"Save us through your cross, O Lord."
Canticle of Zechariah Antiphon of Sept 14, 2012
"We worship your cross O Lord and we praise and glorify your holy resurrection for the wood of the cross has brought joy to the world."
The Bible tells us that Jesus will be a contradiction in the world. The cross is a sign of failure and foolishness to the non-believer in Jesus as the Christ, but to those of us who do believe in Jesus as the Christ, the cross with his corpus is a beautiful sign of love and victory. We know what happened on Good Friday so we mourn. But we also know what happened on Easter Sunday therefore we rejoice. It is hard to imagine that people really don't believe in Jesus due to the number of funerals that occur on any given day when even "non-believers" talk about angels and peace. A crucifix is placed on the coffin in a Catholic funeral service.
As a Catholic, I grew up making the Sign of the Cross.. a symbol of our Baptism that is a sign of new life. I make the Sign of the Cross often during the course of a day as I pray for myself and others. The cross is a sign of complete surrender to God and helping others. God does use scoundrels to get his message across. Jesus knew that and took up his cross. What man meant for evil, God can turn into a good.
I attended a praise and worship gathering at Our Lady Star of the Sea in AC this past summer. One friend who led the singing invited us into the sanctuary and started explaining what she experienced on Sunday mornings when she sings with the choir. She drew our attention to the stained glass windows.
I can only remember one of them..and that was the window over the altar. I faced it as we sang. It was a depiction of a woman clinging to the foot of a cross...Jesus's cross. I could relate to that window and gazed upon it as we sang. I imagined the Marys at the foot of the cross on the day of Jesus's death. There were three women and one young man at the foot of that tragedy. The cross is a symbol of strength..and the women who remained were strong women. As a woman I want strong women as my role models because life is tough.
On September 13, 2012 I walked into the Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary as I have done many times. I looked to my left and noticed a picture I had ignored other times. When I asked someone if it was newly placed there, as it was definitely a picture showing its age, she said no it had been hanging there for years.
The framed picture was that of a woman, not unlike the one in the stained glass window with long brown hair, holding a small cross. Her eyes gazed on the cross as she held it gently in her hands. The artist captured the emotions of the woman. Friday, September 14, 2012 was the Feast Day of the Exaltation of the Cross. I knew there was just no coincidence in seeing that picture for the first time.
The cross is a really a symbol of love. Jesus went to the cross for us. In this day in age, as well as in Jesus' day, the cross is a symbol of conflict because love demands the best of us.
Without the Sign of the Cross or the love it represents, it would be impossible to "go to the mattresses" for someone else. The Sign of the Cross prepares us for battle. The cross reminds us where we will be when the battle is over...if we carry the cross of Jesus.
