Its hard to believe today that it took 400 years before Christians starting to use the cross in art. The earliest surviving image we have is a wood carving on the main doors of the church of Santa Sabina on the famous Aventine Hill in Rome. It's over 1500 years old. For the earliest Christians, the cross invoked fear and unimaginable suffering. It was Imperial Rome's way of keeping you alive as long as possible, while at the same time, causing as much pain as possible. No wonder it took us centuries to get over the trauma. Two millennia later, we now kiss that same cross. It's a sign of our redemption.