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The corpus and the cross.

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4 comments on The corpus and the cross.

Rich Leonardi has a cryptic post up about a hypothetical bumper sticker he'd like to see in the Cincinnati Archdiocese:  "We Preach Christ Crucified."  I read through the comments while waiting for him to update and explain himself, and came upon this comment:

Evangelical friends of mine maintain that their cross, devoid of a corpus, emphasize[s] the Resurrection.


I have heard this before, of course — Catholic crucifixes with corpus displayed emphasize the Passion and death of Jesus, bare Protestant crosses emphasize the Resurrection.  I never thought too deeply about it much. As the commenter goes on to say, there would be no Resurrection without the Crucifixion, so there's a certain primacy there, but Resurrection is the final victory after all.  What's wrong with emphasizing one or the other depending on one's personal devotion?  We Catholics are masters of emphasizing some bits here and some bits there — if I wear a medallion of Mary I am "emphasizing" her, and we say truly that to do so is not to deny her greater Son — so if someone wears a bare cross instead of a crucifix so as to "emphasize" the Resurrection, well, so what?

Though it struck me as I thought about it … does the bare cross really emphasize the Resurrection?  

An empty tomb is an image that emphasizes the Resurrection.  The Risen Lord with the marks in his hands and side, that is an image that recalls and emphasizes the Resurrection.   And we do emphasize those things — I have several images of the Risen Lord around here of one kind or another.  The Divine Mercy image is one such, for example.

But what does a bare cross call to mind?  It might symbolize the Resurrection, if indeed Jesus had "come down from the cross" and saved himself, as the jeering crowd dared him.   Instead, he was dead when they took Him down.  The cross itself didn't last much longer than that.  

The bare cross, objectively, may call to mind the road to Calvary, with the soldiers standing aside hammer in hand.  It may call to mind the dead man being borne to the tomb.  But on the third day, attention would be forever elsewhere.  

Comments

4 responses to “The corpus and the cross.”

  1. Rebekka Avatar
    Rebekka

    Oooh, good point!

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  2. Kelly Avatar
    Kelly

    Contrast this with St. Paul, who writes in 1 Cor 1:23 that “we preach Christ crucified.”

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  3. bearing Avatar
    bearing

    Yes, Kelly, that is the point that Rich begins with in his post. I guess the point I was trying to make is that people who display the bare cross insist that they are not denying or failing to preach Christ crucified, but rather that the naked cross is a way of preaching Christ resurrected. I used to accept that at face value — and of course there are many for whom the bare cross IS an expression of faith in Christ resurrected — I am just saying that it is kind of an odd choice of symbol, if that were the point.

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  4. Kelly Avatar
    Kelly

    I admit, I didn’t read Rich’s post. Sorry!

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