The Cross is mostly understood as a structure, one that’s seen on the roadside. Those Crosses remind us that someone has gone ahead of us with fatal accidents, so be cautious! Apart from the Cross seen around, a sign of the Cross is spotted on our body specially the right thumb. It was a tradition to mark one with the sign of Cross which now has become fashion! Whatever it is, the essence and significance of the Cross doesn’t change although the individual belongs to varied religions! 

Apart from the structured Cross we have little invisible crosses in our life. Jesus said to his disciples: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" Lk 9: 23. The point of taking up our own cross is not tattooing a cross on our body; it’s not even self-sacrifice; taking up our own cross is that, we unite ourselves to the sacrifice of Christ on His Cross. It is allowing ourselves to be nailed because of injustice, jealousy, hatred…, so that we might have a share in his suffering and rise with Him.

The Church celebrates the (feast) Exaltation of the Cross on  September 14, honouring the Cross on which Christ was crucified. In a deeper sense, the Holy Cross of Christ is the instrument that restored the image distorted by Adam. This instrument of torture, designed to degrade the worst of criminals, became the life-giving tree that reversed Adam's Original Sin when he ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in 348 mentions: St Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine, nearing the end of her life, decided under divine inspiration to travel to Jerusalem in 326 to excavate the Holy Sepulchre and attempt to locate the True Cross. A Jew by the name of Judas, aware of the tradition concerning the hiding of the Cross, led those excavating the Holy Sepulchre to the spot in which it was hidden. Three crosses were found on the spot. 

According to one tradition, the inscription Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum ("Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews") remained attached to the True Cross. According to common tradition, however, the inscription was missing. St Helena and St Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, assuming that one was the True Cross and the other two belonged to the thieves crucified alongside Christ, planned to experiment to determine which the True Cross was!

One version of the latter tradition, the three crosses were taken to a woman who was near death; when she touched the True Cross, she was healed. In another, the body of a dead man was brought to the place where the three crosses were found, and laid upon each cross. The True Cross restored the dead man to life.

The fallen condition of humankind was made good with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross. Nevertheless, the Cross is the crossroads of history and the Tree of Life. Christianity without the Cross is meaningless: Only by uniting ourselves to Christ's Sacrifice on the Cross can we enter into eternal life. So too, every individual will find life meaningful through the cross of life!!! Nowhere is God closer to us than in the cross of Jesus. It is our hope and salvation.