On Sept. 14, we will celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross.

By Father David Mercer

Not long ago, an advertisement for a $150 cross necklace caught my attention. The ad read: “This ornately carved cross is made of fine yellow gold. Your devotion will be a great example to others with this 14 carat, yellow gold, elegant, carved, fashion cross pendant.”

An ad for a similar cross made of white gold declared it can help you “show the world the beauty of your faith.”

I’m all for wearing a cross, but Jesus died neither to give us a fashion statement nor to transform our wardrobes. He died on the cross so He could transform our lives.

On Sept. 14, we will celebrate a feast day: the Exaltation of the Cross. We can easily miss this feast, because it’s almost hidden from us on a Wednesday, in the middle of a work week. However, it is significant enough that, when falling on a Sunday, this feast trumps the usual Sunday in Ordinary Time.

With this feast day, the Church reminds us that Jesus’ death and resurrection transformed the cross from being a symbol of gruesome death to being a symbol of our lives as transformed. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are stewards of that symbol.

We Catholics are accustomed to seeing a cross with the body of Jesus on it. Most of us are unaware that this was not a common way of depicting the cross until the Middle Ages. Earlier Christians typically didn’t think of displaying the cross with the body of Christ on it.

More common was a cross called the Crux Gemmata, that is, the Jeweled Cross, a cross decorated with gold and gems. Early Christians knew the cross had been transformed by Jesus’ death and resurrection from a symbol of death to a symbol of life, from a symbol of weakness to a symbol of strength. Their instinct was to show this transformation by transforming the cross with jewels.

A friend, Johanna, told me of how Jesus’ cross can transform a person’s life. Years ago, she was in a hospital’s oncology ward where a man was angry; his cancer made him very bitter. Every day, his mood was difficult, and he experienced no peace.

One day she stopped at his room, his mood had changed, and he was much more at ease. They talked a short while, and she asked him about the change she saw in him. He pointed at the crucifix with Jesus on the wall and said, “I had a conversation with Him.”

Away from the faith for many years, he opened himself to what Jesus had done for him on the cross, and his bitterness went away. He then contacted his daughter from whom he had been estranged for a long time, and she visited him the day before he died. That cross on his hospital wall did something greater than transform his wardrobe. Jesus’ death and resurrection transformed the cross, transformed his cancer, transformed his life.

However we display the cross — either with the body of Jesus, or decorated with jewels, or with simple, plain wood — we more often trace the cross from head to heart, from shoulder to shoulder. We trace it with holy water, with the waters of baptism. We begin prayers with the sign of the cross; we end prayers with the cross. We bless cars, homes, and our children with the cross. After the priest traces the cross above bread and wine, God transforms them into the body and blood of Jesus, which in turn transform us.

About the year 200, St. Tertullian wrote: “At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes — in all the ordinary actions of everyday life, we trace the sign of the cross.”

Jesus did not die on the cross to transform our wardrobe, but to transform our lives.

The Southern Cross

Father David Mercer is associate pastor of St. Christopher Church in San Jose, Calif.

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