Vigils Reading – Exaltation of the Holy Cross

THE VICTORY

OF THE CROSS

By St Chromatius of Aquileia

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The Cross of Christ is our victory, because it has obtained victory for us.

Who among us are so fortunate as to deserve to bear in themselves the cross of

Christ? They bear the cross of Christ in themselves who die to the world and are

nailed with Christ to the Cross. Listen to what the Apostle says: “With Christ I

am crucified; I live, yet it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Those therefore who are free from the vices of the flesh and worldly desires are,

as the Apostle says, crucified with Christ. Those on the other hand who are given

over to vices of the flesh and worldly desires cannot say: “I am crucified with

Christ”, for they do not live the way that Christ did, but according to the fashion

of the world and the will of the devil.

The cross of Christ is the salvation of the world and the triumphal sign of

heaven’s victory. In times past, when great kings had won a brilliant victory over

vanquished nations, they used to set up a trophy of their victory in the form of a

cross and hang spoils taken from the enemy upon it as a permanent reminder.

The victory won by Christ’s cross is far different. The victory of those kings

meant the extermination of peoples, the destruction of cities, the sacking of

provinces. The victory of the cross means nations ransomed, cities saved,

provinces liberated, the entire world made safe. Nothing is destroyed but the

power of the devil, no one taken captive but the demons, for the cross of Christ

redeemed the world and took the demons prisoner. It is spoils taken from the

demons that are hung on the triumphal cross of Christ. Today the demons hang

on the cross of Christ which has become their torment and torture; they are held

captive by faith in the cross, by the sign of the passion.

Christ suffered evil and repaid it with good; he suffered death and gave

life. Not without reason was he crucified on the spot where Adam’s body is said

to have been buried; Christ was crucified where Adam was buried in order that

life might thus rise out of death. Death came through Adam, life through Christ,

who deigned to be crucified and to die precisely in order to destroy through the

tree of the cross the sin that had been caused by a tree, and by the mystery of his

death to put an end to the punishment of death.