Homily for September 14, 2008

Father Tom’s Homily
Feast of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2008

At the top of the Aventine hill in the city of Rome you can find the church of Saint Sabina. It overlooks the Tiber River and gives you a glorious view of St. Peter’s Basilica from a distance of about a mile.
Saint Sabina is considered to be one of the most beautiful basilicas in Rome to have survived from the early Christian period.
One of the very significant features of the church is a wooden panel in the doorway of the church. Before examining this panel, a few words about the person for whom it is named, St. Sabina.

Sabina was a widow of a noble family whose home was at the top of the Aventine hill.
Sabina was converted to the Christian faith by her servant, Serapia, a girl from Syria. When they were accused of being Christians, they were brought before the Roman court where they acknowledged their belief in Jesus Christ.
Serapia was condemned to be beaten to death, a cruel form of execution often given to the lower class such as servants.
The local prefect (chief of police), Helpidius, hesitated to proceed against Sabina, because she was a lady of noble background.

Sabina accompanied her friend, Serapia, to her execution and afterwards buried her in the tomb she had intended for herself.
Since promises and threats could not convince Sabina to change her faith in Jesus, she too was condemned to death. As a citizen of Rome, she was given a more painless form of execution.
On August 29, 125, Sabina was beheaded and was buried by the faithful with her friend Serapia. The memory of these courageous martyrs has been kept by the Church of Rome ever since.

Three centuries later, the basilica of Saint Sabina was constructed on the site of her home at the top of the Aventine hill. That was about the year 425.
The bones of Saints Sabina and Serapia were placed together under the main altar of the basilica, where they remain to this day.

When you visit this basilica to pray at the altar/tomb of these holy martyrs, you cross the threshold through a great door.
It is a cyprus-wood door that has been remarkably preserved after some 16 hundred years. In the door there are a number of carved panels.
One of these panels is especially notable. It depicts Jesus nailed to the cross between two thieves. This is considered to be the oldest representation of the Crucifixion of Jesus.

In earlier representations, for example in the Catacombs, Jesus is shown either during his ministry before his death, or in the glory of his resurrection.
Crucifixion was a shameful death, and remained so for centuries in the minds of Christians. That is why Jesus was never presented suffering on the cross. Depicting Jesus crucified didn’t come easily or quickly. Crucifixion was a horrible and shameful fate.

For centuries, the cross was not used in Christian art. When finally used more commonly in the late 5th and 6th centuries, it was the simple wooden cross adorned with jewels, called “crux gemmata” (the jeweled cross). This represented Jesus’ victory over death on the cross.
When later the body of Jesus appeared on crosses, it was the portrayal of the risen Jesus rather than the dying or dead Jesus.

Around the 1200 when Christian Europe experienced wars and plagues and other calamities, the people became more interested in the Christ who suffered with them.
Accordingly the crucified body of Jesus on the cross became common. Over the centuries since, some crosses displayed the suffering Christ with stark reality, even grisly detail.
In our own day with a renewed emphasis on the resurrection, we have seen a return to the risen Christ on the cross.

Today we celebrate, yes celebrate, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It has its source in today’s letter of St. Paul to the Philippians (2nd reading).
It says, “Christ Jesus humbled himself to death on a cross. Because of this God has greatly exalted him.”

It is a paradox that the cross, a symbol that struck terror in the hearts of people everywhere, should be for us a symbol of hope.
In the gospel reading today, Jesus tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him might have eternal life.”
We exalt the cross of Jesus because it is the sign of God’s amazing love for us.