Symbolism of the Cross
Week 27 of 52 Churches in 52 Weeks:
The Journey to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC
I was never good at buying gifts for women.
During my second relationship with Ten, I got her things she couldn’t use. To channel her inner-Steven Tyler, I bought her Guitar Hero for my Wii (she didn’t have a Wii). Since she liked all things J.K. Rowling, I bought her a Harry Potter Blu-Ray collection for my Blu-Ray player (she didn’t have a Blu-Ray player). I also got her socks.
I wasn’t buying gifts for her, I was buying the gifts for Me. Me. Me. Except for the socks. Her feet would get abnormally cold in the winter…
To truly communicate my deepest feelings, I wanted to get her a romantic emblem to signify my love. Something rich, beautiful, and with thought. At first, I was going to purchase a cross necklace to keep Christ the center of our relationship. The problem was I was still hung up over Me and selfishly distanced myself from the cross idea. Instead, after a considerable amount of research, I found just the thing.
The journey necklace.
Forested with diamonds and paved in 14K white gold, the journey necklace symbolized how our connection was becoming intertwined with each other through the twists and turns of life.
She loved me and she loved the necklace. Not a day went by when she didn’t wear it. The more our relationship was nurtured by time, the more our souls began to swirl together to create magical memories. One summer day, she called me with so many tears streaming down her face, she could have melted the Wicked Witch of the West. She lost it at the beach while swimming with friends. When I drove out to meet-up, she was searching on hands and knees in the mud. When it got dark, the search was called off. Losing it was disastrous to her. I couldn’t stand to see her cry. I purchased a new one a week later.
To me, it wasn’t about the necklace. It was about the journey. Through the language of time, our connection was layered with love. Feeling. Passion. Hope. Joy. Ups. Downs. The future. The past. The good. The bad. The future and past bad gift-giving.
One day, she gathered up the courage to tell our journey had reached a dead end. She wanted to create her own path. I had to find my own.
When she came to say goodbye in person, I took a quick glance at her neck and noticed something different.
For the first time since I had given it to her…
She wasn’t wearing the necklace.
I never understood the vastness of the human soul until our relationship had diverged. I had accepted that it didn’t work, yet I knew we were important souls to each other and had helped each other, even if it was for a finite time. I wanted the best for her, even if that didn’t include me. To me, that was love and what we experienced was never a waste of time.
I started sending emails to God’s celestial inbox, praying that He was keeping her safe. Four months after the break-up, I received an email from her. “Hello” was all there was in the subject line. I think she was reaching out for comfort, get closure, seek validation to believe what we had together was mutual.
Wary that my interference would hinder her self-discovery, my emotions got the better of me and I messaged back. She wanted me to know of all the great things she was doing. She led a Relay For Life to fight cancer, she was succeeding in her lab science major, and her biggest achievement was about to come. She was going to Washington, DC for a symposium to enhance her leadership skills on Capitol Hill.
I was immensely proud of her. She was making her dreams come true. The greatness that I saw in her was blooming. She was making her mark so the world could be better.
My joy was short-lived though. Her successes proved she made the right decision to split. She was becoming more without me. I wrote back:
Re: Hello
(Ten), I need to let go for myself and for you to let go to be true to yourself and whatever it is you’re searching for. I hope that I could give you the closure that you needed, but I need to gracefully bow out of your life, possibly forever. I will never say anything ill of you, I am still rooting and praying for you, but… I need to disappear. Good luck with your new life and I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’m very proud of all the good things you do ☺
-Dave
I couldn’t be a part of her life when she was reaching her greatest heights.
April 13, 2015–12:10 pm Mass: Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC (Crypt Chapel)
Visit 27 was to the highest building in DC and the largest Catholic church in the United States, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
I never had any desire to visit DC. In the past, driving 45 minutes to the nearest Chili’s was a road trip. Yet, when my best friend Patrick moved there (DC, not Chili’s), it changed my tune to visit the nation’s capital.
After getting off the metro train, the Basilica’s 100-meter cross-ornamented tower shadowed over his rented house from just a mile away. I had to walk over and see the imagery for myself.
It certainly didn’t disappoint.
A nun had to pick-up my jaw from dragging on the ceramic tile. The sheer size of this basilica was astonishing, with a towering marble chancel combined with numerous statues, art, and mosaics featuring traditional Catholic depictions in every direction. There are 70 chapels that flank the sides of the upper church and downstairs crypt, most honoring the Virgin Mary with various international representations.
As a lifetime Protestant, my understanding of the Catholic tradition mirrors my noobness in gift-giving. At the Catholic masses I’ve attended, I’ve felt more out of place than Honey Boo Boo during Jeopardy! Kids Week. I miss cues when it’s time to cross the forehead and heart, I sit alone when members go up for the Eucharist, and fail to understand several doctrines as a result of papal supremacy.
Rather than focus on what I don’t understand, I focus on what I do… the symbolism I rejected years ago.
The cross.
The sermon this day was about the very first Christians who witnessed the dramatic double event that was the death and resurrection of Christ. As the priest said:
“Whenever we discover something new, we tend look at it by comparison to something old and familiar. We try to make connections with thoughts. And immediately, people began to look back and connect the new with what was immediately preceded.”
Stepping back, the priest mentioned that the very beginning of the Bible was foreshadowing the coming of Jesus. When Jesus arrived on the scene, He challenged Old Testament thinking about the law and order of The Creator, and instead talked of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one.
“In God, something is happening”.
Break-ups are a serious matter, a tremendous loss, a deep wound that takes time to heal. The human soul, eternal and vast, often cannot comprehend such a severe reaction when so much is invested in another.
The basilica’s sermon didn’t teach me this immediately, but it left me to start building sand castles in my head over what the symbolism of the cross means. After some thought, the cross symbolizes everything that Jesus was about. Everything we should be about. The entire Biblical narrative points us on a journey that leads us to the revelation of God’s love on the cross at that moment.
This is how we know what love is. Jesus died on the cross for us so we could live for each other. The cross defines the very nature of God. The depth and quality of a person’s love for one another is measured by the degree in which they’ll sacrifice. By innocently dying, Christ went to the furthest degree for the sake of us.
In pain, there is a breaking of our shells so our hearts stand to the sun. When our hearts are broken, they are broke open so that we may feel more love, more pain, more life. It creates a deepening of who we are. We have the ability to feel deeply, grieve to the core of our inner being, and know love in all its totality.
If you understand the cross, you can understand love.
