NeuroDivine

A new episode of NeuroDivine Audio for Holy Cross Day

A reflection for Holy Cross Day | 15 minutes 46 seconds

Recorded outdoors in County Laois, with the natural sounds of the surrounding landscape.

In this episode, Michael McFarland Campbell reflects upon Holy Cross Day through a visit to Moone High Cross in County Kildare, made on the anniversary of his baptism.

The ancient cross gathers biblical stories of danger, deliverance, exile, nourishment, Crucifixion and apostolic calling into one great proclamation carved in stone. Placed alongside the waters of baptism and the living landscape of Kildare, those stories speak again of the God who enters human suffering, remains present within it and opens a way beyond it.

The reflection concludes with two original hymns inspired by the Cross, Scripture and the landscapes of Ireland.

Prayer. Poetry. Reflection.

Read the original reflections

This audio episode brings together and adapts two pieces previously published on NeuroDivine:

• Written in Stone, Remembered in Water: Moone High Cross and the God Who Delivers
• The Cross Still Marks This Pilgrim Land: A Hymn for Holy Cross Day

Transcript

Written in Stone, Remembered in Water

The Cross Still Marks This Pilgrim Land

Hello, and welcome to NeuroDivine Audio: prayer, poetry and reflection.

I’m Michael McFarland Campbell.

Today I am recording outdoors, surrounded by trees, birdsong and the ordinary sounds of life continuing around me.

It seems an appropriate place to reflect upon the Cross—not as an object removed from the world, but as a sign planted within its living landscape.

Today is Holy Cross Day: a day on which Christians contemplate the instrument of Christ’s death as the sign of God’s victory, mercy and life.

The day invites us to contemplate the Cross not merely as an instrument of suffering, but as the place where the self-giving love of God is revealed.

The appointed scriptures draw together the serpent lifted by Moses in the wilderness; the desolation of Psalm 22; Christ’s humility and exaltation in the Letter to the Philippians; and the promise in John’s Gospel that the Son of Man must be lifted up.

But this year, my thoughts turn particularly towards an ancient cross standing here in County Kildare.

[Pause]

In late August, I visited Moone High Cross on the anniversary of my baptism.

That coincidence gave the visit a particular resonance.

Baptism draws us into the death and Resurrection of Christ. The high cross gives that same mystery monumental form.

Water and stone.

Baptism and Cross.

Personal memory and the long life of the Church, meeting within one Kildare landscape.

Moone High Cross is believed to date from the eighth century. It is one of Ireland’s tallest and best-preserved high crosses. Its granite surfaces carry biblical scenes from both the Old and New Testaments.

Daniel among the lions.

Abraham and Isaac.

Adam and Eve.

The loaves and fishes.

The Flight into Egypt.

The three children in the fiery furnace.

The Crucifixion.

And the Twelve Apostles.

These are not simply decorations surrounding the Cross. Together, they proclaim something about the God revealed through it.

[Pause]

The figures carved at Moone are direct and stylised. Bodies become strong geometric forms. Lions, birds and other creatures inhabit the stone beside apostles, saints and biblical characters.

The stories are reduced to their essential gestures so that they can be recognised and remembered.

Daniel is held through the night.

Isaac is spared.

The children stand within the fire.

The hungry are fed.

The Holy Family is carried through danger.

Christ is crucified.

The Apostles are sent.

The Cross gathers all these stories into itself. It becomes more than the setting for one terrible moment on Calvary. It stands within the long biblical testimony of a God who enters danger, suffering, exile, hunger and death—and does not abandon those who are found there.

That movement became the foundation of a hymn I wrote after visiting Moone:

[Pause]

O God, whose peace in shadowed dens

Held Daniel through the night,

Keep us within Kildare’s soft fields

Where lions fear Your light;

Where ancient stones in silence stand

And winds through hawthorn weave,

Your guarding presence fills the land—

We trust, and do not grieve.

[Pause]

The prayer is not that there will be no shadowed dens.

Daniel’s story offers no such easy promise.

Its hope is that God remains present within the darkness.

Perhaps that distinction matters especially when we speak about the Cross. Christianity does not promise a life untouched by suffering. Nor should the Cross ever be used to make suffering seem desirable, virtuous or unimportant.

The Cross tells us that God has entered suffering.

God has known betrayal, pain, humiliation and abandonment from within.

The cry of Christ—“Forsaken”—means that no depth of human anguish lies beyond his presence.

[Pause]

While my hymn follows the biblical scenes carved at Moone, it also places them within the landscape surrounding the Cross.

The River Liffey bends through the story of Eden.

A salmon leaps beside the loaves and fishes.

Hawthorn, ash and rowan grow around ancient stones.

Curlews cry above the reeds, while larks rise over fields receiving the light of Resurrection.

This is not an attempt to relocate the events of Scripture literally to County Kildare. It is an acknowledgement that Scripture is always encountered somewhere.

We do not read the Bible from nowhere.

We hear it beside particular rivers and beneath particular skies. Its words meet the landscapes we know, the journeys we make and the fears we carry.

The Flight into Egypt therefore passes through a Kildare dusk:

[Pause]

Through Kildare’s dusk the Holy ones

Once fled from sword and fear;

Now Brigid’s flame along the road

Proclaims Your shelter near.

[Pause]

Placing the Holy Family among pilgrim lanes and flowering hawthorn does not make their flight picturesque.

They remain a family escaping violence, depending upon the possibility of sanctuary.

But bringing their story into a familiar landscape asks a necessary question:

If they travelled along our roads, would they find shelter here?

The Cross cannot remain an ancient symbol, safely removed from the demands of the present.

It calls us to recognise Christ in those who are endangered, displaced or afraid. It asks whether the communities formed beneath its sign are prepared to become places of refuge.

[Pause]

Holy Cross Day can sometimes be treated as though it were the celebration of an object.

Yet Christians do not worship wood or stone. Nor do we glorify suffering for its own sake.

We honour the Cross because of the One who was crucified upon it—and because human violence did not have the final word.

At Moone, the Crucifixion is surrounded by stories of deliverance.

That does not make the Cross less terrible.

It reveals what God does within terror: remaining present, bearing suffering and opening a way beyond it.

In the hymn, darkness falls across the Kildare hills, but dawn is already approaching:

[Pause]

On Kildare’s hills the shadows fall

Where Christ bore grief and pain;

Yet ogham-etched in furrowed earth

His rising breaks the chain.

[Pause]

The movement from shadow into light is not a denial of grief.

Resurrection does not pretend that Crucifixion never happened.

The wounds belong to the story, but they no longer determine its ending.

Around the Cross, life begins again.

Flowers grow among the stones.

Larks rise from the fields.

Light reaches the old cloister walls.

[Pause]

To visit Moone High Cross on the anniversary of my baptism was also to remember that baptism is not confined to the day on which it happened.

The water dries.

The congregation goes home.

Dates pass into memory.

Yet the life begun in baptism continues: a repeated turning towards Christ; a repeated passage through death into life; a repeated discovery that we are held by a grace older and stronger than ourselves.

The great cross at Moone has endured in granite.

Baptism leaves no comparable mark upon the body, yet it makes an equally profound claim upon a life.

I am Christ’s.

I have been drawn into his death and Resurrection.

I belong within this story of deliverance.

Standing before scenes of danger, mercy, exile, nourishment, fire, death and apostolic calling, I found the meaning of baptism told again in stone.

[Pause]

The final panel represented in the hymn is that of the Twelve Apostles. They remind us that the Gospel carved upon the Cross cannot remain confined to stone.

As Twelve once walked the Galilee,

We tread Kildare’s own ground;

In lark-song, bog-light, pilgrim stone

Your living Word is found.

The Apostles move outwards, and we are invited to walk after them.

The living Word is found not only in distant holy places, but in the ground beneath our feet: beside wells and oaks, along ordinary lanes, in communities offering shelter, and wherever bread is blessed and shared.

Moone High Cross has stood through centuries of prayer, upheaval, neglect, discovery and restoration.

Its carved figures continue to tell their stories because each generation must learn again what it means to trust, to offer sanctuary, to share what we possess and to recognise God’s presence within the fire.

The ancient stone directs our attention beyond itself.

It points towards Christ: crucified, risen and present still.

And it calls those who have passed through the waters of baptism to carry that story into the landscape through which we walk.

[Longer pause]

I want to end with another hymn written for Holy Cross Day.

It draws upon the appointed scriptures for the feast and places the Cross within the wider Irish landscape: amid bog and hillside, beside rivers and beneath ancient trees.

The Cross meets us in valley mist, peat-smoke and Atlantic wind.

These are not decorations placed around the story of salvation. They remind us that the Cross is planted within the real landscapes of human life—within beauty and pain, abandonment and healing, death and hope.

The Crucified One is also risen and exalted, and the healing begun upon the tree continues wherever lives and landscapes are opened to his transforming love.

[Pause]

O Christ, uplifted on the tree,

Whose mercy breaks the serpent’s claim,

In wilderness and bog and brí,

Your healing fire burns through our shame.

From Slemish slopes to Shannon’s tide,

Your Cross stands tall in wind and rain;

The cry “Forsaken” once You cried

Now sanctifies our deepest pain.

The oak and ash in stillness stand,

As ancient prayers around us rise;

Your Cross, the doorway to that land

Where heaven breathes through earthly skies.

Though You were God in form and right,

You bent to earth in humble grace;

The hazel glen and peat-smoke night

Are brightened by Your lifted face.

As Moses raised the sign to save,

So You draw all by love’s pure flame;

The hawthorn bows, the oceans wave,

And all creation knows Your Name.

O Christ, whose Cross the world renews,

Whose rising breaks the grip of death,

In Celtic quiet Your Spirit brews

New life in every pilgrim breath.

Exalted now at God’s right hand,

Your Name above all names proclaimed;

The Cross still marks this pilgrim land

With hope that never can be tamed.

So lead us, Bright and Burning One,

Through valley mist and mountain air;

Until the healing work begun

Is crowned in glory everywhere.

[Pause]

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus Christ,

crucified and risen,

meet us within the landscapes of our lives.

Remain with us in every shadowed place.

Shelter those who flee from violence.

Feed those who hunger.

Stand beside all who suffer.

And kindle within your baptised people

the courage to carry your mercy

into the world.

May your Cross mark our lives

not with fear,

but with self-giving love;

not with despair,

but with hope that cannot be tamed.

And may the healing work begun upon the tree

be crowned in glory everywhere.

Amen.

You have been listening to NeuroDivine Audio.

I’m Michael McFarland Campbell.

You can find more reflections, hymns and prayers at NeuroDivine.ie.

Prayer. Poetry. Reflection