At Msida, in the same open area in front of the church where a few weeks ago the Muslims used to gather and pray on a Friday, the parish has erected a huge cross which is well lit at night.

The Cross, it would seem, has triumphed over an area earlier taken over by Muslims.

This year, it would seem, the number of crosses hanging from balconies seems to have multiplied. Whether this happened just because the fad has taken on and crosses have become what Christmas Trees are at Christmas or because somehow the cross signifies a Catholic Malta resisting multiculturalism and the inroads of Islam across the sea, is difficult to tell.

Anyway, it does seem the Cross has triumphed this year.

Of course, the above is extremely superficial – things are not decided by the amount or less of crosses hanging from balconies. Nor, for that matter, the clash of civilisations can be decided by these means.

Religion cannot be decided by the amount of popular support it generates, as a football match is decided by the number of goals scored. On the contrary, religion is a deeply personal commitment, regardless of the number of adherents.

But there is another way for Christians, on a day like yesterday, to understand the meaning of the phrase ‘The victory of the Cross’’ and this goes far beyond the number of adherents.

Maybe Christians as a whole have forgotten the real meaning of the phrase. By honouring the Cross, as Christians do every day, and especially in Passiontide, by queueing up to kiss the Cross, as Catholics do in the central part of the Good Friday ritual, they are honouring, adoring, embracing, kissing a tool of torture, a tool used for an execution. The Man on the Cross is a condemned man, a man who was found guilty by both the political and the religious leaders of his time.

The Saviour is a man who became an abomination, a criminal, an outlaw.

It is through his death on the Cross that He has saved us. This is the real, fundamental, victory of the Cross.

The Cross means that the Saviour of the world is here and now sharing the crosses each one of us has to carry. Our crosses become his Cross and vice-versa.  By sharing with Him, our crosses become lighter. The Cross unites all human beings living under its shadow.

At the same time, the Cross is not just sharing in the universality of pain and burden-sharing, but more a sharing in Christ’s  and eventually our victory.

It is not just the victory that triumphs over pain and death but also the victory in which love triumphs over hatred. When Pope Francis on Thursday travelled to an Immigrant Centre outside Rome and there celebrated with migrants from all over the world the triumph of love over hatred, of hope over despair, regardless of their gender, colour, race and religion, he was contributing in pulling down the walls that so many times separate people from one another.

Now that is the real victory of the Cross.