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On the icon of the Holy Cross

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The icon depicts revelation: the crucifixion of the human Jesus as the appearance of the eternal God. The divine being is eternally cross-shaped, even as it is eternally radiant.

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The crucifixion of Christ is the secret of eternity, the true and only glory that shines forever from the abyss.

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At the center of Christian devotion is not a revealed doctrine, a religious ideal, or even a right way of life, but an embodied human person. Christianity began not with beliefs about Jesus, but with people who had known Jesus. They were affected by Jesus as one is affected by friendship, not as one is affected by reading a powerful book or encountering a new idea. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled” (1 John 1:1). The heartbeat of Christian faith is a fact as tangible as wood and nails.

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The crucifixion is depicted here as realistically as is possible within the bounds of iconography. The human Jesus stretches out his arms across a rough-hewn wooden beam. His body is bent, his feet twisted, his hands pierced, his head turned down in sorrow.

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Around the earthly historical cross shines an eternal heavenly cross. This budded cross is clean, unbloodied, perfect; its form is untouched by the harsh lines and distorted perspectives of the small internal cross. Its form is light itself, the glory of eternity. Everything contingent, historical, earthly is suspended amid this timeless light, absorbed into the serene balance of perfect form. The budded cross is the true essential form, the Platonic reality, that projects the earthly crucifixion like a black shadow on the wall of the cave of time.

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The eternal cross is a theodicy. Death and hell are safely circumscribed within its shining frame.

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At the top of the icon, the divine face of Christ peers through the curtains, high above the earthly historical cross of Jesus. Unlike the face of the crucified one, this Christ-face looks straight ahead, reminding us that its own impassive glory is the hidden truth of the crucifixion. On either side, the saints gather reassuringly, springing like flowers from the barren wood. They model for us our own proper response to the spectacle of the crucified one. We are to respond with adoring humility and reverent submission. The presence of the saints makes the cross safe, familiar, accessible. There is, the icon assures us, a proper human posture that corresponds to the fact of the cross. The cross stands not merely over and against us but alongside us, in uninterrupted continuity with our religious piety.

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Is not history—the history of Jesus—completely fixed and immobilized in this representation? Is it not suspended in eternity like a beautiful figure in a glass ball?

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Are we not left with the impression that the icon is wholly right in what it shows, yet somehow also wholly wrong? Its sole aim is to set forth Christ as the truth of eternity, the truth that shines forever, the truth of God. But in the very act of showing this, the icon allows the impassive majesty of eternal truth to eclipse the brute fact of the cross of history.

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When I was a boy, I lived in a vast sprawling mansion beside the sea on a tropical island in North Queensland. When I had grown up, I went back one day to the island and saw my childhood home: a tiny dilapidated fibro shack with a tin roof and cracked concrete floors, scarcely more than a backyard shed. All my life, the real earthly house had been eclipsed by the fantasy house that my memory had built for me as, year after year, I silently venerated my childhood. The fantasy house was beautiful: but it was fantasy.

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