LESSONS FROM LITURGY: ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces’ — The Cross

On Sept. 14, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Most feasts in the Church celebrate a salvific event in the life of Christ or commemorate a saint. This feast, however, celebrates an object — the cross of Christ.

Without contest, the cross stands as the most renowned symbol of Christianity. For Christians, the image of the cross becomes almost synonymous with Christ himself. After all, Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8); he made “peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20); and from the cross “he bore our sins in his body” (1 Pet 2:24). Now when we look at a cross, we do not see the symbol intended by his executioners — a symbol of death and mockery — but a symbol of triumph over death and of love beyond telling.

Although the celebration of Christ’s triumph on the cross was celebrated since the birth of Christianity, the public celebration of the cross itself took time to develop.

Christians of the early centuries only occasionally used the image of the cross in their art; in fact, one of the earliest images of an apparently Christian crucifix was carved by a pagan mocking Christians for worshiping a god who died in weakness (the Alexamenos Graffito portrays a soldier raising his hand in worship to a crucified donkey).

The prominence of the cross ascended with the events before and after the legalization of Christianity.

According to the fourth century Church historian Eusebius, shortly before Constantine’s victory over Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D., God sent the future Emperor Constantine a vision of “a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription “In Hoc Signo Vinces,” meaning “In this sign you will conquer.” Following another dream from the Lord, Constantine made his battle standard the Chi-Rho, the first two letters for Christ in Greek. Under this sign of the cross, he conquered his foe and became the emperor of Rome.

His Christian mother, the elderly St. Helena, undertook the difficult journey to Jerusalem to seek the True Cross, the cross on which Jesus was crucified.  In 326, she uncovered three crosses at Calvary, conveniently marked by the recently destroyed second century Temple of Venus which Emperor Hadrian built over the holy site.  Miracles of healing proved which cross bore the Lord.  She sent pieces of this True Cross back to Constantine in Rome and safeguarded the other pieces in a silver reliquary in Jerusalem.  In 335, Constantine constructed the Holy Sepulcher over the site where Jesus died and resurrected. 

Veneration of the True Cross then became part of Catholic piety.  The late fourth century “Pilgrimage of Egeria” describes how during Holy Week in Jerusalem, the True Cross would be revealed and venerated by the faithful (something we still do on Good Friday 1600 years later).  Thus, the Church began to celebrate the Finding of the Holy Cross.

But finding is not the same as keeping, and in 614 King Chosroes II of Persia conquered Jerusalem and stole the relics of the True Cross. The Emperor Heraclius defeated the Persian king and returned the relics to Jerusalem in 629.  When he approached the gates of the city, he discovered he was unable to enter dressed in his majesty. The Christian emperor removed his royal robes, his crown, and his shoes and carried the cross, still in the silver reliquary, back to its resting place. Having returned the cross to Jerusalem, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was established.

Among all relics, the True Cross holds a unique place in the Church as especially worthy of veneration.  St. John of Damascus wrote, “this same truly precious and august tree, on which Christ offered himself as a sacrifice for our sakes, is to be worshiped as sanctified by contact with his holy body and blood.” St. Thomas Aquinas was so bold as to say that we adore the wood of the True Cross with the same adoration we give to Christ himself because of the wood’s “contact with the limbs of Christ, and from its being saturated with his blood.”  We cannot wash away or separate the blood of Christ from the wood that held him.

This fitting celebration of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross reminds all Christians of the cost of our redemption and how the humility of the divine taking flesh and offering his life won our salvation.  The symbol of defeat becomes the symbol of victory, and the crucifix on the wall of every Christian home proclaims this victory.  And now when we see the cross, our minds remember our crucified Lord and our hearts rejoice in his love.