I knew Thee not, Thou wounded Son of God,
Till I with Thee the path of suffering trod;
Till in the valley, through the gloom of night,
I walked with Thee, and turned to Thee for light.
I did not know the mystery of love,
The love that doth the fruitless branch remove;
The love that spares not e’en the fruitful tree,
But prunes, that it may yet more fruitful be.
I did not know the meaning of the Cross:
I counted it but bitterness and loss:
‘Till in Thy gracious discipline of pain
I found the loss I dreaded purest gain.
And shall I cry, e’en on the darkest day,
“Lord of all mercy, take my cross away”?
Nay, in the Cross I saw Thine open face,
And found therein the fulness of Thy grace.
–George Wallace Briggs
When I was in my early 20’s, around 1980, this poem appeared in the church bulletin of my home parish one Sunday morning. I saved it, and eventually, after I started a prayer notebook, I included the poem so I could meditate on it whenever I wanted. It had the power to draw me into a reality deeper than where my daily drift usually took me. I appreciated the poem because the speaker at first openly confesses ignorance of Jesus, whom so many people seem to know; and then he expresses how his knowledge of the Son of God comes through suffering.
Then last week, when preparing a sermon for a celebration of Holy Cross Day on Sunday, September 14, I turned to Wikipedia for an article about the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, and finder of the True Cross on which Jesus was crucified (Helena). But what intrigued me most was not what Helena did about the cross. It was what she did with the earth on which the cross stood, and the precious blood that was spilled on that ground.
Tradition says that the site of the Vatican Gardens was spread with earth brought from Golgotha by Helena to symbolically unite the blood of Christ with that shed by thousands of early Christians, who died in the persecutions of Nero.
Empress Helena and George Wallace Briggs both felt a connection between the suffering of Christians of their time and the agony of Christ on the cross. Both testify that our suffering is not in vain. Jesus is still present whenever and wherever anyone suffers for his sake. When Helena brought earth from Golgotha to mix with earth where the Roman martyrs had died, she was performing an act of prophetic significance. The blood of Christ belongs to all who suffer in his name, and theirs belongs to him. How fitting that the mother of the first Christian Emperor would bring the fertile soil of Golgotha to mingle with the soil of the Roman martyrs. What a powerful way of proclaiming the unity of Christ with those who live and die in his name! How many lost souls have come to life because they have believed that the blood of the divine Savior is for them?
We fret about the silence of the West over the persecution of Christians in the world today, or, what is worse, we go on with our busy lives and ignore the rest of the world. Let us remember that these martyrs belong to Christ. We, too, belong to Christ. Their blood, and ours, belongs to Christ. When it is spilled, his blood is spilled. Their deaths, unjust and intolerable as they are, will be swallowed up in his life.
Let us unite in protest against ISIS and other groups who are killing Christians and people of other religious faiths. Let us support our leaders in their actions to stop persecution and cruelty and to bring justice and mercy to the world. Let us find ways to spread the gospel of love to the corners of the world so that new generations do not grow up to kill and destroy those whom they are taught are not worthy of life. And let us keep faith and hope in the one who gave his blood for us, and for all, that our lives may be joined with his forever.
Joseph N. Davis+
The Collared English Major 