Holy Cross - The Invisible Throne of God
It is for three times in the ecclesiastical year that we celebrate the Holy Cross: on the third Sunday of the Great Lent, on August 1, for the Procession of the Cross, and on September 14, at the Exaltation of the Cross. During Lent, the Cross is the sign of fasting, repentance, and spiritual progress toward Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. The Gospel of that Sunday clearly states this thought through Christ’s own words: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
The second feast has a less theological and liturgical significance and is no longer observed in parishes today. It refers to the tradition of the procession with the Wood of the Holy Cross of Christ in ancient Byzantium, on the first day of August and the first day of the Lent of the Theotokos. At that time a fragment of the Holy Cross, kept in the safest place of the empire, the imperial palace next to the treasure, was carried in procession from the palace to Hagia Sophia.
This week in September, however, we celebrate the Holy Cross in a special way, with a different emphasis, namely as a sign of Christ’s victory over death. We now celebrate the divine sign that Christ chose as the instrument of His death. Overcoming death, He offered this instrument to humankind as an eternal mark of triumph over mortal condition and human passions, yet a mark now charged with a purifying and saving spiritual force. Through the Cross, Christ always grants us a new power of life, as stated in a sticheron from the Vespers of the feast: “As the Cross is lifted on high, it urges all of creation to praise the undefiled Passion of Christ, Who was lifted up on it. For by the Cross He killed the one who killed us, and brought us back to life when we were dead. He adorned us in beauty, and in His compassion made us worthy to live in heaven.”
The vital force that Christ offers us through the Cross will resurrect us at His second coming, and in this life bestows on us strength in our diseases and failures of this life, in our despairs, depressions, and defeats. Thanks to this life-giving force, the Cross truly becomes a new tree of Life and a power that brings all creation back together in Christ. One of the Vespers stichera portrays creation worshipping before the saving Cross: “Therefore, beholding you raised on high, creation rejoices and celebrates, glorifying Christ Who has joined together through you that which was divided in His infinite goodness.”
This theology of the victorious Cross was developed in the Orthodox tradition both in the first centuries and starting from a particular historical event. St. Empress Helen, the mother of St. Constantine, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem around 326 to worship at the Holy Places. She finds there the site where the Holy Sepulchre of Christ had been covered underground and requires both the excavation of the tomb and the construction of a church to cover this holy place. Most likely, on the occasion of this event, she finds the three crosses buried near the tomb.
The moment Patriarch Macarius finds the true Cross and lifts it up, the Christians in Jerusalem glorify God. It is this moment of joy that is celebrated at the Feast of the Exaltation, as, again, a sticheron of Vespers describes it: “As the Cross is lifted on high, it urges all of creation to praise the undefiled Passion of Christ, Who was lifted up on it.”
The gesture of raising the Cross invites us to a moment of reflection on its meaning. Indeed, already in the first centuries, Christians believed that the second coming of Christ, the Parousia, would be preceded by a cosmic Cross of Light. Some visionaries of the early centuries contemplated this cosmic Cross, among them being St. Constantine who saw its appearance in the sky before the battle of Milvian Bridge in 312.
Christians have also tried to find out the deeper meaning of the fact that God chose this form and not another. Their reflection led them to the idea that the shape of the Cross lays as a mystery inscribed in the depths of the nature of creation. In a more profound first dimension, we discover this mysterious sign as hidden and active in human history, crossing ages as a symbol that brings the power of God’s grace from the patriarchs of the Old Testament to the eschaton. Patriarch Jacob blesses his children with the sign of the Cross (the letter taw of the ancient Hebrew alphabet), Moses makes it on the Red Sea in order to separate it, and on the rock from which water sprang miraculously, while Ezekiel (9: 4) mentions an angel sent to make the sign of the cross on the heads of those who will be saved. With this last miracle, the symbol becomes a mystery that opens toward the Kingdom of God, simultaneously protecting us and carrying us to the Kingdom.
Finally, Christ Himself chooses to die on this sign, at that time the most humiliating form of capital punishment. Through this humility, however, He also reveals His infinite goodness and love for humankind. Yet, in the emptiness and vortex of this humility, He descends with all His divinity, so that His Cross becomes the Throne of His presence. With this, the Cross is revealed to us in a second dimension, even deeper. From now on, we discover it in the unseen world in which it is active again and transposes us, as through a window, into the Kingdom of God.
In the invisible world, we discover the Cross as the Throne of God's glory, surrounded by angels, like the heavenly Throne. It is significant to see that an idiomela from the litya of the feast informs us that the Cross became the Throne of God's feet as in the Temple of the Old Testament the ark of Moses was the God’s footstool: “Today the holy saying of David truly has come to pass, for behold, in the sight of all, we venerate the footstool of Your undefiled feet, and, putting our hope in the shadow of Your wings, we cry aloud to You, O all-compassionate Lord: ‘May the light of Your countenance be marked as a sign upon us!’”
Another sticheron of vespers describes it again surrounded by angels, as a veritable Throne of God: “O most venerable Cross, attended by ranks of rejoicing Angels.” We know that the image of the Holy Cross surrounded by angels is not new but also appears in many classic icons. Here, however, iconography and hymnography intertwine as bearers of the same old and profound theology.
A sticheron from the litya of the feast identifies the Cross as the axis of the world through which God works the salvation of all humankind unfolding from this central point of the universe, the place where Christ is crucified, to the ends of the world: “The Tree of True Life was planted in the Place of the Skull and upon it the eternal King has worked salvation in the midst of the earth. Exalted today, it sanctifies the ends of the world, and the church of the Resurrection celebrates its consecration. Angels in heaven rejoice, and men upon earth are glad, crying out and saying in David’s words: ‘Exalt the Lord our God and worship at the footstool of His feet, for He is holy and grants the world great mercy!’”
In this way, through hymns and icons, the theology of the Eastern tradition conveys to us not only the historical narrative of Christ’s visible Passion but also its spiritual account which includes the events of the invisible world. There, the divine glory of the heavenly Throne descends with Christ on the Cross, and the angels surround it celebrating because, now, it is the Throne of God. At this time, Christ descends to hell as a God, not in His humble form without glory, but as King and Judge of creation, with all His light, to destroy death and save Adam, Eve, and the righteous of the Old Testament. Again, the rich hymnography of the feast of the Exaltation offers us the following vespers’ sticheron: “Come, all you nations, let us fall down in worship before the blessed Tree, by which eternal justice has come to pass! For he who deceived Adam by a Tree is caught by the lure of the Cross; and he who held under his tyranny the creature endowed by God with royal dignity is brought down in a headlong fall.”
We may understand now on a different level the life force that springs from the Cross as from the Throne of God. The true life and spiritual strength stemming from the Cross are granted to us precisely from that abundant life of the Throne of the invisible Kingdom: “Enlighten us with your brightness, O life-bearing Cross! Sanctify us by your might, O all-venerable Cross.” Let us all magnify Christ, our God, who made the Cross His invisible Throne and the axis of the world through which His divinity descended into our visible world to bestow on us eternal life.
Fr. Dragoș Giulea - PhD
