In his autobiography, Winston Churchill recounts an episode from his early school days when he had to decline the Latin noun mensa. When a puzzled Churchill asked why the vocative case is translated, “O table,” the schoolmaster responded matter-of-factly that that’s how one would address a table. After objecting that he does not speak to tables, Churchill received a reprimand for impertinence – and a distaste for the classics.

If, however, he ever prayed the Divine Office for the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross (today’s celebration), Churchill might have had a flashback to his school days encountering this antiphon:

O crux beata, quae sola fuisti digna portare Regem caelorum, et Dominum, Alleluia.
“O blessed cross, you alone were found worthy to bear the Lord and King of heaven, alleluia.”

While it might sound odd to address the cross directly, as if it were a living, sentient being, we could excuse this as a type of poetic license.

The Church, however, does not give us that easy out. The antiphon above is but the first of many examples that speak to the cross, with increasingly lofty language:

“O glorious cross, your arms upheld the priceless ransom of captive mankind. Through you the world has been saved by the blood of the Lord.”

“Hail, O cross, consecrated by the blood of Christ; his members have made your wood more noble than precious pearls.”

As the Hours of the feast day continue, the language grows ever more striking. The antiphons continue not only to address the cross but also to speak of it with language reserved for God alone. More than one antiphon contains the line, “We worship your cross, O Lord.” This is more than the reverence and veneration we pay to relics, to holy images, even to the Mother of God. This is the language of latria, of the worship and adoration that only God receives.

To worship not God, but an object of Creation, even the holiest object, should be blasphemous. But the Church’s liturgy, doubling and tripling down on this jarring usage, forces our attention and calls us to look deeper.

Why this strange linguistic-liturgical phenomenon, this worshipful invocation of a historical object? When I’ve posed this question to fellow theologians, the answer I often hear is that the Cross occupies such a lofty place because it was stained with the blood of Christ in the act of redemption.

While true, that explanation only goes so far. In the first place, many other treasured relics of the Passion – we might think of the Crown of Thorns carefully preserved in Notre-Dame de Paris or the sacred Shroud of Turin – are stained with the blood of Christ and yet receive neither the liturgical attention nor anything close to the latria language of the Cross.

Moreover, the antiphons make quite clear that we are not invoking or worshiping the blood of Christ on the Cross, but the very Cross itself. So the question stands: Why this unique and even shocking privilege?

I would venture to propose that the Cross occupies a place in the drama of redemption qualitatively beyond that of any other instrument of the Passion because Christ has mystically identified with it, fused with it, in a way that elevates it beyond that of a mere object, however holy.

We are not speaking to or worshiping only the relics of the True Cross that held the Lord’s body on Calvary 2,000 years ago. We are worshiping the Cross as a metaphysical avatar, as it were, of Jesus himself. This is why, following the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief), we genuflect before the cross on Good Friday.

We’re not genuflecting before the True Cross (except in rare circumstances), but before the Cross as that mystical representation of the Savior. It is an identification that Christ Himself foretold: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.” (John 12:32)

Christ declares His elevation, His exaltation, upon the Cross as the prerequisite for His universal saving work. That identification extends to every would-be disciple: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

The Cross thus embodies the essence of the Christian message: a self-emptying, self-giving, dying to oneself, and to the old man of sin in order to live now for Jesus Christ, the model and first-fruits of that death and resurrection. This gives the Cross its privileged place.

Jesus wore the crown on His head, He bore the scourges on His back, He received the nails in his hands and feet. But He is the Cross, His cruciform body giving physical expression to that spiritual identification, embracing the cross to the point of making it one with Himself.

That assimilation, completed when He breathed his last, allowed the centurion to proclaim Jesus’s divine identity: “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54). The marks of the nails that held Him to that Cross remain in His glorified body, the precious trophies of his victory and the “proof of life” by which the Apostles recognized Him.

The language of this feast calls us to reflect more deeply upon this mystery and to see the Cross as quite literally the crux of the Christian faith and of the spiritual life. It is only to the extent that we ourselves identify with and embrace the cross of Christ, taking it up, carrying it, and making it our own, that we may hope to share in its triumph.