The Holy Cross

This past weekend proved to be quite emotional.

—Dick Enberg called his last professional tennis match.

–The Brooklyn Youth Chorus sang Sarah McLachlan a cappella.

–The Washington Redskins soundly defeated the New York Giants!

But when the first cool breezes of fall begin to caress our faces, our thoughts must run to the immemorial September 14 commemoration of the cross of Christ…

The ancient Romans used crosses to execute low-life criminals of the barbarian races. The criminals often hung for days on crosses along highways. The Roman Empire made a statement this way: We will do what we need to do to maintain order.

Cicero was a philosopher and statesman of ancient Rome. He taught that a polite person should not even mention the word “cross.” Well-bred citizens did not refer to such ghastly business in pleasant conversation.

But something changed. Constantine marched toward Rome in the fall of AD 312 to unseat the tyrannical emperor Maxentius. Constantine raised his eyes to heaven to pray for help from the true God, and He received a vision. He saw a cross in the sky and heard these words: ‘In this sign, you will conquer.’

The cross had been a brutal, unmentionable means by which the Romans conquered disorder and rebellion among the nations they subjugated. But the Son of God turned the cross into something else. Christ committed no crime; He never rebelled against order and truth. But the sentence for sin fell upon Him, and He lovingly embraced it for the sake of the salvation of the world.

So now the cross signifies not death but life. If signifies not crime and punishment but mercy and kindness. Now, we do not shy away from mentioning the cross, or invoking it. The cross is not foreign to polite society. Rather, the sign of the cross adorns the lives of Christian people in every possible way.

But we owe it to ourselves to meditate frequently on the fact that the shameful cross of Cicero and the victorious cross of Constantine are not two different things, but the same thing–transformed from ugliness to beauty by the suffering of Christ.

Constantine’s mother Helen sought and found in the ruins of Jerusalem the wood of the cross on which the Lord had been crucified. This same holy relic was defended in battle by the Emperor Heraclius three hundred years later, when the Persians attacked the Holy Land.

September 14 commemorates all these events, which link us with the true cross. The cross of beauty can be none other than the cross on which Christ suffered at the brutal hands of the ancient Romans. We exult the glorious cross because the Savior of the world hung in agony on it for us.

Seventeen Proud Years

The Israelites marched into the midst of the sea on dry land, with the water like a wall on their right and their left.

Where your unworthy servant was baptized

We Christians are marching to the holy mountain, where it is always springtime.

To outfit us to march forward, the Lord initiates us through the sacraments. We must be washed, anointed, and fed.

Easter is a good time for us to recall and thank God for the sacraments that have made us Christians.

On October 18, 1970, I was baptized by a well-meaning non-Catholic, non-priest at New York Avenue Presbyterian church. My parents were kind enough to carry me to the font, and they saw to it that I was in church every Sunday for the next 17 ½ years. I am grateful.

But there was still some unfinished business. On Holy Saturday night, 1993, I was confirmed and given Holy Communion for the first time by Father Ed Ingebretsen in Dahlgren Chapel at Georgetown University.

Seventeen years ago this morning, I woke up washed, anointed, and fed for the first time in my life.

It is good to be Catholic.

No one—not the Washington Post or the New York Times, not CBS News or CNN, not Geraldo Rivera or Sinead O’Connor—no one is going to tell me that it is not good to be Catholic on Easter Sunday.

We Catholics hate it when people do evil. We hate it that priests have done great evil and hurt innocent young people. We hate it that some bishops have failed to discipline their clergy like they should have.

But we know this, too: The world needs the mercy of God that comes to us through His Church.

As Norman MacLean put it in “A River Runs through It,”

When you pick up a fly rod, you will soon find it factually and theologically true that man by nature is a damn mess.

We need God. We need Christ. We need the Church. We need the sacraments. We need to be washed, anointed, and fed, so that we can march toward the goal.

Where your unworthy servant was Confirmed a Catholic

…How badly do I want Butler to beat Duke?

I wanted the Giants to beat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. But not this much. I wanted N.C. State to beat Houston in 1983. But not this much. I wanted Delpo to beat Federer, but not this much.

Philly Up, Philly Down!

This whole sad, sorry mess is not a local tale of a franchise gone rotten anymore; it’s national news, almost as depressing as the real world. —Mike Wise on last night’s Redskins loss

Fair amount of hype about both the Yankees and the Giants going to Philadelphia this Sunday, to play the Phillies and the Eagles, respectively.

We will see how things go. But how about this:

Few teams are more loathsome to a Washingtonian than the Iggles. For instance: the Flyers.

Yes, Philadelphia whupped us yesterday.

But the Caps whupped Philadelphia today!

Also, let’s look at the bright side: The Redskins scored more points last night than they have scored in a while…