Santa Cruz de Mayo - ROSES AND THORNS by Alejandro R. Roces

The Santa Cruz de Mayo is the remnant of a feast for the Holy Cross that was once widely observed in Christendom. The cross was not the earliest Christian symbol. The early Christians used the fish as a symbol because its Greek name ichtus formed a monogram of the initial letters of the words Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The cross became an important symbol only in the 4th century, when Constantine on his march to Rome, saw a luminous cross in the sky with the motto In hoc vinces, by this (sign) conquer. In 312, the night before the battle of Saxa Rubra, a vision commanded him to inscribe the cross and motto on the shields of his soldiers; he replaced the Roman eagle standard with the cross and won the war. His mother, Dowager-Empress Helena, at age 75, went to calvary to search for the cross where Christ was crucified. After some archeological diggings at the crucifixion site, she unearthed three crosses, which she tested by making a sick servant lie on all three; the cross where the servant recovered was identified as Christ’s. All churches the world over dedicated to the true cross are said to have pieces of this relic. St. Helena died asking all Christians to celebrate the discovery of the cross every May 3rd.

It was the story of Constantine and Helena that started the sublimation of the cross into Christianity’s main symbol. The Byzantine Empire minted coins showing Constantine raising a cross like a banner; Christians started using the cross as pectorals, grave markers and objects of veneration in their homes; churches began displaying them on spires; some were even constructed with cruciform ground plans; by the 13th century, the cross was endemic throughout Christendom.

English literature may be said to have begun with Helena and the cross.

Two of the oldest English poems (8th century or earlier) are Cynewulf’s Elene and the anonymous Dream of the Rood; the former was an English variant of Helena’s finding of the true cross; the latter anthromoporphized the cross by making it express, first, its humiliation at the hands of those who transformed it from a tree to an instrument of execution; second, its humility upon seeing who its occupant would be; third, its glory when it becomes the restored tree of salvation. More than a millenium later, St. Teresa of Avila would echo the same sentiments:

Oh, Cruz, madero precioso,

Lleno de gran majestad,

Pues siendo de despreciar

Tomaste a Dios por esposo!

On July 26, 1960, Pope John XXIII decreed the abolition of the Invention of the Cross.