HOLY CROSS 2012

• Numbers 21:4b-9 and Psalm 98:1-5 or Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38 •
• 1 Corinthians 1:18-24 •
• John 3:13-17

CloistersCross 12th century Museum of Art, New York

Legend has it that in 326 AD, during a pilgrimage she made to Jerusalem, Saint Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, discovered  the True Cross of Jesus . She ordered a church to be built at the site of the discovery. On Sept 14 635 AD a portion of the Cross was carried into the newly consecrated 'Church of the Holy Sepulchre'. Since that time Sept 14  has been a red letter day in the Christian Calendar. Holy Cross Day invites us to meditate on the deeply mysterious fact that God chose an instrument of tortured death to be the means of salvation. 
The Cross provided Isaac Watts with the central image of possibly the most famous of all Christian hymns

• When I survey the wondrous cross
  On which the Prince of glory died,
  My richest gain I count but loss,
  And pour contempt on all my pride.

  
  

  Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
  Save in the death of Christ my God!
  All the vain things that charm me most,
  I sacrifice them to His blood.

  
  

  See from His head, His hands, His feet,
  Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
  Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
  Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

  
  

  His dying crimson, like a robe,
  Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
  Then I am dead to all the globe,
  And all the globe is dead to me.

  
  

  Were the whole realm of nature mine,
  That were a present far too small;
  Love so amazing, so divine,
  Demands my soul, my life, my all.

  Isaac Watts (1674-1748)