Tag Archives: True Cross

“Today Hell Cries Out Groaning….”

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This 8th-century panel painting, now at the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, Egypt, is the oldest known painted depiction of the dead Christ on the cross. We see Gestas, the unrepentant thief, on the left; Dismas, the Good Thief, was probably on the right (which is now missing; we can see the first letter of his name in the space beside Christ). At the foot of the Cross, there are 3 soldiers gambling for Christ’s seamless robe. On the Cross, Christ is wearing a tunic, known as a “stola,” a garment worn by those who had permission to speak to the emperor. Christ has the boldness to speak to God, his Father, on our behalf because of His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection and his battle with Death on the Cross.

Today, hell cries out groaning: “I should not have accepted the Man born of Mary. He came and destroyed my power. He has shattered the gates of brass. As God, He raised the dead that I had held captive.” Glory to thy Cross and Resurrection, O Lord.

Today, hell cries out groaning: “My dominion has been shattered. I received a dead man as one of the dead, but against Him I could not prevail. From eternity I had ruled the dead, but behold, He raises all. Because of Him do I perish.” Glory to thy Cross and Resurrection, O Lord.

In these hymns from Holy Saturday, we hear Hell cry out in agony as Christ enters and destroys it from the inside out. Truth exposes the Liar. Light shines in the Darkness. Life confronts Death. The gates of Hell are torn down and the chains broken. Only those who want to remain in Hell are still there.

Christ fought Death and the Devil, the Liar, on their own turf. In the ancient world and the figurative language of the Bible, three places belonged to the Death and the demons: deep water, the desert, and the air. Christ went down into the deep water at His baptism and then went out into the desert for forty days. In both places he confronted the enemies of God. But how did He fight them in the air?

Early Christians thought Christ had to die on the Cross because crucifixion was the only way to die in the air. Raised on the Cross, Christ was able to fight the powers of Darkness in their own territory and thus enter Hell. St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “… if the Lord, by His death, broke apart the wall of partition divinding people (Ephesians 2:14) and called all the nations to Him, how could that happen except on the Cross? For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to spread out His hands, that with the one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself. Furthermore, if the devil, the enemy of our race, having fallen from heaven, wanders about in the air (Ephesians 2:2) … well, by what other kind of death could this have come to pass, than by one which took place in the air, I mean the cross? Being lifted up on the Cross, He cleared the air of the malignity both of the devil and of demons of all kinds, as He says: I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven; and made a new opening of the way up into heaven as He says once more….”

Having slain Christ on the Cross, Death and Hell thought they had won their battle. But once Christ had entered Hell, they discovered their mistake and realized that what they had thought was their ultimate victory was instead their ultimate defeat.

Want to read more about this? Read The Victory of the Cross by James R. Payton, Jr. or On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius of Alexandria.

Nazis Pervert the Swastika

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Various depictions of the swastika, a sign of life and health, which was adopted by the Nazis in 1935. The swastika is now seen by most as the infamous emblem of the most pernicious evil in human history.

The swastika, an ancient symbol of life and health, was adopted by the Nazi regime as their official logo on September 16, 1935. The symbol is now seen by most people as exclusively the emblem of the most wicked political system ever devised.

The swastika–the name swastika comes from Sanskrit word swastik, which means ‘conducive to well being’ or ‘auspicious’–is an icon which is widely found in human history. In northern Europe it has also been called a sun-wheel. A swastika generally takes the form of a cross, the arms of which are of equal length and perpendicular to the adjacent arms, each bent midway at a right angle. The earliest known swastika is from 10,000 BC found in the Ukraine. (It was engraved on wooden monuments built near the final resting places of fallen Slavs to represent eternal life.)

In several major religions, the swastika symbolizes lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion.

Some say the swastika represents the north pole, and the rotational movement around the center or axis of the world. It also represents the Sun as a reflected function of the north pole. It is a symbol of life, of the life-creating role of the supreme principle of the universe, the absolute God, in relation to the cosmic order. Medieval Christians used it a way to depict the life-giving power of the True Cross on which Jesus was crucified and destroyed Death.

The Nazis’ principal symbol was first the hakenkreuz, “hooked-cross” (which resembles the Swastika) which the newly established Nazi Party formally adopted in 1920. The emblem was a black swastika (hooks branching clockwise) rotated 45 degrees on a white circle on a red background. This insignia was used on the party’s flag, badge, and armband and became the flag of Germany in 1935.

Invention of the Cross

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St. Helen tests the crosses she discovers during the excavations of Golgotha in Jerusalem.

St. Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, is said to have discovered the True Cross in Jerusalem. (Because her son Constantine has seen a vision of the Cross when God promised him victory, locating and honoring the Cross was important to her.) Her discovery is known as the “Invention of the Cross;” the word invention means discovery, not just that someone invented or made up something that did not exist before.

The legend says that Adam was buried on a hill near what became the city of Jerusalem and that the hill became known as Golgotha. Adam’s son was given a seed from the Tree of Life in Paradise to plant in Adam’s grave. The seed grew into a tree whose fruit healed the sick. But eventually the tree was cut down and the lumber used for building projects. Some of it was used to build a bridge into Jerusalem and when the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon in Jerusalem, she realized how special the wood in the bridge was. She got down off her horse and bowed down in reverence to the wood before going across it. Later, when Jerusalem fell into ruin, the bridge collapsed. Much later, the Roman soldiers found the planks from the old bridge and used them to build the cross that Jesus was crucified on. So the lumber from the seedling of the Tree of Life became the Cross and the blood of Christ, the Second Adam, sprinkled Adam’s bones deep within Golgotha.

(The imagery in this legend expresses in poetic form a lot about the Cross—the ultimate Tree of Life—that is true but difficult to express otherwise. Bridges were metaphors for spiritual and religious practice that enable a person to transcend sin or earthly limitations; “pontifex,” the Latin word for “bridge-builder” also came to mean “priest.” The Queen of Sheba reverenced the material through which God would act to save the world; she is also associated with bringing the Ark of the Covenant (a metaphor for the Incarnation and the role of the Virgin Mary as Mother of God) to Africa for safekeeping—so the Queen of Sheba is twice associated with the ways God uses matter to save the world. The death of the Second Adam on Golgotha released the First Adam and all of us who are Adam’s children.)

When Jerusalem became a Roman city in the 2nd century AD, a temple for Adonis was built atop Golgotha. This helped identify Golgotha and the local Christians never forget what had happened there before the temple had been built. So when St. Helen came to Jerusalem in the early 4th century AD to excavate places important during Jesus’ life, the local Christians could tell her where to begin excavating to discover the place of the Crucifixion.

St. Helen began excavations and found three crosses beneath the temple. She had three sick men brought and touched the crosses to them. Two of the crosses did not heal the sick. One did. She had three dead men brought and the cross that had healed a sick man also raised a dead man.

The cross that healed the sick and raised the dead was identified as Jesus’ cross. It is also said to have been surrounded by lots and lots of basil plants; basil is therefore thought to protect against curses. It is also used to decorate the Cross in churches on feast days and to sprinkle holy water on the faithful coming to celebrate festivals in honor of the Cross.