The Cross and The One Ring

As Christians, and especially as Catholics, we exult the cross. How weird. And even…grotesque?

Day 175…One Ring by bandita (2008) via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0.

Tomorrow we celebrate a Feast of one of the most unlikely events in history. Perhaps not even an event in itself, but a symbol of the event: the Cross. Tomorrow is the Feast of the Exultation of the Cross. Isn’t it like glorifying the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings?

And yet, as Christians, and especially as Catholics, we exult the cross. How weird. And even…grotesque?

As a symbol of that which meant death – gruesome agonizing death – we take the symbol of the cross and mark it everywhere. We place it in churches, we wear it as jewelry, we take the holy name of our God in three persons and apply those names to our body in the shape of it (the sign of the cross). We anoint ourselves continually with this symbol of pain and agony.