An Apologetical Explanation of the

Veneration of the Crucifix

Since Christ is risen, why do we venerate his crucified image?

“I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of my compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him.”  (Zec 12:10)

Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  (1 Cor 1:22-24)

Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?  (Gal 3:1)

A crucifix is a depiction of Christ on the Cross.  We venerate the crucifix as a reminder of Christ’s Passion and Death, by which we have been redeemed by God.

Christ suffered and died on the Cross for our salvation; he also told us to take up our crosses daily and follow him.  His crucified image serves as a power reminder of what he endured out of his divine love for our sake and of the true cost of our own discipleship: the willingness to endure every pain, hardship, and humiliation for the sake of attaining eternal life and being with him forever.  The crucified Christ reveals to us the power of redemptive suffering.  (Cf. CCC 618, 2132)

St. Paul called the crucified Christ “the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor 1:24-25).  He told the Corinthians that we “preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23).  It is through his taking on human flesh and his voluntarily experiencing the suffering and humiliation of his Passion and Death that the glory and power of God is ultimately revealed in his Resurrection.  (Cf. CCC 272)

As a prayer in the Byzantine liturgy for the Feast of the Transfiguration says:

On the mount you were transfigured, and your disciples, as much as they could bear, beheld your glory, O Christ God; so that when they should see you crucified, they would know your Passion to be willing, and would preach to the world that you, in truth, are the Effulgence of the Father.  (Cf. CCC 555)

The Catechism addresses this question in paragraph 1192.

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