The Rooster Crows for Christ

I heard a different story. The Roman guards at the Tomb were stewing a tough old bird. One of them said that he'd heard that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. The other one laughed and said, "He'll rise when this rooster crows!" Just then, the cock leaped from the pot and crowed, saying "The Son of the Virgin is safe!"

From Crisis

By Mary Cuff, PhD

Revisiting the forgotton symbols of Christian culture help us to deepen our understanding of scripture and our faith.

The rooster is, for many of us, a goofy figure: the strutting male of a bird species not known for its brains or courage. And for Christians, the rooster bears the dubious distinction of being the other half of the unfortunate duo involved in denying Christ three times the night of His betrayal. 

And yet, it seems like chickens were very much on Jesus’ mind in the lead-up to His passion. The only two clear references to chickens in the Bible are recalled during Holy Week. As Christ approaches Jerusalem to begin His passion, He proclaims: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37). And then, just as Jerusalem is poised yet again to kill God’s Anointed One, the rooster comes to announce Peter’s denial, just as Christ had warned; and the apostles scatter like so many chicks.

So, it might surprise you to know that the rooster was such a beloved symbol of Christ Himself—trumpeting His victory over the darkness—that medieval churches put weather vanes in the shape of roosters up where a modern parish might install a cross.

The oldest surviving weather vane in the shape of a rooster dates to 820, complete with a Latin inscription crediting the local bishop with ordering its positioning upon the abbey steeple. And we know that Pope Leo IV ordered a rooster placed on top of the old St. Peter’s Basilica just twenty years later. Supposedly—according to 19th-century British antiquarian S. Coode Hore—a papal decree of the ninth century mandated the weathercock on churches, inspired by Pope Gregory the Great, who reflected in the sixth century that a rooster was the perfect symbol of Christianity.

Whether they were actually mandated or not, weathercocks sprang up on churches all across Europe: Notre Dame’s weathercock miraculously survived the fire that destroyed the roof in 2019, and the Bayeux Tapestry includes a fellow perched precariously upon a ladder installing a rooster on top of a church. Another 19th-century antiquarian, A. Welby Pugin, noted that on many churches, ornamental roosters perched on top of the cross itself.

My own rooster, a plucky little black and gold fellow named Chanticleer, has made me appreciate just how apt a symbol of Christianity the rooster can be. Everyone knows that the rooster’s crow comes with the dawn. But it is not the light of the sun that gives the rooster his cue; he is not responding to the light but heralding it. As I lie in bed listening to his triumphant crow in the dark, I wonder how he knows that dawn is at hand. Similarly, when we sing the alleluia in the dark hours of Easter morning, we give voice to the Light which has overcome the darkness, even if, to the world, all still seems dark. 

As a symbol of Christ Himself, the rooster has much to offer. In the song “When the Man Comes Around,” Johnny Cash calls Christ “the father hen” who “calls his chickens home.” This is very much what a rooster is like: my rooster, Chanticleer, always knows where his hens are, ever vigilant for dangers. I once watched a hawk land on a post near a group of clueless hens, and instantly the little rooster rounded up his flock just like a shepherd and ushered them (with himself in the rear) to the safety of the coop. When darkness begins to fall, the free ranging hens are gathered together by his insistent clucking, ready to return to the safety of the coop. 

And unlike the more majestic lion, the rooster does not privilege himself over his flock when it comes time to eat. I like to toss treats to the chickens just to hear the friendly little warble as Chanticleer invites his hens to enjoy it first while he stands over them to watch for danger. By design, he models the sacrificial nature of the Good Shepherd.

The Middle Ages, more at home with roosters than most modern people, never thought of a rooster as a coward. There is a reason cock fights were once so popular. There is something rather magnificent in watching a rooster attack an aggressor—he almost transforms for one brief moment into an eagle as he leaps, talons out, toward his foe. There is a masculine power and majesty to the king of the barnyard. Thus, when medieval popes and prelates placed the burnished bronze weathercock on their steeples, they could have been thinking of the grandeur of Christ the victor. That roosters were ubiquitous around towns and villages made them a more immediate reminder of Christ than the far-away lion.

The rooster proclaims another reality of Christ: this one tied to the rooster’s role in Peter’s denial. In the Exultet, the deacon proclaims the line, “O Happy Fault, that merited such and so great a redeemer!” The fault here is Adam’s, not Peter’s, but it attests to the reality that Christ transforms our fallenness. Perched faithfully upon the spire-cross of a church, the weathercock would announce to the parish that the deep shame of Peter’s failure is overcome by the deeper mercy of Christ.

Oddly, just as the only two concrete biblical references to hens and roosters are in the Passion Gospels, their egg has featured prominently in Easter since the earliest days of the Church. According to legend, Mary Magdalene used a chicken egg to illustrate Christ’s Resurrection: Christ emerged from the tomb just as a little cockerel came forth from an egg. When Tiberius Caesar heard her, he laughed and said that a man rising from the dead was as likely as the egg turning red. Instantly, the egg transformed color in her hands.

You might not have chickens running around reminding you of the Passion, death, and Resurrection of our Savior, or a weathercock to contemplate. But hopefully Pope Gregory’s comment that the rooster is the perfect symbol of Christianity will give you food for thought as you enjoy your Easter eggs this year. Christ is risen!