Saint Vladimir’s Seminary
September 14, 2024
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Joyous feast! С праздником!
In the Old English poem, “The Dream of the Rood,” the precious and life-giving Cross appears to the lyric persona in a dream. It appears to him not as an ordinary piece of wood, much less as bloodied fragments, but instead as
a most wondrous tree / raised on high, circled round with light, / the brightest of beams. All that beacon was / covered in gold; gems stood / fair at the earth’s corners, and five there were / up on the cross-beam . . . / the tree of glory / honored in garments, shining with joys, / bedecked with gold; gems had / covered worthily the Creator’s tree.
This is a poetic description of the Cross as it appears in the light of eternity; this is the Cross of the Risen God, the Cross of victory.
Moreover, this is the Cross as it appears to us today: bedecked in flowers, hailed as the “unconquerable trophy of godliness, door to Paradise, succor of the faithful, rampart set about the Church . . . invincible weapon, adversary of devils, glory of martyrs, true ornament of saints, haven of salvation.” We celebrate the Cross in the center of the Church as a “sign of true joy.”
And truly, although we place the Cross in the physical center of the Church today, it is in fact always at the center of the Church, the center of our Christian experience. It is always at the center of our worship.
After all, as we sing at every Resurrection vigil, “Through the Cross joy has come into all the world.” On the Cross, Christ took upon himself all the suffering of the world. By undergoing this suffering willingly, he transformed it: to suffer implies passivity, but Christ embraced suffering as an active agent. He took up his Cross and carried it all the way to the place of Golgotha, the place of the skull. He embraced suffering unto death.
But in so doing, he transformed suffering into joy and death into life. We no longer regard suffering as something pointless, as an ultimate evil; through the Cross, suffering is filled with meaning and the potential of transfiguration. Suffering as Christians identifies us with Christ, who is himself eternal Life.
Likewise, death no longer appears as an end, a dark door to nowhere, or to places unknown, or to the gloomy and monotonous plains of Hades. Christ has made death a passage way into life, life everlasting, life abundant and overflowing, life incomparable to this fleeting life, life not as the world knows or gives.
With that said, a cross, as St. Ambrose of Optina says, is always a cross. Even as the Cross shone with splendor in his dream, the rood-poet’s lyric persona also saw “an ancient wretched struggle, for it first began / to bleed on the right side. . . . / I saw that eager beacon / change garments and colors—now it was drenched, / stained with blood, now bedecked with treasure.”
The Cross becomes the sign of true joy precisely because it is an instrument of torture; it is the ensign of life because it served as a tool of death. The Lord bears the wounds in his hands and feet and side even after the Resurrection; he is eternally marked, eternally scarred, for our salvation, for this is what it is to be the Savior.
Therefore, if we desire to exalt the Cross in our own lives, to suffer with Christ, to walk the ways of the martyrs and ascetics, all of this entails real pain, real suffering, real self-denial. The Cross is no mere illusion.
However, now, by means of the Cross, our real grief and sorrow and affliction and wounds are given a new meaning. Moreover, if we fix our eyes on the crucified Savior, all of our pain is accompanied by a higher joy: by the presence of Christ himself in our midst, now and always, by means of his Passion. He died so he could rise, rose so he could ascend, ascended so he could send the Spirit, and sent the Spirit so he could, in that same Spirit, always abide in and with his people.
To our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, who endured the Cross for us, who endures in and with us whenever we take up our own Cross, who hangs beside us when we are crucified to the world: to him be all adoration and glory, together with his Father and his Spirit, the Comforter, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
O power of the precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, forsake not us, sinners!