Celebrating the Cross
Celebrating the Cross
It was the Roman Emperor Constantine, first to legalize Christianity, who ordered the erection of a complex of buildings in Jerusalem “on a scale of imperial magnificence,” to set forth as “an object of attraction and veneration to all, the blessed place of our Savior’s resurrection.” He entrusted this project to his mother, Empress Helena. When she arrived at Jerusalem, she discovered that Calvary Hill, which had stood outside the city walls in Jesus’s time, was now inside the walls of a city which the Romans had built on top of the old city which they had destroyed.
Calvary Hill itself was buried under tons of fill. It took years of excavation to find it, the nearby tomb, or sepulchere, where Jesus had been buried — and from which he rose — then finally a relic believed to be the true cross.
Constantine’s shrine included two principal buildings: a large basilica, used for the Liturgy of the Word, and a circular church, known as “The Resurrection”—its altar placed on the site of the tomb — which was used for the Liturgy of the Table, and for the singing of the Daily Office. In the courtyard between the two buildings, the exposed top of Calvary Hill was visible. So, as the faithful passed from Word to Sacrament, they would see where Christ was crucified. And it was there that the solemn veneration of the Cross took place on Good Friday.
This Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated on September 14th, 335 AD, a date suggested by the account of the dedication of Solomon’s temple in the same city, in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, hundreds of years before. The original church was destroyed in 1009 on the orders of al-Hakim, “the Mad Caliph.” Some decades later, Hakim’s son and the Roman Emperor in Constantinople agreed to rebuild it. Then the Crusaders added to it, and that is the church which today stands on the site of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection, the holiest and most sacred Christian site in this world.
In time, this day became a feast not just of the Church itself, but of the Cross. “Feast” is one of those old church words that really means “celebration.” So, today we celebrate the cross to which Jesus Christ was nailed. The focus of Holy Cross Day is not as much on the evil of the cross and our complicity in it, as on the triumph of the Cross. When Jesus says today — And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself — He is echoing what he said to Nicodemus back in ch. 3 — As Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
In both cases, Jesus is foreshadowing his being lifted up on the cross. The snake that Moses lifted up was a bronze replica of the venomous snakes torturing the Israelites in the desert. So in the first lifting up, Jesus offers to draw all our suffering, our anger, our sadness, into himself. In the second lifting up, Jesus offers to draw all people together in the knowledge of how we have all fallen short. Thus, acknowledging our unity as sinners, we can be reconciled to each other as forgiven. Emptied of all that poisons our relationships with each other, we can be filled with new hope, new peace, and new love.
The Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the best news that humankind has ever heard and will ever hear. As he is lifted up on that cross, so we are lifted up with him. And that makes this Holy Cross Day not a Friday fast for our sin, but a Sunday feast to be celebrated. Alleluia.
September 14th, 2025
Holy Cross Day
The Rev. David Kendrick