Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Wandering through the many churches in Rome decorated in the first 500 years of Christian history, one will notice a peculiar absence of an image, the image of Jesus on the Cross. Church apses contained lots of images of Jesus as the Good Shephard, and then later, Jesus as Judge on a throne, but the cross as the central feature in the church did not occur until the 12th century. The cross has always been a hard image to bear. In the early church it was the sign that Jesus died as a criminal and criminality was an image the early Christians wanted to avoid. Although Paul saw the death and resurrection of Christ as a pattern for our own life, the cross always stood as a difficult image even though the narrative of the crucifixion played such a substantial part of each gospel. Coming to grips with death and suffering has always been one of the great mysteris of human existence, a challenging mystery in light of our believe in loving God. We are like the apostles on the road to Emmaus who look at the cross with puzzlement and fear. And, like the apostles, we need to hear the words of Jesus reminding us that there is much in life that resembles the cross, but the cross is not the ultimate meaning and end of a life that is eternal.