Holy Cross Day, September 14, 2025
Today, we are departing from the counting of the Sundays after Pentecost and putting aside the scripture readings appointed in the Ecumenical Lectionary. Today, we mark Holy Cross Day. It is also known liturgically as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross – in honour of the Cross of Christ.
It is not a principal celebration, or feast day (like Christmas and Easter), in the calendar of the Church. But it stands out as a special day among many that together tell the story of Christ, his Church and our faith. It is an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and the place of the cross in our own lives.
The day holds a special place in my life and my memories. Fifteen years of my life and ministry were spent at the Church of the Atonement, Alderwood, in Etobicoke. At the time, it was one of only two parish churches in Canada that bore the name and title ‘Atonement.’ The other was the Church of our Lady of the Atonement, a Roman Catholic parish in Windsor Ontario. In searching out Anglo-Catholic parishes on-line during the Covid pandemic, I discovered an Episcopal Church of the Atonement in Chicago, Illinois. It is a bright and beautiful church with a wonderful musical tradition and moving liturgy.
Since it is never in keeping with the sad and stark solemnity of Good Friday (the Day of Atonement) to have a parish feast and party, we fittingly marked the parish title (and history) on the fourteenth of September, Holy Cross Day.
“What is the Atonement?” many people I met would ask. “How and why did your church get the name?
Aren’t churches named after saints – Mary, George, Ann, Thomas, Teresa…?” Faced with the daunting challenge of explaining what ‘atonement’ means, my default was to reply, “Oh, the church was named by Archbishop James Sweeney, then bishop of Toronto, in 1923, when it was founded,” and leave it at that.
A little digging into history brings up the fourteenth of September in the year 629. The place – Jerusalem. The event – the restoration of the true Cross to the basilica on the hill Golgotha. Fifteen years prior, in 614, the Persians invaded Jerusalem, desecrated the churches and walked off with the Cross. Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor of the day, went to war against the Persians, defeated them in 629 and reclaimed the treasure.
While 629 and the events leading up to it have drifted away from most of us, Holy Cross Day, September 14, has since remained in the Christian calendar. We, modern, twenty-first century folk might look with skepticism upon the cross Heraclius restored to its shrine. How can anyone be sure of pedigree! It had been discovered three centuries earlier in the year 326, buried near the hill where Jesus was crucified. Nothing marked or labeled it as the true cross the Lord died on. The contemporary study of archaeology and the science of carbon dating were not available at the time. And the culture, assumptions, and outlook were different than ours.
Now, we should never dismiss the comfort and the strength of Christian piety. But piety alone cannot be relied upon for fact. Putting skepticism aside…it does make good sense for Christians to take another day in the year, apart from Good Friday, to give some thought to the cross and its place in our believing and in our lives.
We take the cross for granted! Crosses are ubiquitous. Crosses are found everywhere. They can be found in unexpected places in addition to where we would most expect to find them. As a sign of Christian faith, we find it chiefly on, and in, the buildings we worship in. It is often plain with little or no decoration. A cross is often quite grand. Sometimes its beauty will take your breath away – thanks to the skill and craft of the designer and artist.
A cross may bear the image of the suffering Christ. A cross may also bear the image of the risen Christ, crowned and robed in colourful vestments.
We Anglicans are most familiar with the Latin cross: the bottom or foot is longer than the top and the arms equal in length. There is also the Greek cross and the Orthodox cross.
The altar cross in a church is often carved, engraved, embossed, gilded, or bejeweled. The cross is carried in procession as the standard around which the people of God gather. Crosses appear on bibles, hymn books, prayer books, devotional books, vestments worn by clergy and others, windows, doors, banners and much more. We could take the time right now to walk through this building with a check list of just how many crosses we find. I am sure we would be surprised!
The cross is used so much that we take little notice of its presence. Crosses are worn by many people – men and women – in our society. Many of us at Mass this morning are wearing a cross – on a chain around our necks, a pin on our clothing – perhaps carrying a cross in a pocket or purse. Believers…and non-believers alike take up and wear a cross. For many, the cross is simply decorative – maybe having a reassuring, or a meaningful message having nothing to do with Christ and his Cross.
“We proclaim crucified Christ,” says Paul. (1 Corinthians 1:23) Paul recognized that the Good News proclaimed by Jesus, is not truly good without the cross. A message that makes little or no room for the cross is not good news for anyone! Both the tellers of the gospel and the hearers of the message don’t feel the full effect of Paul’s words when the cross is taken for granted, dismissed, or ignored.
The Jews trusted their scriptures. To be stripped and hung from a tree was a sign of a criminal and an abomination. Jesus’ death on the cross was a curse. How could, how would, God reach out to his people in a way that contradicted scripture! The cross is a message, says Paul, ‘that is offensive to the Jews and nonsense to non-Jews.’
Now, Greeks and Romans were caught up with heroes and the idea of a hero – somewhat like people today caught up with celebrities and those who are ‘at the top of their game.’ A hero won your loyalties by brave action and strong character. How could Jesus who died on a cross be a hero! The death of a young and nondescript Jewish man was the last thing to pin your hopes on. As Paul tells it, God acted once – and for all – in the death of Jesus on the cross.
God had struck down all that can set his creation apart and out of touch with God’s love. God acted in an unexpected way. God acted in a paradoxical way. The cross looks foolish to human beings who put their trust in their own wisdom and skills and abilities. What appears to be folly – a man whose short life ends at the gallows – is used by God to turn things around. In God’s wisdom and love, what looked like a lost battle becomes the means whereby creation is brought back to God and lovingly restored.
The cross is a sign of God’s power to save. The cross has become a sign of love and life. As we sang, in the words of the Entrance Hymn:
The cross he bore is life and health,
though shame and death to him;
his people’s hope, his people’s wealth,
their everlasting theme. *
Amen.
Fr. Ted Hales
*Words to the hymn, ‘The head that once was crowned with thorns,’ by Thomas Kelly, 1760-1835