Dry Cross
In every cell of a Carmelite monastery hangs what Saint John of the Cross called a “dry cross” one that is barren and without the corpus of the crucified Christ. This cross, also present in the refectory, aids the general austerity of the architecture perfectly and communicates, wordlessly, a number of ideas. Sometimes, three nails will still be in place, each representing the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, vows made eventually by every monastic member of the Order and which can be applied in varying ways, according to one’s state, to every Catholic. It is these things which fix us to the cross we all must bear - that barren cross that hangs in our cells is our cross, one that we must carry, lean on, and embrace with the help and inspiration of Christ who said “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, once also called Roodmas, on September 14th marks the beginning of what was once a much more universal monastic practice of fasting from the feast of the Holy Cross until Easter of the next year. The Carmelites still hold to this fast as it is written in the Rule of Saint Albert.
Every day, the cross serves as a reminder both of that generous gift of salvation won by the blood of Christ on the cross, but also our own cross, our own individual responsibility, something not unique to the Carmelites, but characteristic of the spirituality of the order as our eremitical character finds us alone with and before the living God. Father Anastasius of the Holy Rosary, O.C.D. meditates on the physical center of the Carmelite Rule: “Each one shall remain in his cell or near it, meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord, and watching in prayer,”
In the first place, it deals with a personal obligation of the religious; his vocation is such that it does not admit substitutes of any kind; and the common life itself does not lessen the responsibility of the individual who, because he is a person, can be elevated to God only by meditation and prayer.
We are called as Carmelites and as Catholics to bear patiently the burdens of others, but our responsibility is ours - we cannot trade our cross, neither can or should we seek to diminish it, but to embrace it, cooperate with it, for it is the instrument of our salvation, and because of this, we can say confidently, with so many of the saints, whose spirits, in the midst of their earthly sufferings once cried out: Ave crux, spes unica.
