EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS

The pagan Pontius Pilate is the only person besides Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is mentioned by name in the Creed. This is because, in the person of Pilate, it was the Roman Empire itself that condemned Jesus and killed Him on the Cross. Is this why the American Orthodox theologian and priest Thomas Hopko (1939-2015) calls the Exaltation of the Cross a “political holyday” in his introduction to Orthodoxy?

1 On September 27, the Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Cross. This feast is celebrated fortieth days after the Transfiguration and is closely linked with it.

2 In answering the question of why Christ was transfigured before the Disciples, the Teacher of the Orthodox Church, bishop, and theologian Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) believed that it occurred to demonstrate that grace is the uncreated light of the Divinity. Unlike St. Gregory, the Early Church was convinced that the Transfiguration revealed the Glory of Jesus so that when the Hour of Infamy arrived in the Glory of the Cross, the disciples could preserve the faith. In other words, Jesus was transfigured to save the Apostles from impending despair. This theme is also reflected in the liturgy of the feast. Like the Transfiguration, the Exaltation of the Cross is also a feast of glory.

Unlike Holy Week, this is not a commemoration of the Passion of Jesus, but rather an understanding of the Holy Cross, a reflection on the Cross, a theology of the Cross. The origin of the Exaltation of the Cross lies in two historical events. In 326, the Cross on which Jesus was crucified was found in Palestine by Saint Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. The Cross was solemnly displayed to the people, hence the term “Exaltation.” In 629, the Cross was returned from Persia, where it had literally been held captive. This dual historical basis for the feast has another, parallel, theological-political causality. And it, too, is twofold.

4 By celebrating the finding and return of the Cross, the Church was, in fact, celebrating something else. This was the baptism of Emperor Constantine in 337, on his deathbed, and the final defeat of Persia in 628 by Heraclius. Constantine’s baptism meant that the Empire would henceforth be Christian, and victory over the Persians was the triumph of the Cross over what the Byzantines considered a “pagan” state. It is no coincidence that the Orthodox people in Constantinople hailed Heraclius as the “new Constantine.” For some mysterious reason, in establishing such a dual feast, the Church hesitated to call things by their proper names. By a paradoxical and astonishing divine providence, this silence proved correct.

5 Historians teach us that Constantine’s baptism placed all Christians in Persia under suspicion of disloyalty. Christians were brutally persecuted, so much so that only the condemnation of Nestorius and his followers at the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus in 431 gave them a chance for survival. The Church in the Persian Empire soon called itself “Nestorian,” which largely saved it from the attacks of the Zoroastrian Iranian state. The Christian mission reached Tibet and beyond, and the famous “Stele of the Eminent Religion,” erected by evangelists in Tang China on January 7, 781, is a magnificent testimony to this. The holy ascetic and bishop Isaac of Syria (640–700), a Qatari by birth, who knew only his native “Nestorian Church” of Persia, became the greatest Christian mystical author of all time. He attained such a degree of love for people and God’s creation that his heart literally wept with pity for animals and even earthworms. The Taxiia Cross (8th century) can also be understood in this way. It is located near Islamabad, once the capital of Gandhara and the easternmost satrapy of the Persian Empire.

6 Persia was indeed finally defeated by Heraclius. But in a protracted war that lasted from 602 to 628, the two empires, Roman and Persian, exhausted each other so much that soon neither could stop the new Arab Muslim conquerors. Ancient Zoroastrian Persia perished completely, and Byzantium lost Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and other lands—two-thirds of its total territory—and forever lost its global reach.

7 Truly, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the following is fulfilled: where the Cross of Christ is, there is an apocalyptical warning. Today’s world lives in an era of global confrontations. To paraphrase one of the great quotes attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre, that true father of modern people, both in faith and in unbelief: “The same mistake cannot be made twice, because the second time it is no longer a mistake, but a choice”.