Prayer 'to' the cross?

[Robert Hegwood]

This is a passage from a prayer to the Cross:

"Hail, most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, for Thou drivest away the demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified on thee, Who went down to hell and trampled on the power of the devil, and gave us thee, His venerable Cross, for driving away all enemies. O most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, help me with our holy Lady, the Virgin Mother of God, and with all the Saints throughout the ages. Amen."

And I must admit, while I do pray it, I am not sure I understand why...not because I do not know of what was accomplished by the Cross but because I don't understand how we are to understand the nature and personhood of the listener. When one prays to the saints asking their intercession they are people, persons whom we can relate to as other persons...but the cross is not a person, it is a man made object.

So I don't quite know what to think. If the prayer is purely poetical in its address...then this makes the prayer a nice religious poem but undercuts it as a prayer (wouldn't it?)...and it is presented in our prayer books as a prayer. If the cross is just a material object, a thing (though one of great salvic significance) then asking it for help seems pointless. But it is unlikely the Church would so prominantly sanction pointless prayers...so it must not be pointless. The only other possibilty that occurs to me is that the Cross has somehow by grace become empersoned. If this is so it still puzzles because if so it raises a host of other questions about how such a personhood "works", and the larger implications towards the rest of the material creation...can other things...will other things be "empersoned" in this or a coming age?

Maybe I've missed something...or am just oblivious, but I'm hoping someone out there has some useful insights.

[Paul Cowan]

Dear Robert,

This is a good question. I too would like to hear more.

What I have heard about the cross relates back to the Tree of Life that was subsumed in Paradise after the Fall. The Holy Life Giving Cross is the Tree of Life resurrected.

Perhaps since Christ was resurrected as a person, though He was also before, the Tree of Life was also resurrected as a quasi-person?

Paul

[Mourad Mankarios]

You think that might seem confusing. Here's what the Coptic doxology on the feast of the cross says:


Let us give praise O faithful
To our Lord Jesus Christ
And bow down to His Cross
The immortal and sacred wood

[Nina]

"Why do we honor the Cross with such reverence that we make mention of its power in our prayers after asking for the intercession of the Mother of God and the Heavenly Powers, before asking for that of the Saints, and sometimes even before asking for that of the Heavenly Powers? Because after the Saviour's sufferings, the Cross became the sign of the Son of Man, that is, the Cross signifies the Lord Himself, incarnate and suffering for our salvation."

St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

Cross (http://www.orthodox.net/gleanings/cross.html)

[Daniel H.]

I'm glad you asked this question. My question is, if you had never heard anyone speak about the Bible but you had just read it yourself, would you be asking that question at all? Did anyone in the New Testament pray to the cross? The cross, like the tree of life are merely symbolic and not powerful in themselves. Its what they stand for that is powerful, they stand for a life of dependance, love and fellowship with God. We place our faith in Gods goodness in providing a way to access Gods presence and to specifically claim His personal forgiveness and His personal supernatural righteousness through the fruit of the Spirit.

Christianity works by God's love and faith, and its not about what we can achieve as our righteousness is as filthy rags. Submit to His will, trust Him to replace your attitude and create in you a clean heart.

Did anyone in the Bible ever pray to anyone other than the Creator Father?

[Herman Blaydoe]

There certainly is a general lack of knowledge about the simple literary tools of rhetoric. We are not praying TO the cross, we are praying about the cross, using picturesque and rhetorical language. This is a literary device used in song, poetry, and prose throughout history in many cultures.

Come on folks! It is like saying the Pledge of Allegiance. "I pledge allegiance to the flag..." Hey it is only a bit of multicolored cloth. Do we expect it to tell us to do things? It is not the cloth itself, but what it stand for that is being exalted. The same thing is true for the Cross. As one Father says, when I have two sticks, I throw them on the fire, but when they are put in the shape of the life-giving Cross, I bow in reverence.

It is what the Cross means that matters, that is all this flowery language is trying to convey. Don't read more into it than is meant to begin with!!

O bother!

Herman the grumpy Pooh

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Daniel H. wrote:


Did anyone in the New Testament pray to the cross? The cross, like the tree of life are merely symbolic and not powerful in themselves. Its what they stand for that is powerful, they stand for a life of dependance, love and fellowship with God. We place our faith in Gods goodness in providing a way to access Gods presence and to specifically claim His personal forgiveness and His personal supernatural righteousness through the fruit of the Spirit.


Actually this is very interesting.

For us although not identical, the symbol is our means of communion with the original.

For example today for some of us it is the feast of the Lord's Tansfiguration. Today at Liturgy or last night during the service was not absolutely identical to the actual event of the Transfiguration.

But yet in another crucial sense it is and even more so since the commemoration on these days places us within the actual reality that the event of the Transfiguration represents.

Thus it is for everything within the Church. Faith relates to something real. But yet this reality is not limited by time and place for it is not a reality of time and place in the first place.

Rather the reality of faith is based on Christ's dispensation among man and our engrafting to that reality.

And that is why again one symbol, be it the Cross or the Feast of the Transfiguration, connects us eternally with the reality of Christ's presence.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

As I'm sure we all know, the cross is no mere symbol but has power for, as Tertullian said, it is the grace of God. Apostle Paul said he gloried in the cross: Galatians 6:14. The power of the cross is mentioned in the priest's prayers for the blessing of a cross. The Church sees the power of the cross even in the OT. St Constantine's vision of the cross in the sky in Gaul was accompanied by the words, in this conquer. The verses in the service for the Adoration of the Cross during Lent are full of references to the power of the cross. Scientists have recently claimed that making the sign of the cross over water alters the physical properties of the water. Things are sanctified by making the sign of the cross over them. We bless and sanctify ourselves by making the sign of the cross. But the cross is not magic; it must be used with faith and reverence. Thus we should make the sign of the cross carefully and with reverence: 'cursed is he who does the work of the Lord carelessly' Jeremiah 48:10. I hope the Greeks here will forgive me for mentioning this but some Greeks are very careless in the way they make the sign of the cross, something which shocks the Slavs.

[M.C. Steenberg]

...the cross is no mere symbol...
Indeed. It is a symbol, not a mere symbol.

A word Christians must reclaim, full of power and genuine theologia.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Rick H.]

Indeed. It is a symbol, not a mere symbol.

A word Christians must reclaim, full of power and genuine theologia.

INXC, Dcn Matthew


Dear Father Deacon Matthew,

I am not familiar with this distinction, but I would like to be. The only point of reference I have is the writing of Father Schmemman in The Eucharist. I can't remember if he said this or I formed this from his writing, but it seemed he was pointing towards a 'symbolic realism' or a 'realistic symbolism' in the Eucharist. But, either way, I wonder if you might have time to bring me up to speed on this in the near future?

Thank you.

In Christ,
Rick

[Chev. James R. Weber KGCT]

theologia is theology

theologia es le studio de Deo e su relation al universo.

the investigating of God relative to the universe

I use investigating here because the English wordy study has been colloquialized and lessend in its meaning...





genuine theologia.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Andreas Moran]

'Symbol' as meaning the 'type' or 'exemplar' of truth and reality is something we should indeed claim in our faith, as Fr Dcn Matthew helpfully points out. We may remember that the Greek for The Creed is 'Συμβολον της πιστεως' - the symbol, as truthful expression, of our faith.

[Eric Peterson]

It seems to me that such prayers, that is, the type of language used in them, is related to other prayers which appear most often in the eastern liturgies. "Most Holy Theotokos save us" comes to mind.

[Aaron Taylor]

This thread caught my attention because similar questions had occurred to me last night as I was reading the Akathist to the Precious Cross, which seemed to anthropomorphise the Cross even more than the prayer Mr Hegwood mentioned (it reminded me of the Old English poem, ‘Dream of the Rood’, although I really did read the latter as merely ‘poetic language’). Anyway, I was greatly helped by Nina’s quotation of St John of Kronstadt, which seems to me the most fruitful way to read such prayers.

Have all decided, however, charitably to ignore the implied Arianism of Mr David H.’s final question? As John Milton has so aptly demonstrated on behalf of the other side, Sola Scriptura leaves precious little ground for opposing this heresy. But in responding to a Protestant friend who was still not quite ready to give up prayer to Our Lord, a line of reply to this particular aspect of the problem suggested itself. It seems that Mr David H.’s question presupposes that ‘prayer’ refers only to words addressed to someone who is not ‘physically’ present, while if Jesus Christ is God, He is God before as well as after His Ascension. On this basis, and to name just a few of the first examples I come across in the Gospel of St Matthew alone, I would cite Matt. 8:2, 8:8, 8:25, 9:27, 14:30, 15:22, 15:25, 17:15, 20:21, 20:30-31 & 33, 21:9. Interestingly, many of these resemble, both in form and sentiment, the central prayer of the Orthodox Tradition—the Jesus Prayer. The Fathers often refer to verses such as these as Scriptural examples of this type of prayer.

Of course, St John addresses a prayer to the ascended Christ as well in Rev. 22:20.