September 5, 2006

THE CHRISTIAN CROSS

 IN ITS MULTIPLE FORMS

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By: Bishop Sarhad Yawsip Jammo

All iconic representations of the cross on which the Lord was affixed ought to be deeply meaningful and eminently expressive. They are, indeed, a public proclamation of the faith and spirituality of the Church: we use them very fittingly as an integral part of our worship and as a required element in our liturgy.  No church building is complete, in liturgical apparatus, without an elevated Holy Cross installed in a prominent and referential position.

     In a church building, designed according to the Chaldean Rite, the focal point is the Sanctuary, or “beth qudhsha”, called also the Qanke, which is separated from the nave by a veil or curtain called sitra or wela.  Inside the Qanke is the altar, at the east end of which is the cross and the icon representing the glorified image of the Lord, facing west and the dawning sun.  Golgotha and the empty tomb are the main points of reference for the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, and therefore, the cross and the altar are focal features of the New Temple built for the perpetual offering.

     Fulfilling the Lord’s declaration at the paschal supper, his body has been indeed “broken” for us, a dramatic process that began at the Mount of Olives, to the way of the passion, up to Golgotha.  But Golgotha was not the end of the divine drama; the body was, in fact, carried to a tomb, from where God resurrected him in glory. Therefore, the crucifixion is not a story closed in upon itself, but one principal chapter in the Lord’s story; consequently, a static and uniform concept of the cross does not satisfy the dynamics of the historic facts.

     For this reason, the iconographical tradition of the Church has provided multiform representations of the cross, each one of them being an expression of a specific theological and spiritual meaning. There are in fact:

a cross with the crucifix:  represents the historic fact of the crucifixion of our Lord, with its redemptive, always present, and eternal value;

a cross without the crucifix: refers to the fact, described in the Gospel of John, when Joseph of Arimathea took the body from the cross to a tomb in a garden where no one yet had been buried; we are hereby reminded that the cross is not our final destination;

a cross with the appended burial linen: connects the empty cross to the empty tomb, calling us to look and search, beyond the cross and the tomb, for the glorified living Lord;  

a cross with the glorified body: is the comprehensive representation and the summary of the principal events of our redemption, perpetually valid and active in human history.

     The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross is the public and solemn profession of the Church of its pride in the Cross of her Lord and her recognition of its triumph over death and evil_.