Throughout history the most wonderful events have been only the symbols and foreshadowings of this cross. Consider them, if you are anxious to learn. Did not God decree that Noah should escape from drowning in the flood with his sons and their wives and every kind of animal in a tiny wooden boat?
And what of Moses’ staff? Was it not a symbol of the cross? Now it changed water into blood; now it devoured the false snakes of the magicians; now by the power of its touch it divided the sea; now it made the waves of the sea flow back together, drowning the enemy and saving God’s true children.
Aaron’s rod was another symbol of the cross. On a single day it blossomed and showed him to be the true priest.
Abraham too foreshadowed it, when he bound his son Isaac and placed him on a pile of wood. By the cross death was killed and Adam restored to life. In the cross every apostle has gloried; by it every martyr has been crowned and every saint made holy. We have put on the cross of Christ, and laid aside the old. Through the cross we have joined Christ’s flock, and are granted a place in the sheepfold of heaven.
St. Theodore the Studite
Locus Communis 