Monday Motivation: St. Vincent de Paul

"God allows us to give rise to the practice of two beautiful virtues: perseverance, which leads us to attain the goal, and constancy, which helps us to overcome difficulties."

"Do not limit your vision any longer to yourself, but see the Lord around you and in you, ready to put his hand to the work as soon as you ask for help. You will see that all will go well."

-St. Vincent de Paul

Legend of the Cross

My last post talked about the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and its history post-Christ. But there are a lot of legends of the origin of the Cross as well. Most stories developed in the early medieval times to emphasize Christ as the New Adam and the Resurrection has the victory over the Fall.

I’ve been reading the Golden Legend lately, which includes lots of heroic, miraculous heliographies as well as a few stories about the Cross. The Golden Legend was compiled by the Bishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine, in 1260.

In one story, it is said that after Adam died, his son Seth planted three seeds in the mouth of Adam’s corpse. A “tree of mercy” grew from those seeds and was the tree used to make the Cross. Sometimes these seeds are said to have grown three different types of wood, one of which also grew the bush that became the burning bush.

In another story, the Cross came from part of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As Adam was dying, he sent Seth to the gates of the Garden of Eden to beg God for an oil of mercy distilled from the Tree. Seth found the way by following the footsteps of Adam and Eve, as nothing had grown where they stepped during their expulsion. St. Michael appeared to Seth at the gate and gave him a branch from the Tree. Again, Seth planted this cutting of the tree on Adam’s grave. From this tree came Moses’ staff. David planted it in Jerusalem. Solomon had it cut down to be a beam in the Temple, but it was not found suitable, so the wood was used to build a bridge, over which the Queen of Sheba passed on her journey to meet Solomon. She recognized the importance of the wood used in the timber and fell to her knees along the bridge and revered it. She told Solomon that a piece of that wood would bring about a new covenant of God. Solomon, fearing this revelation, ordered the timber buried. Centuries later, these beams were discovered and used by the Romans to fashion the Cross on which Jesus was crucified.

Journey of the Cross

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, also called Roodmas. It celebrates the victory won for humanity by God’s sacrificial love. While the cross was a method of torture and execution, for Christians it serves as a reminder of Christ’s abundant love and mercy for us, to the point that he would humble himself, walk with humanity, and die on that Cross. It is also a radical symbol of victory; a method of torture becomes a symbol of love, and a sign of death becomes a sign of resurrection and new life. The Cross has become the symbol for Christianity.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that we seek to know what happened to the actual cross used for Christ’s Passion or that we want to travel and stand in the spot where He stood, where He died.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross actually celebrates several events in the life of the veneration of the True Cross.

The first is the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena. According to legend, Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, travelled to the Holy Land in her late 70s from 326-328. There, she researched the places and items associated with Jesus. Her work established many of the pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land and relics shared throughout the Christian world. While there, she discovered a hiding place storing three crosses, said by the local community to be the crosses used at the crucifixion of Jesus and the two thieves, Dismas and Gestas. She was unsure of the crosses’ authenticity. The Bishop of Jerusalem knew of a woman near death; when she was brought to the crosses, she touched the first two, and her condition did not change. When she touched the third, she suddenly recovered.