As we enter the third millennium, the "issue" of God has become more problematic than ever before. The transformation and evolution of religious experience cannot help but raise questions in our Western society, which has been shaped by a Judeo-Christian culture that is nearly four thousand years old. The waning of traditional religions, the rejection of dogma, the emergence of new forms of religious practice, the internalization and personalizing of faith and belief, scientific discoveries that continually defy the concept of the divine creation of man and the universe - all these factors make us question the figure of God and its place in our society. The figure of God as we know it did not just materialize out of nowhere, as is often presumed. The God of the Jews, revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai in the mid-thirteenth century B.C., was the result of a long process of maturation in human history. What is the religious impulse if not a perpetual questioning about the meaning of life, life after death, and of the ties that unite humanity? As early as 100,000 B.C., long before the word of God was revealed to Moses, we find hints of a spiritual life connected to the "sense of the hereafter" that would take shape several millennia later in the polytheistic religions and cults of the Near East. It was from that extraordinarily fertile context for religious development that monotheism was born. For the believer, the One God of monotheism is seen as the creator of all things, the absolute good and the source of salvation. This faith is based on a divine commitment that ends the individual’s error and questioning regarding the meaning of life. For their part, men and women must unceasingly honour their commitment and attachment to God through faith, which is at the source and the centre of all religious life. Faith is a deep personal conviction that is expressed through the ritualized gestures and ceremonies of the three great monotheistic religions. The descent from the cross Interior of the right-hand panel of the triptych of the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption Church in La Tour-du-Pin (Isère) Painting on wood, attributed to Georges Pencz 1541-1542 Classified as a historical treasure From the 5th century on, the cross tended to become the official symbol of Christianity and the Church. Over the centuries, the cross assumed many forms and a rich iconography. The attribute of Christ, whom Christianity identifies as the son of God, the cross became both a religious symbol and an ecclesiastical emblem.

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