14/09/2026
𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐗𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐒
September 14, 2026
One may put the same question to two men and receive two answers entirely: ask a Roman what the cross meant, and he curses it; ask a Christian, and he kisses it. Among Romans, the cross was even hurled as an insult in everyday speech. One might hear: "Fugite in malam crucem", literally "flee to a bad cross," or in a more modern rendering, "go to hell." Small wonder, then, that the earliest Christians did not display the cross openly, but hid their confession beneath the Ichthys, a secret fish symbol standing in for Christ. And yet the Church has never ceased to lift this same cross above every other sign. Why, then, do we exalt and venerate it still?
The cross had already begun taking shape as a Christian symbol by the third century, but it gained its great triumph when Emperor Constantine attributed his victory at the Milvian Bridge to a vision of the cross, a moment that led to the legalization of Christianity and the promotion of the symbol throughout the Empire. Years later, his mother, St. Helena, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and sought out the site of Christ's tomb. There, she uncovered three crosses and could not tell which was the Lord's until one, touched to a dying woman, restored her to health; by this wonder was the True Cross made known. Over the tomb and Calvary, Constantine raised the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, and on this very date, the cross was first brought out for the faithful to venerate. Three centuries later, when the Western Empire had long since fallen, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius overcame the Persians who had carried the True Cross away as plunder, and restored it to Jerusalem, again upon this same date.
Saint Paul had already given us the language for this mystery centuries earlier. "But God forbid that I should glory," he told the Galatians, “Save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14). To the Corinthians, he declared that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). And to the Philippians, he told how Christ humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:8). Paul knew the cross for what it truly was: not a mere instrument of ex*****on, but the very hinge of salvation history.
Here, fellow brethren, is the great reason we still venerate it. We do not honor the wood for its own sake, nor do we forget what horror it once represented. We venerate the cross because upon it, an instrument of shame became the means of victory. Death itself was put to death there, and the sign of the worst thing Rome could do to a man became, by the hand of Providence, the sign of the best thing God could do for the world.
Saint Andrew of Crete, preaching on this very mystery, said it well: "Had there been no cross, death would not have been trodden underfoot, nor hell despoiled." And again: "The cross is honorable because it is both the sign of God's suffering and the trophy of His victory." That paradox, shame turned into glory, is why the Church still lifts the cross before the faithful this day.
Perhaps neither the Romans, nor even the early Christians, could see the cross as we do now: one people cursing what the other would one day kneel to kiss.
"See the cross of the Lord; let all His enemies flee in terror; the Lion of Judah, David's seed, has prevailed, alleluia."
- St. Anthony of Padua
Reflection by Vincent Gabriel Pamintuan
