When the Homily is about Immunology

Will the true cross please be elevated?

Frankly, many of the issues being wrestled with in the comments of my last post are beyond me. I do not at all understand the use of the term eschatological in the context we are giving it. Hey, I’m just a stupid fisherman with a puny bachelors degree in religion!

I fear my realm of discussion on this matter will be on a lower plane. Let me thus not dissuade the loftier amongst us from pursuing the heights.

When to set aside doubt and when to trust? Actually this is a much more difficult question than one may think. On the one end of the spectrum we paint a character who is a simplistic dupe willing to believe anything that someone dressed in a black robe tells them and on the other side we visualize a doubting Thomas, filled with pride and puffed up knowledge, who knows better than everyone else. None of us wish to manifest either role!

If a convert looks hard enough, they will find protestant tendencies in many things – for instance I tend to see it in the way we like to sit in personal judgment of Tradition. We all seem to want to personally decide what is “t”radition and what is “T”radition. Or just in general taking protestant hermeneutics and applying them to any tradition. (i.e. we, as individuals, are free to judge whether or not the splinter of wood is what the Church claims it to be). Sometimes you will find Orthodox converts hurling “protestant” baggage onto one another’s arguments. No offense intended to my protestant friends, just pointing this out. We (the Orthodox and Protestant) are different and do have a different mindset, but we Orthodox converts love to point out the suspected lack of an Orthodox mindset in other Orthodox. Of course, sometimes rightfully so…but other times…well you get the point. Protestant can be in the eye of the beholder. Nuff of that.

No teaching or practice of the Church is necessarily on equal footing with another. In other words, I do not think that a person is in danger of excommunication if they question the veracity of the True Cross…as compared to the target one would paint upon oneself if they denied the Holy Trinity or the Real Presence in the Eucharist. However, that being said, I think we step down MUCH further if we compare the celebration of the True Cross (as being the True Cross) to the ancient canon prohibiting our employment of a Jewish doctor, which is most certainly not a Dogma. Weight, I believe, must be thrown in the direction of the True Cross when we consider that (as far as I know) we have not marked any day on the universal ecclesiological calendar to celebrate the fact that we do not go to Jewish doctors.

The universality and centrality of the True Cross, I think, speaks to its authenticity. If one looks hard enough – into the furthest corners of Orthodoxy – you will find many strange customs and claims. I believe, really I do, that in time the Church at large will judge the authenticity of these things. In other words, if these customs and/or claims become universal in the life of the Church, then this would testify to the truth therein. (Is this NOT how we came to have our Bibles?)

I think the Elevation of the Life-giving Cross is an integral part of the consciousness of the Church. It’s “Truth” or “Veracity” is somewhat secondary – at least in terms of how it might be scientifically verified – which as Clifton well said, it ultimately cannot. Saint Thomas said that he would not believe unless he saw and touched the wounds himself…but “blessed are those who believe and yet have not seen.” Yet, Saint Thomas is no less a saint. Perhaps Saint Thomas is Patron of the Western mind? Go to the old country and tell them you doubt that that wood is from the True Cross and you are likely to get some very strange looks I imagine.

I am reminded of this: An Orthodox friend of mine has a real hard time accepting the perpetual virginity of our Lady. Another Orthodox friend of mine, upon hearing this from him, wept. Both were perplexed by the others stance. But I wonder how my first friend, who doubts the ever-virginity of Mary, must feel and think when we so often refer to her with that title in the Liturgy or in our own prayers? Does he skip that part? Does he shake his head in disbelief? What must go through his mind if he is convinced that it isn’t true?

And from my own perspective, when I enter into the nave of the Church and approach the relics of St. Paul and Saint Nicholas to venerate them…what would it be to me if I were to think: “These are not authentic, they are simply medieval forgeries and the Church has been duped into accepting them.” Would I be less inclined to press my lips against them? To embrace them? And would we be wasting our time in Liturgy to prostrate before the “True Cross” if it were actually merely shards from some 13th century shrubbery? Would I be tempted to laugh at the reverence being paid to some insignificant piece of wood? Cynicism and doubt are dangerous to me…I’ve seen it steal my soul and harden my heart. I do not want to wait for the carbon dating in order to bow down and say “My Lord and my God.”

Some may perhaps be able to transcend the perceived “fact” that it is not the True Cross and none-the-less have it be a touch point with God – a sacrament. And perhaps they are right! However, such lofty and noble religious thinking escapes me. I am a simple man, I admit it. I do not want to have a transcendental experience of fishing, or say that I enjoyed peaceful nature which accompanies a day of fishing despite the lack of fish…I want to FEEL the tight lines and the fighting fish! I want to get wet…I want it to be REAL! Maybe I am the silly dupe on the far side of that aforementioned spectrum.

You know the unbeliever (and many times the protestant) would find our explanation of the Eucharist’s Real Presence while yet still looking like bread and wine, unsatisfying. Carbon date the True Cross and find it to be 900 years old and I suppose we could argue that the consecrating authority of the Church transubstantiated the wood to become for us the True wood upon which Jesus died. But alas, we do not accept Transubstantiation as defined in the western churches…but what the heck why not. Hehehe…I digress.

No, I do not think the Church has been duped. While not a Dogma, per se and while not ever having been confirmed by an Ecumenical Council (neither has scripture by the way) it is none-the-less been incorporated into and embraced by the universal life of the Church. This should make us pause and reconsider our doubts. It would even make me pause and reconsider the veracity of scientific data that might contradict it.

I believe it is the True Cross as surely as I believe that Jesus rose from the dead. For I should not know either to be the case unless the Church told me so. At some point, it does become a part of the house of cards.