Light from the Altar - The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 14 September

When Heraclius was Emperor of the East, in the beginning of the seventh century, Chosroes II of Persia, a cruel, perfidious King, plundered Mesopotamia and part of Syria. Meeting with no opposition, he advanced as far as Antioch, took Cesarea and Damascus, and then marched due south to Jerusalem. In the Holy City he and his dissolute army behaved with shameless barbarity, massacred monks, priests, and nuns by the hundred, and sold 90,000 Christians into slavery. The churches were plundered, the shrines burnt, and all that was precious in gold and silver carried off and distributed as spoil. The victorious army marched next into Egypt and took Alexandria and Carthage, and then possessed themselves of the seaboard of Africa. Heraclius, moved by these ravages, sued again and again for peace, but the mocking answer always came: "No peace could be made with men who adored a crucified God!" Fired with a holy zeal, Heraclius determined to carry war into the enemy's country, to invade Persia, to spoil the spoiler. His only hope was in the God of armies, his troops and treasure compared with the enemy's were really nothing. Coming before his soldiers with a picture of our Lord in his hand, the Emperor stirred up his men to undertake the war in the spirit of a crusade, to exterminate one who was an enemy to God, religion and mankind alike.

God prospered his arms; victory after victory was gained, and at last, on the 12th December 627, near Ninive, the Persians were totally routed, Chosroes was slain by his own rebellious son, and peace was concluded.

Heraclius, in his triumphal march home, brought with him to Constantinople the greatest treasure the East possessed, the relic of the true Cross. This had been seized, with other relics, when Chosroes plundered Jerusalem, but had been preserved with unbroken seal in its original silver case. The Emperor took the holy relic himself to Jerusalem and carried it, barefoot, without royal robe or diadem, into the Holy City. There he delivered it over to the patriarch, Zachary who had been exiled with the relics, and reinstated with them in his See.

This is what is meant by the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Feast kept on the 14th September.

The Exaltation of the Cross! The very name seems to contain a summary of the change wrought in the world by the coming of our Lord. Cicero, the polished writer and orator who lived some fifty years before Christ, said the word cross should never pass the lips of a free man. It could not be mentioned in decent society, because it stood as the symbol of a degradation only fit for a condemned slave. Time went on, and a Roman Emperor arose who won his victories under the standard of the Cross, who forbade its use as a punishment, who honored it as the symbol of his faith. Constantine exalted the Cross in the eyes of the world, but its veneration had begun three centuries earlier. The first Christians, as they spread throughout the world, took with them wherever they went the sign of their redemption. They used it in spiritual and temporal concerns alike, in conferring Baptism and Confirmation, in beginning and ending a meal, in going in and out of doors. It had become a part of their everyday life Tertullian tells us, and they did nothing without its consecration.

And why? A heathen of the day would have explained that one time a remarkable Jew had been condemned to death by His enemies, and had died upon the Cross. Is this an adequate answer? No. That crucified Jew was God, and, as His symbol, His Cross has become hope, safety, comfort, and glory to all who believe in Him. Iconoclasts of East and West may pull down the crucifix and trample it under foot, but they cannot stay the hands of thousands of little children from signing their foreheads with the sacred sign, they cannot root it out of the hearts of the faithful. Look up at the finest buildings of the world and you will see the Cross on their loftiest pinnacles; look at the low resting-places of kings and beggars and you will see the cross, like uninterrupted prayer, marking the spot where they lie in hope of resurrection. This veneration, universal, deep-rooted, persistent, this is the true Exaltation of the Cross, compared to which that of Heraclius was but the flicker of light.

The Cross Our Badge

We Catholics have a great share in this Exaltation of the Cross. It is our special trust, our badge, our glory. Like the first Christians, it is ours to honor, to use, to be known by. Those who have fallen from the true faith have laid it aside as childish and not fit for the mature. But the Gospel was preached to the child-like, and the Kingdom of Heaven reserved for them. So we will keep our child-like ways, and loyally use the sacred sign. We will make it with reverence, with confidence, with joy. And the day will come when we who are signed with the Sign of the Cross upon our foreheads will go forth to meet our Redeemer, and He will acknowledge us to be His own. Like Constantine, by that sign we shall conquer.

- taken from Light from the Altar, edited by Father James J McGovern, 1906