it is totally sacrificial—gives life. It always gives life.
The love of a husband and wife—gives life in a little baby. The love of a soldier for his country gives life.
You see those who love— die to their own desires and wants. They sacrifice themselves for the one whom they love—so that the one they love will have life.
Re-Building the Temple of Venus
How ironic that the Romans built a temple to Venus—the false goddess of false love—over the very place where the Son of God gave His life for the sake of true love. Venus was the goddess of love defined as emotion—the goddess of love defined as selfishness, the goddess of love defined as sexual excess. A very modern god indeed. And they built a temple to her honor.
(And it goes without saying that modern society—the movers and shakers—the pols and celebrities—the media mavens—the show producers and entertainers are trying to re-build the temple of Venus once again over the Cross. Oh—they say— if we could only bury the cross one more time underneath our new temple! What do you think is the real message of the likes of Katy Perry and Beyoncé and Lady Gaga?—that they are Venus and they—in all their embarrassing gyrations—are what love is supposed to be; forget Jesus and His cross. Worship us.) But try as they might—even the new temple to Venus will come down—because true love—God’s love— conquers all.
Eventually, the cross—over time—would be seen not so much as horror—but as comfort. The cross would be seen as the emblem of love par excellence. The cross becomes a blessing, a protection, a balm, an oil of gladness and an object of untold devotion.
Christians would learn to make the sign of the cross, kiss the cross, hold the cross, love the cross, protect our homes and banish the devil with the cross. We would baptize and marry and bury the dead all in the name of the cross. We would swear our lives by the cross and pledge our love under the cross.
Is it any wonder that we call this day the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross—because it truly is held high—in the world and in our hearts.