We venerate the cross because it is the Father’s pleasure

[Mary Naeem]

Pope Shenouda III


We venerate the cross because it is the Father’s pleasure
The Father received Christ on the Cross as a pleasing sin offering and also as a burnt offering. He was “a pleasing aroma to the Lord” (Lev.1: 9,13,17). Concerning this, the Prophet Isaiah said: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him” (Is.53: 10).
The Lord Jesus Christ satisfied the Father all His life on earth. But He entered into the fullness of this satisfaction on the Cross when He “became obedient to the Point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil.2: 8).
Every time we see the cross, we remember the perfect obedience and the perfect submission so that we may resemble Christ in His obedience: to the point of death.
The Cross which was the pleasing object of the Father, was also the pleasing object of the Crucified Son, about whom it is written: “... who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb.12: 2). Thus the full joy of Christ was in the Cross. May we be like Him.