A Catena on the Cross

In her 2017 The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy, Robin Jenson notes that among the memorials of the World Trade Center attacks is a large object known as the “Ground Zero Cross,” two intersecting steel beams found in the wreckage. To borrow a verse from the 1825 hymn by John Bowring, echoing Gal. 6:14, the cross towers o’er the wrecks of time. Set on a mound during the cleanup, the Ground Zero Cross became the site of prayer, even regular Masses, and the stations of the cross. It was — as all crosses are or perhaps should be — a reminder of the intersection of pain and hope, death and life. This symbol of humiliating death — naked and slowly suffocated — is the place where perverse human failure is swallowed up in divine provision. Ave crux, spes unica; hail the cross, our only hope.

I feel confident that I am not alone in noticing the proximity of the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 14, to the anniversary of September 11, 2001. The feast day originally set aside to celebrate Constantine’s mother, Helena, finding the cross in Jerusalem circa 324 is likewise an opportunity to reveal hidden truth, a truth covered over by our comfortable expectations for life. September 11 marked the end of the 20th century not merely chronologically, but also culturally. The 1980s’ “morning in America” and the end of the Cold War was followed by the bubbly 1990s, an upbeat period in the United States featuring the Dave Matthews Band and the comedy of Seinfeld.

The new century, which began with the falling of those towers, has turned out to be far less optimistic and less secure. The 2008 economic downturn, only a few years later, called into question for young adults (including me at the time) an expected course of life: buying a house, starting a family, following the road to being middle class. During the 2010s, the two political parties began to widen to their polar extremes, birthing the bitter fruit of (without hyperbole) lunatic fringes gaining credit on the national stage. There has been palpable social change, some of which seems like satire and whose ultimate ends are still unknown, and there is a pervasive uncertainty about democratic institutions that have long been trusted. Oh yes, and there was a global pandemic through which many of us were trying to raise kids.

But hey, life ain’t so bad. Please forgive me if this sounds like moaning and whining. After all, most of us are not living through the sack of Rome or even the ravages of war and famine that are happening right now across God’s good creation. In truth, many of us in the West are very comfortable; many of us have a reasonable hope to pay for our kids’ college and our retirements. My point, however, is that 9/11 seems to have marked the end of a particular culture of certainty and expectation embraced in America during the second half of the 20th century, a certainty about the course of life that had endured even during the Cold War.

Perhaps the tragedy of 9/11, now almost 25 years ago, inaugurated an era of clarity. I certainly do not mean that 9/11 was somehow helpful; that would be grotesque. And likewise, it is a strange assertion during a season when trust in the former “givens” of Western life is bottoming out. But that is the point. We see, or at least I hope some of us see, the truth about real security. Older liturgical calendars list the feast as the “invention” of the Cross, an echo of its Latin title. The word Inventio has the connotation of uncovering that which was always there. It has the sense of revelation or unveiling, not creation or fabrication. Consider the emotionally powerful moment in our Good Friday liturgy when the cross is brought out for veneration. The cross is unveiled; the truth is revealed. According to Eusebius, the true cross was hidden underneath a Temple to Venus; it was covered over by lies. Hail the cross, indeed, our one hope. And this uncovering is not merely seeing two pieces of wood fixed together, but the truth that our security is found in that place, the cross of Jesus Christ, where pain and hope meet, where death and life intersect, where (once more) perverse human failure is swallowed up in divine provision. There is God’s victory and our security.

Here, then, is a short catena of Christian voices on the Cross, a gathering of sources for reflection on this day. I have only lightly amended language and translations for ease of reading.

Cyril of Jerusalem (313-86), Catechetical Lectures
Let us not be ashamed of the cross of our Savior, but rather glory in it. “For the word of the Cross is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” but to us, it is salvation. And “to those who are perishing it is foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:23). For it was not a mere man who died for us, but the Son of God, God made man. Further, if the lamb under Moses drove away the destroyer (Ex. 12:23), did not much rather the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world deliver us from our sins” (John 1:29)? The blood of a silly sheep gave salvation. Shall not the blood of the only begotten save?

Dream of the Rood (c. 8th century)
Listen! I will speak of the sweetest dream, what came to me in the middle of the night, when speech-bearers slept in their rest. It seemed that I saw a most wondrous tree … Then the young hero made ready—that was God almighty— strong and resolute; he ascended on the high gallows, brave in the sight of many, when he wanted to ransom mankind. I trembled when he embraced me, but I dared not bow to the ground, or fall to the earth’s corners—I had to stand fast. I was reared as a cross: I raised up the mighty King, the Lord of heaven; I dared not lie down. They drove dark nails through me; the scars are still visible, open wounds of hate; I dared not harm any of them. They mocked us both together; I was all drenched with blood flowing from that man’s side after he had sent forth his spirit … “Now I bid you, my beloved hero, tell them in words that it is the tree of glory on which almighty God suffered for mankind’s many sins and Adam’s ancient deeds. Death He tasted there, yet the Lord rose again with his great might to help mankind. He ascended into heaven. He will come again to this middle-earth to seek mankind on doomsday.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), Commentary on Colossians
O the abundant riches of God’s mercy! O the unspeakable goodness of his heavenly wisdom! When all hope of righteousness was past on our part, when we had nothing in ourselves whereby we might quench his burning wrath and work the salvation of own souls, and rise out of the miserable state wherein we lay; then, even then, did Christ the Son of God, by the appointment of his Father, come down from heaven to be wounded for our sakes, to be reputed with the wicked, to be condemned to death, to take on himself the reward for our sins and to give his body to be broken on the cross for our offenses. “He,” says the prophet Isaiah, meaning Christ, “has born our infirmities and has carried our sorrows; the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes are we made whole” (Isa. 53:4-5) … St. Paul likewise says, “God made him a sacrifice for our sins who knew no sin, that we should be made the righteousness of God by him” (2 Cor. 5:21). And St. Peter agrees, writing, “Christ has once died and suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust” (1 Pet. 3:18).

Martin Luther (1483-1546), Commentary on Galatians, Erasmus Middletown, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1979)
Carnal glory and ambition is a dangerous poison … Our glory is increased and confirmed because our cross and suffering is the suffering of Christ. Our Savior, who is greater than the world, pronounced us to be blessed and wills us to rejoice (Matt. 5:11-12) … Our glory, then, is a different glory to the glory of the world, which does not rejoice in tribulation and persecution, but in power, riches, honor, and its own righteousness. But mourning and confusion will be the end of this kind of glory.

Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-82), Sermon, “Joy out of Suffering”
The joy of the world ends in sorrow; sorrow with Christ and in Christ, yes, and for our sins, for Christ’s sake, ends in joy … Faint not then, you weary soul, but trust! If you can see nothing but hell before you, shut your eyes and cast yourself blindly into the infinite abyss of God’s mercy, and the everlasting arms will receive you and bear you. Hide in the cleft of the rock riven for you, your Savior’s wounded side, until this tyranny is past. If buffeted by the waves, you would not let go of a rope which held you to the rock! So now, though “all his waves and storms seem to pass over you,” hold faster to him who, unseen, holds you.

J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), Sermon, “On the Cross“
What did St. Paul mean when he said, “I glory in the cross of Christ,” in the Epistle to the Galatians? … He simply meant, “I glory in nothing but Christ crucified, as the salvation of my soul. Reader, Jesus Christ crucified was the joy and delight, the comfort and the peace, the hope and the confidence, the foundation and the resting place, the ark and the refuge, the food and the medicine of Paul’s soul. He did not think of what he had done himself, and suffered himself. He did not meditate on his own goodness, and his own righteousness. He loved to think of what Christ had done, and Christ had suffered — of the death of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, the atonement of Christ, the blood of Christ, the finished work of Christ. In this he did glory … Are you one that finds his heart too ready to love earthly things? To you also I say, “Behold the cross of Christ.” Look at the cross; think of the cross; meditate on the cross, and then go and set your affections on the world if you can. I believe that holiness is nowhere learned so well as on Calvary. I believe you cannot look much at the cross without feeling your will sanctified, and your tastes made more spiritual. As the sun makes everything else look dark and dim, so does the cross darken the false splendor of this world. As honey tasted makes all other things seem to have no taste at all, so does the cross seen by faith take all the sweetness out of the pleasures of the world. Keep on every day steadily looking at the cross of Christ.