The Cross design couldn’t be simple. One beam horizontal and the other vertical. One reach out – like God’s love (represent the width of His love) and the other reach up – as does God’s holiness (reflects the height of His holiness). The Cross is the intersection- where God forgive his children without lowering His standard.
The Cross is a sign of God’s love and Justice.
The bible says “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:3). The Lord has played three roles on the Cross. When Adam and Eve sinned, the result was obvious death! “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Humanity didn’t need only love. If it were, it would have been easy for God to forgive Adam. Adam’s transgression needed also God’s Justice. Humanity needed a redeemer who takes Adam’s place to die and to shed His blood in accordance with the law established in the Old Testament; “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” (Heb. 9:23). The Cross is a sign of Christ’s sacrificial love and Adam’s salvation. St. Gregory the Theologian, said, “humanity has been saved through being unified with God. So the incarnation , along with crucifixion, can fulfill salvation. The cross, then, is an essential matter in the process of salvation”.
The Cross is God’s call to humanity.
The bible says “when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (Jn. 12:32). St. Athanasius explains this saying “ How could He have called us to Him unless he had been crucified. For no man can die with open arms except on the cross. That is why the Lord saw fit to bear this death, to stretch forth His hands, so that with one hand He could draw the old nation and with the other draw the nations, so that both would unite in His person.”
The Cross is the power of God
St. Paul in his letter to Corinthians said, “ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor. 1:18). That is why in our daily prayer we cross our body three times saying, “I worship before the cross of our Lord Eeyesus Kiristos, which was sanctified by his precious blood.
The Cross is our Might,
The Cross is our Strength.
The Cross is our Ransom,
and the Cross is the Medicine
of our Soul.
The Jews denied Him, but we
believe in him.
We who have believed in Him are
Saved by the power of His cross.
The cross is our sign to defeat the devil and all evil temptation as Christ defeated all evil with the cross. For this reason, we elevate and bow down before the cross in veneration and worship of God. In one our Church’s hymn, specifically in passion week, we say “Before the Cross, We bow down in Worship, O Master, and your Holy Resurrection, we glorify”. In the Old Testament, King David as well as prophet Isaiah order us to bow before His footstool (the Cross) (Psalm 99:5 and Is. 60:11-16).
The Cross is a place of Judgment
St. Augustine said, “the cross itself, if we contemplate it well, is a judgment seat. Here, the judge is in the middle, one criminal who had delivered was saved, and the other one who had blasphemed was condemned. God judges our response to His love and mercy. While on the cross, the thief on the right didn’t care for his own pain but tried his best to save the other from going astray and guide him to the truth. This is what it means when Our Lord Jesus Christ said “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.(Lk 14:27). By his imitation of Christ likeness, faith and repentance, he became a disciple and entered into the paradise. It is a great glory for the believer to bow and carry with His master His passion, in order that he get an experimental knowledge with the resurrection power and its Joy into him.
Background on the Feast of the Holy Cross.
For a long period of time, no one knew where the Cross of the Christ was. In the 4th century, St. Constantine, the king of Rome, as he was preparing for a battle, he saw a cross sign in the sky, and over it the word, “by this (sign of cross), conquer”. Using this Holy Symbol, he won battle after battle. He stopped Christian persecution and established Christianity as an acceptable religion throughout its empire and became the patron and defender of Christianity. Constantine’s mother, St. Eleni, 84 age, her greatest desire was to find the cross on which Christ was crucified. After 20 years of reign of Constantine [306-337], He sent his mother, empress Eleni , to Jerusalem to seek for and discover the Wood of life-giving Cross of the Lord.
After the Lord Crucified, the Jew hid the Holy Cross as there were many miracles manifested God’s power through the Holy Cross. The leaders of the Jews put a decree throughout the country to cast their household trash where the Lord’s cross was buried. The Jews did this for over 200 years until St. Eleni came to Jerusalem. After a long search, the elderly priest Enbakom told her where in the mountains the Lord Cross might have been buried. St. Eleni, then , asked the patriarch of Jerusalem, Mekarios, to help her in prayer and burn a bonfire waiting for a sign from the Lord. God gave them a sign where the cross was buried as the smoke of the bonfire rested on the exact mountain.
To find the Holy Cross, it took 6 months of digging on the mountain from September 16 to April 10. After this long search, she found the lord’s cross hidden together with the two crosses on which the two thieves (on His right and one on His right) had been crucified. The true and life-giving cross was recognized when a dead man was placed on it and was brought to life by the miracle of the Holy Cross. St. Eleni celebrated on September 17, the revelation of the Holy Cross by building a Church where the Cross was found. Even though the Holy Cross was found on April 10, which fall on during the great Lent, the Church fathers ordered to celebrate the feast of the Cross through liturgy and prayer on September 17, where the digging for the cross was started.
In Summary, the Cross of Christ has the power of victory over Satan so that whoever draws the sign of the cross on his forehead with faith terrorizes Satan and demons. The fallen spirits fear the Cross and flee from it as insects flee fire. It is a sharp spiritual weapon that draws down upon us divine power and at the same time drives away all the evil influences which come from the demons or intentions. We wear small cross around our neck as a sign of divine seal for protection from all evil. St. Athanasius said, “By the sign of the cross all magic ceases; all incantations are powerless; every idol is abandoned and deserted; all irrational voluptuousness is quelled, and each one looks up from earth to heaven”. And St. Cyril of Jerusalem reminds us to Cross all the time saying, “Let us not, therefore, be ashamed of the cross of Christ. Be the Cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow, and on everything; over the bread we eat, and the cups we drink; in our comings in, and goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we rise up; when we are in the way, and when we are still, in a word, on every occasion, for He who was here crucified is above in the heavens”.
May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.(Gal. 6:14)