A Sign of Glory

Hanging above the altar at OLMC is a large crucifix, with a 6-foot-tall corpus of Christ painted in the Ionic style. As I'm sure you know, OLMC is not alone in having a crucifix, as every Catholic Church is required to have a crucifix on or near the altar for the Mass. But why is that?

If Jesus died and then rose from the dead and is now ascended to the Father in Heaven, why do we feature so prominently the cause of His death? Wouldn't a cross with Him no longer attached to it, or even a cross completely bare, be a better illustration of that? The rubric that requires this crucifix hints at the reasoning: " ... there is to be a cross, with the figure of Christ crucified upon it, a cross clearly visible to the assembled people ... so as to call to mind for the faithful the saving Passion of the Lord" (General Instruction of the Roman Missal 308).

To call to mind the saving Passion of the Lord: We cannot have the Resurrection without the Crucifixion. The Crucifixion shows us most clearly how God loves us, not just how much, but the manner in which He loves us. Love is not just about quantity, but about quality. He is willing to suffer. And He instructs us to love just as He loved us, to take up our own cross and to follow him ... to death into life.

A common understanding of the Crucifixion since early Christianity's Patristic period is that it is a sign of glory, with some crucifixes painted with the title "Rex Gloriae" instead of the commonly seen "INRI" above the corpus. Rex Gloriae, Latin for the King of Glory, recognizes that Christ's death on the cross is not a failure, not something to be ashamed of showing, but rather embracing it as a sign of victory over sin, death, and the devil through His Passion.

On our crucifix at OLMC, written into the halo surrounding Christ's head are three letters arranged at what would be the points of a triangle: I, A, M, or when read top to bottom, "I AM". This, of course, is a call back to Exodus 3:14 when Moses asks God what his name is. God responds, "ehye 'aser 'ehye" as written in the original Hebrew of the text. Translated into English as "I am that I am", meaning He is existence itself. Like how God established a covenant with Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land, Christ the God-man establishes and renews a new covenant with us upon the cross, opening the gate to eternal life with Him.

St. Francis de Sales writes: "Mount Calvary is the mount of lovers. All love that takes not its beginning from Our Savior's Passion is frivolous and dangerous. Unhappy is death without the love of the Savior, unhappy is love without the death of the Savior! Love and death are so mingled in the Passion of Our Savior that we cannot have the one in our heart without the other. Upon Calvary one cannot have life without love, nor love without the death of Our Redeemer. But, except there, all is either eternal death or eternal love: and all Christian wisdom consists in choosing rightly."