The Exalted Standard

This Sunday, we step out of the routine of “ordinary time” with the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The feast is ancient, going back to Jerusalem in the early centuries of the church, and eventually brought west. 

If ever you get to Rome, and I hope you do, I encourage you to go to the Church of San Clemente. Clement was one of the first-generation popes, and the present church is the fourth or fifth building on that site, including a Roman villa from before the time of Christ, a pagan temple of the soldier’s god, Mithras, and three churches dating respectively from the 6th, 11th and 16/17th centuries. It is a treasure house.

On the cover of this week’s bulletin you see its grand mosaic apse, covered in sparkling glass mosaic tiles, ca. 1130. The cross stands as the core of the Tree of Life and the trellis for a great swirling grape vine. As was often represented in the medieval period, the Crucified Lord is serene, even majestic, lifted here on a lapis cross surrounded by Mary, St. John, and a dozen doves representing the apostles.

The huge background is riot of life: deer drink from the springs of living water flowing from the foot of the cross. Fifty coils of vine encircle doctors of the church and monkish wine makers, while shepherds tend their goats and a lady calmly feeds her chickens below. Enormous sheep (another dozen) march single-file from diminutive representations of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, sacred cities that are surmounted by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, Clement, Paul, and St. Lawrence toasting his feet on his martyrial grill.

This image is a reminder that despite its horror, agony, and shame, the cross of Christ remains for us the standard on which Jesus was raised up on high, and from whose height the Holy Spirit was breathed upon us. It is our hope, and the pledge of our redemption.

Blessings,