14 September: Exaltation of the Holy Cross

A Holy Sign of God’s Love

“We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection: through him we are saved and made free” (Gal 6:14), is the entrance antiphon for the Feast of the Exhaltation of the Holy Cross. This Feast celebrates Christ’s victory over sin and death and is shared by the Catholic and the Orthodox Church. Indeed, the Orthodox Church considers this Feast day to be almost as important as Easter. The origins of the Feast can be traced back to the first Christian communities of Jerusalem, when the faithful solemnly venerated the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

According to tradition, Saint Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother, found the Cross in Jerusalem on 14 September 320. The Feast also recalls the Emperor’s dedication of two Basilicas, the Martyrion and the Anástasis (Resurrection), built in the first half of the fourth century, between Golgotha and the Sepulchre of Jesus. The dedication of the Basilicas took place on 13 September 335. On the following day, the Patriarch of Jerusalem showed the faithful the Cross for veneration. This was part of the reason for the choice of 14 September as the date for the celebration of what is known in the West as the Exhaltation. On that day, we also recall Emperor Heraclius’ victory over the Persians (628) and the subsequent finding of the Cross, which was brought back to Jerusalem after the Persians had taken it as a war treasure in 614.

During the Liturgy, placing the Cross at the altar while celebrating Mass means recalling the Biblical figure of the bronze serpent that Moses raised in the desert. When the Hebrews, bitten by the poisonous snakes, looked at it they were healed. Those who look to Christ also obtain salvation.

It is certainly not easy to understand the authentic meaning of the Cross. Not even the Apostle Peter immediately understood the true meaning of the Announcement of the Passion, to the point that Jesus had to scold him when he tried to dissuade him from offering his life (cf. Matt 16:21-23. At the same time, when we refer to the Cross, we must never forget that the Mother of the Lord is always at its feet, as Pope Francis recalled during the Angelus on 30 August 2020 when he prayed: “May the Virgin Mary, united to her Son unto Calvary, help us not to retreat in the face of the trials and suffering that witnessing to the Gospel entails”. On the same occasion, the Holy Father had highlighted the importance of following Christ: “The task of ‘taking up the cross’ becomes participating with Christ in the salvation of the world. Considering this, let us make sure that the cross hanging on the wall at home, or that little one that we wear around our neck, is a sign of our wish to be united with Christ in lovingly serving our brothers and sisters, especially the littlest and most fragile. The cross is the holy sign of God’s Love, it is a sign of Jesus’ Sacrifice, and is not to be reduced to a superstitious object or an ornamental necklace”.

Many sacred authors have commented on the meaning of the celebration of 14 September, among them Bishop Saint Andrew of Crete (660-740), who highlighted in his Discourses: “We are celebrating the Feast of the Cross which drove away darkness and brought in the light. As we keep this Feast, we are lifted up with the crucified Christ, leaving behind us earth and sin so that we may gain the things above. So great and outstanding a possession is the cross that he who wins it has won a treasure. Rightly could I call this treasure the fairest of all fair things and the costliest, in fact as well as in name, for on it and through it and for its sake the riches of salvation that had been lost were restored to us”. (Discourse 10 on the Exhaltation of the Holy Cross).