The Church celebrates this Monday, September 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a date that may seem paradoxical: the instrument on which Our Lord Jesus Christ died appears “exalted” by the liturgy as a sign of victory. The celebration does not repeat Good Friday; rather, it contemplates the Cross in the particular light of the Resurrection and the redemption accomplished by Christ.
The feast has its roots in fourth-century Jerusalem and was later linked both to the veneration of Christ’s Cross and to the recovery of the relic after the Persians seized it in the seventh century.
From instrument of execution to sign of victory
Crucifixion was one of the harshest and most humiliating forms of execution used in the Roman world. The Church does not exalt the cruelty of the torment nor present suffering as a good in itself. What it celebrates is what Christ accomplished precisely through the Cross: the instrument of death was transformed by his redemptive sacrifice into a sign of salvation and victory.
Benedict XVI explained this during the Mass celebrated in Lourdes on September 14, 2008: “Through his Cross we have been saved.” The instrument of torment became, through Christ, “a source of life, of forgiveness, of mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace.” “The Church invites us to raise the glorious Cross with pride,” the Pontiff added.
That is why the Exaltation has a character distinct from Good Friday. The latter places the veneration of the Cross within the celebration of the Lord’s Passion and death. On September 14, by contrast, the Cross itself occupies the center of the feast and appears in a particularly explicit way as the standard of Christ’s victory and the tree of salvation.
A feast born in Jerusalem
One of the immediate origins of the celebration lies in the dedication, on September 13, 335, of the basilicas erected in Jerusalem over the sites associated with Christ’s death and Resurrection. The following day the Cross was solemnly exposed; according to Christian tradition, it had been found by Saint Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine.
From this Jerusalem celebration comes the date of September 14.
The tradition of the finding of the True Cross developed widely in the following centuries, and the veneration of the wood of the Cross spread from the Holy Land to different regions of Christendom.
The Persians took the Cross from Jerusalem
Another historical episode reinforced the meaning of the date. In 614, the forces of the Persian king Chosroes II conquered Jerusalem and carried off among their trophies the relic venerated as the Cross of Christ.
Years later, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius defeated the Persians. After the victory at Nineveh in 627, he demanded the return of the relic, which subsequently made its way back to Jerusalem.
The memory of that recovery eventually merged with the already existing celebration and helped spread it throughout East and West.
“We do not exalt just any cross”
Contemporary popes have insisted that the celebration does not consist in glorifying an instrument of torture. Francis explained in 2014 that Christians “do not exalt just any cross,” but the Cross of Jesus, precisely because on it God’s love was manifested.
Last year, Leo XIV took up this idea during the Angelus of September 14.
Commenting on the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, he recalled that God used “one of the cruelest instruments of death that man has ever invented” and transformed it, through Christ’s self-giving, “from a means of death into an instrument of life.”
Read also: Leo XIV: “To redeem mankind, God became man and died on the cross”
The bronze serpent and the Gospel of the feast
The readings chosen for September 14 help explain this meaning. The Book of Numbers recounts how, during the desert journey, those bitten by serpents could be saved by looking at the bronze serpent raised by Moses.
The Gospel of Saint John applies this image to Christ: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
The liturgy culminates with one of the central affirmations of the Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
From this comes the Christian meaning of “exaltation.” The Cross is not a mere symbol or a reminder of Roman torment: the Church venerates the Holy Cross because on it Christ offered the sacrifice of our redemption and turned the instrument of death into the sign of his victory. As Benedict XVI recalled, since then the Cross is “a sign of hope” and “the standard of Jesus’ victory.”
Read also: Exaltation of the Holy Cross: “Ave crux, spes unica”