The Cross at the Threshold of the Year
The cross has become something more than a historical memory; it does convey, almost as by a mathematical diagram, the truth about the real point at issue; the idea of a conflict stretching outwards into eternity. It is true, and even tautological, to say that the cross is the crux of the whole matter.
In other words the cross, in fact as well as figure, does really stand for the idea of breaking out of the circle that is everything and nothing. It does escape from the circular argument by which everything begins and ends in the mind.
-G.K. Chesterton: “The Everlasting Man”
Today we turned back our liturgical books to the beginning of the sanctoral cycle, for each year the feast of St Andrew the Apostle is the sanctoral New Year.
When we turned back the pages on the 29th of November for First Vespers of the Feast, we were greeted by the sign of the cross.
Salve, crux pretiósa, súscipe discípulum ejus, qui pepéndit in te magíster meus Christus.
Hail, thou precious cross, receive the disciple of Him Who hung on thee, my Master, Christ.
In our post at the threshold of the Marian New Year, we noted that the year is full of new beginnings.
Most Catholics know that the primary Liturgical New Year in the Latin rites is the First Sunday of Advent.
It may come as a surprise to many Catholics to know that in the Usus Antiquior there is also a sanctoral New Year. In fact, it was probably the seasonal New Year of Advent that gave rise to the sanctoral New Year that occurs on the Feast of St Andrew: they are always in close proximity (this year the feast falls the day before the First Sunday of Advent).
Yet a more perfect feast could not have been chosen. Each year it is as if we enter the New Year with a gigantic sign of the cross.
For monks there is a special significance to this first text of the sanctoral New Year. Each of us stood before God and cried out: Suscipe me, Domine! Receive me, O Lord! Now we sing almost the same thing to the Lord by repeating the words of St Andrew. It becomes for us a sort of renewal of our total offering to God. As it did Andrew, may the cross of Christ receive us.
