“He came on His own, and His own received Him not.  As a symbol of the world’s contradiction of His life-giving message, they gave Him a Cross, in which one bar is at contradiction with another.  The Horizontal bar symbolizing death for all, for all death is flat and prostrate, the vertical bar symbolizing life, for all life is upright and erect.  By a Divine act, He made the sign of contradiction the sign of Redemption, and converted the Cross into the Crucifix.  The Cross is the problem of pain and death, but the Crucifix is its solution, for once the God-man ennobled it by His Presence He reveals that pain is the condition of pleasure, death the prelude to life and that unless we take up our cross and follow Him we cannot be His disciple.”     Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Stations of the Cross)