I really don’t want to start a fight; I say this merely as a personal view: I’ve never quite “got” Holy Cross day. I acknowledge the NT speaks of the power of the cross but it never speaks as the cross as holy or glorious. The power is the message of what is effected at the cross

I suppose my mind keeps going back to the Black and Liberation theology I’ve been reading e.g. James Cone’s phrase “The Cross and the lynching tree”. The cross as instrument of torture and tyranny can never and never was redeemed. It’s purpose was subverted and undermined.

It wasn’t thereby “redeemed”. Maybe that’s why the Church didn’t really use the cross as a prominent symbol for many decades if not centuries. Also worth noting that there are virtually no explicit references to the cross itself in the general epistles.

Maybe it’s my non-conformist upbringing that means I’ve never really “got” the idea of veneration of the cross. Maybe just a personal thing. Maybe one day I’ll see it all differently.

Phrases like “scorning its shame” are signifiant for me: it recognises that the cross is associated deeply with shame because it is an instrument which utterly dehumanises. Jesus scorned this association ie counted it as ultimately impotent thus robbing it of its power.

He didn’t make the Cross glorious or holy: in treating it/regarding it as he did, by God robbing it of its claim to finality, ultimate power with the resurrection, God renders it ridiculous not glorious. An instrument of torture can’t be redeemed; it can only be rendered obsolete