In a rather interesting section of Julian the Apostate’s Against the Galilaeans, the emperor asks, “Again, will anyone think that victory in war is less desirable than defeat? Who is so stupid?”[1] Julian saw Roman political authority was justified by its military might, and he believed that Rome needed the good graces of the pagan gods in order to preserve its power. When Rome abandoned its traditional faith and became Christian, the empire became weak; it was for this reason he had inherited an empire which was crumbling apart. Ignoring traditional piety, the Christian emperors had angered the gods, and so their blessings were no longer upon the empire. When he became emperor, he wanted to restore Rome to its greatness, and to do so, he believed it needed to return to its pagan roots. If the greatest leaders in world history worshiped the classical gods, so would he; and, if he did things right, he believed they would once again bless Rome, returning it to its former glory. How could anyone disagree; how could anyone want Rome to continue its decline, and become the plaything of barbarians? Might makes right, and no one, least of all its Christian subjects, should want Rome to be destroyed. One must either conquer or be conquered, rule or be ruled over. Such logic is the logic of the world. Julian’s logic is one we see repeated, time after time, under different contexts, but every time we see an empire in decline trying to return to its “golden age,” we see the empire crumbles away even quicker. The appeal to power for salvation is understandable, but the Christian who looks to the sign of the cross should know better. The sign of the cross is the sign of victory through powerlessness. It is no wonder that the sign of the cross perplexed the world. How could Christians look upon it as anything other than a symbol for humiliation and defeat? Let us lift up the cross and contemplate its lesson, so that on this Sunday of the Holy Cross, in the middle of the Great Fast, we can understand why the Church elevates it and puts it up before us as we journey through Lent.
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1Cor. 18). Ridicule upon ridicule has been heaped upon Christians for their reverence of the cross. It stands for a way of life, a way of conduct, which contradicts the way people normally see the world and how one is to survive within it. Accumulate power and you will be free; weakness means slavery or death. The sign of the cross stands for the reversal of such worldly wisdom, which, as St Therese of Lisieux shows us, is the wisdom of Lucifer. “I know that Adonai is stronger than I am, and that is the source of my eternal rage. But look at how little He cares for His own glory, how He leaves His friends in humiliation and sorrow… And too, count His own and you will see that their number is small… So, with my powerful legions, I am going to attack this despicable handful of people, and shortly I’ll be proven right.”
The path to true life, liberty, and happiness, requires us to journey through the ways of powerlessness and self-renunciation. “And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it’” (Mk 9:34-35). No wonder we find Jesus saying those who live by the sword shall die by it (cf. Matt 26:52), for the sword symbolizes all kinds of self-authority validated by might. Those who try to take the reigns of power to preserve themselves will find that same power turned against them one day, when it will be used to destroy them; in the struggle for power, no one can keep it long. Cross or sword, dying to the self or preserving the self, powerlessness or power, life or death, those are the two paths before us. The gate which leads to life is narrow and difficult to get through (cf. Matt 7:13-14); as long as we burden our backs with the artifacts of death, we will never pass through it. The sword we bring with us will turn against us and prevent us from partaking of the tree of life (cf. Gen 3:24). For the cross is the tree of life; to partake of it, we must forsake all indulgences of earthly might.
Now the flaming sword no longer guards the gates of Eden; It has mysteriously been quenched by the wood of the cross! The sting of death and the victory of hell have been vanquished; For You, O my Savior, have come and cried to those in hell: “Enter again into paradise“ (Kontakion of the Sunday of the Holy Cross).
It is fitting that the cross, the banner of victory, is elevated during Holy Lent. For it serves as a light, showing us the path we are meant to tread during this season (and all our life) is that of self-sacrifice; if we follow it to the end, we will come to Christ and be taken in by him. The more we set aside our individualistic ways and die to the self, the more we take upon ourselves the cross and join ourselves to Christ’s work. We are made low so that we can be lifted up on high. The cross is the sign of what lies ahead for all of us. We must put ourselves with Christ on the cross so that we can be raised with him in the Eternal Passover. We must abandon the illusion of glory found within the world so that we can find real glory, the glory of love. The sacrifices we make for the kingdom of God, however small they might be, put us that much closer to Christ, that much closer to his heart. By our sin, we put up the gate which tries to block God away from our lives. It is our pride, our egoism, which stands guard and prevents us entry into his blessed presence. The sword of pride can only be overcome by the humility of the cross, the tree of life. We are called to paradise to take its fruit; how bitter is it while we remain in sin, how sweet it is when we have been purged of all unrighteousness.
How difficult it can be to look upon the cross, to gaze at Christ upon it, humiliated for our sake, and then to see it for what it truly is, the sign of real glory. The world thinks Christians are crazy when they suggest this. The cross, the sign which Christ gave to the world of God’s love, is not the sign the Jews wanted. They wanted earthly glory, a messiah to come in might and rule the world with an iron first. They wanted Christ in the image of Caesar, not Christ the God-man, his humanity made perfectly in the image of his divinity, that is, perfectly made in the image of love. The cross, the sign of God’s wisdom, is not the wisdom the gentiles understood. They had an earthly wisdom, one which said the way of conquest, that is, the way of Alexander and Caesar, led to eternal glory; their wisdom said the way of servitude was the way of shame. St Paul understood this when he pointed out how the Christ crucified can only be a stumbling block to those who look upon Christ with eyes tainted by earthly understandings of grandeur. “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1Cor. 1:22 -25). True power and wisdom are paradoxically found with Christ on the cross; in his absolute self-giving, in his absolute abandonment of all claims to power, we are shown true power, for it is there he changed the world. Only one who has power under their control can turn away from it and give it up; if they can’t, that shows they are the one who is controlled. Christ, who had all authority and power given to him, showed us this by giving it all up, as he freely put himself under the bonds of death.
“So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee”; as he says also in another place, ‘Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek’” (Heb. 5:5-6). Exaltation requires servitude, glory through self-sacrifice; Christ, the King of Glory and the Son of God, was able to show us true glory because he was truly humble; he did all that he did in loving obedience to the Father, and the Father in return showed the world his approval through the glorification of the Son. The cross, as the means of Christ’s obedience, was a thing of shame and humiliation, but now it has been transformed into a symbol of victory and glory, for it shows us the conquest of love over sin.
O Lord, save Your people, And bless Your inheritance. Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians, over their adversaries. And by virtue of Your cross preserve Your habitation! (Troparion of the Sunday of the Holy Cross).
The cross is lifted high as a banner of victory, protecting those under its mantle from the ire of their foes. But if God calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, who could be our enemy? St Paul answers for us: ” For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). That is, we fight against the darkness of sin, and the demonic principles which would lead us to sin. We fight against pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, glutton, lust, and dejection. We fight against all false opinions which would turn us away from God. We find the way forward is through the cross, because it takes away from us all those things which we would hold onto, to preserve ourselves as unchanging individuals, and opens us up to the persons we are meant to be. Through the cross, we go from closed individuality to receptor of the Holy Spirit. Through the cross, we become a fit habitation for God. Through the cross, we become temples of the Lord. And it is by overcoming the self we thought we were, we become the child of God the Lord has always desired us to be.
Footnotes
[1] Julian the Apostate, The Works of The Emperor Julian. Volume III. Trans. Wilmer Cave Wright (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 381. The emperor then asserts that the whole collection of Hebrew generals are unworthy of being ranked next to minor equivalents from Greek and Roman history. He insults the Jewish faith, not because he finds it to be a simple, barbaric faith, but because Christianity came out of it, and so he wanted to criticize Christian origins before insulting the Christian faith itself.
[2] St Therese of Lisieux, The Triumph of Humility, pgs. 297 – 321 in The Plays of St. Therese of Lisieux. trans. Susan Conroy and David Dwyer (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2008), 317.
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