Homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross St. Jerome once said that ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Truly, if we do not know the scriptures and if they are not an essential source of prayer and spiritual nourishment for us, we will find ourselves drifting further away from the Lord Jesus Christ. In a similar way, to be ignorant of the history of our Church and the venerable traditions had have shaped our Catholic identity is also to be ignorant of Christ, for our faith has be profoundly impacted by the lived experience of the Christians of ancient days who, if we are willing to listen, continue to speak to and teach us. In particular, many of the feasts we celebrate throughout the liturgical year are rooted in Christian history and are not nostalgic memories of the past but important testimonies of faith that continue to inspire us as Catholic Christians of the 21 st century. That Christians have exalted the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ takes us back to that Friday afternoon on Mt. Calvary when a few of the Lord s disciples gazed upon the one who was pierced to see the depth of his love, a love that
St. Paul boasted of when he proclaimed that he preached Christ crucified, to whom every knee would bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. But in time Mt. Calvary and the Tomb of Christ, those holy sites of the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord, were covered over with mounds of dirt and pagan temples were built over them. Buried alongside these sacred sites was said to be the True Cross and those of the two thieves In time God would allow Christians to rediscover the sites of the Lord s Death and Resurrection to allow His People to once again visit the spots where the world was recreated anew in the Blood of the Resurrected Lamb. St. Cyril of Jerusalem in 348 AD tells us that St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, in the year 324 travelled to Jerusalem to oversee excavations of Mt. Calvary and the Tomb of Christ and to discover if in fact the Cross of Christ remained in Jerusalem. To the great joy of the Christians of Jerusalem the True Cross was found in the place where it was said to have been hidden hundreds of years before. One tradition states that they knew it was the true Cross because the inscription INRI was still fixed to the wood. Another tradition states that
because they found three crosses, St. Helena and Bishop Marcarius of Jerusalem decided to bring them to a sick woman and a man who had recently died. When they touched the True Cross, the woman was restored to health and the man was raised from the dead! In thanksgiving for the discovery of the true Cross and place of the Lord s death and resurrection, the Emperor Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and dedicated it to the Lord on September 14, 335 AD. While many contemporary historians and theologians have declared the traditions surrounding the finding of the Holy Cross as pious legends, we should not be too quick or arrogant in dismissing these venerable traditions without considering the way they inspired the faith of countless Christians. The finding of the True Cross, that altar of sacrifice Jesus mounted for our salvation, was not meant to turn the Cross into a mere relic. Rather it was the discovery of a visible and living memento of the perpetual victory of Jesus Christ over sin, death and the devil, so as to inspire us that the Lord s Cross is forever blessing us and leading us to embrace our own cross to know the royal path of following in his footsteps.
But the story of the finding of the Holy Cross did not end with the dedication of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In the early 7 th century AD, the Persian army attacked Jerusalem and took the relics of the True Cross back to Persia. The Emperor Heraclius recaptured the relics in 629 and after thinking first to bring them to his palace in Constantinople, he discerned that it was only right to return them to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. He ordered that a magnificent procession bring the Cross into Jerusalem but as he approached the Holy Sepulchre, dressed in his royal regalia, he felt stopped by an invisible force and felt the weight of the relics become unbearable for him to carry. Bishop Zechariah of Jerusalem told the emperor that if he desired to bear the cross and return it to its proper resting place, he must strip himself of all worldly honours and attachments and assume the poverty that Jesus Christ bore when he carried the Cross. With that the emperor stripped himself of his silk robes and put on a pilgrim s garb and was able to bear the relics till he placed them on an altar that to this day stands directly above the summit of Mt. Calvary.
Like the Emperor Heraclius, we too must realize that to bear and exalt the Cross of Jesus Christ is to recognize just how much it costs us to be identified with Christ on his way to Calvary and if we desire to daily be detached from anything that separates us from the love of God. For it is in the Cross that we encounter that strange truth that what can kill you can actually bring you everlasting life! Serpents once killed the Israelites for their sins but then a golden serpent restored them to life. So too it was a tree in Eden that brought spiritual death to Adam and Eve but then the tree that brought death to the Son of God restored the children of Adam and Eve to eternal life. The cross then is the true tree of life, and one true hope. It is the bridge that connects heaven to earth upon which the angels of heaven ascend and descend. And for that reason the Cross is to be borne by us all. But if we are afraid of the Cross and fail to understand why it is so essential to our faith, then go to the Holy Mother of God, Our Lady of Sorrows, and she will teach you why the Cross is necessary and how to bear it well for love of her son.