Axis Mundi.

In honor of the discovery of the 3rd-Century Church found at Megiddo, from Richard John Neuhaus' Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross:

In the cross we see that of which humanity is capable: self-transcendence in surrender to the Other. All the evidence to the contrary, we are capable of love. The sign of shame and death becomes the sign of cosmic possibility. Here is the axis mundi, the moment upon which all reality turns. A third-century paschal homily captures the full reach of the truth:

This tree of heavenly dimensions rose up from earth to heaven, the foundation of all things, support of the universe, holder of the whole world, cosmic bond keeping unstable human nature united and securing it with the invisible nails of the Spirit so that, firmly gripped to the divinity, it can no loner break away. With its top branches touching the sky and its roots firmly set in the earth, it holds in its infinite embrace the many and intermediate spirits of the air.

Is it coincidence that the Church was found at Megiddo, or that it lies beneath a prison - like the cross itself a "sign of death and shame", or that I came upon a third century homily the same time I read of the Church's discovery? A prison on top of a church - "top branches touching the sky and its roots firmly set in the earth".