Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him flee from His face. As smoke vanishes, let them vanish; and as wax melts from the presence of fire, so let the demons perish from the presence of those who love God and who sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross and say with gladness: Hail, most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, for Thou drivest away the demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ Who was crucified on thee, went down to hell and trampled on the power of the devil, and gave us thee, His honorable Cross, for driving away all enemies. O most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, help me with our holy Lady, the Virgin Theotokos, and with all the Saints throughout the ages. Amen.
Modern sensibilities (formed and shaped in a post-Reformation world) stagger when they hear classical Christianity offer prayers to the saints. Needless to say, an even greater affront occurs when an Orthodox Christian offers a prayer addressed to the Cross of Christ. “Only God can hear prayers! Only God can save us!”
The argument runs that saints can’t hear us because they’re dead (they’re not dead, they are with Christ). Also, that only God can answer prayers which is really just a confusion of language. The word “pray,” in modern usage, has a strictly religious meaning. However, the word means nothing more than to “ask.” In The Twelfth Night, Olivia says: “Stay. I prithee, tell me what thou think’st of me.” “Prithee” is a contraction of “pray thee.” We “pray” to one another all the time as we speak and ask.
But, speaking to an inanimate object would seem to raise the bar to yet another level of difficulty. Again, I go back to our language. Is the Cross “inanimate?” In a secularized understanding, only minds are “animate,” or perhaps things that can be described as “alive.” “Inanimate” means to have no spirit, no soul, no animus to use the Latin. And so we live in a “disenchanted” world, surrounded by soul-less stuff.
But here are the Orthodox speaking to the Cross.
Strangely, Christ spoke to the wind and the waves (inanimate bits of creation). And, we are told, “The wind and seas obeyed Him.” (Matt. 8:27) The language used says something about the wind and the sea even as it tells us something about Christ. Apparently, there is more to the “stuff” that surrounds us than the modern mind imagines.
Christian devotion to the Cross is quite primitive, with possible evidence of its devotional use even in the first century. It is so deeply embedded in the ancient Church that when the iconoclasts (8th century) demanded the removal of all icons from Churches, they made an exception for the Cross. Not until the 16th century would any Christian reject the image of the Cross.
It is, of course, important to note the very nature of the Cross when it is being invoked (whether by word, or symbol, or signing). The Cross is a symbol of shame, weakness, and defeat. Crucifixion was the common means of execution reserved for slaves (primarily). Its humiliation was so great that it was forbidden to be used against a citizen of Rome. Whenever we invoke the Cross, we are proclaiming that we have allied ourselves with the way of the Cross, and specifically with Jesus Christ, the God/Man, who demonstrated for all time that the Cross is the way of love and the fullness of the revelation of God. The resurrection of Christ vindicates the Cross and Christ’s self-emptying (Phil. 2:5-10).
The victory of Christ, of the Word-Made-Flesh, is also a victory for the groaning creation itself (Rom. 8:19-22). The Cross is not mere wood, a mute recipient of the writhing agony of God. The Church’s veneration of the Cross and its treatment in prayers and hymnody expand a very Bibilical model in which the “mountains and hills…break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands….” (Is. 55:12).
The smallish arguments of the past few hundred years in which some modern sects wage war against iconography, relics, and the invocation of saints are ultimately an effort to further the drive towards secularization as well as an unrelenting effort to diminish the Church and the true vision of salvation as a cosmic event.
It is, ultimately, an argument that is not solved by competing syllogisms. Rather, as is true of the faith itself, it is settled when the Orthodox say, “Come and see!” The fullness of its life and practice is itself part of that abundance that Christ promised to us all.
The Hymn to the Cross
O Lord, save Your people,
and bless Your inheritance!
Grant victory to the Orthodox Christians
over their adversaries,
and by virtue of Your Cross,
preserve Your habitation.
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