FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS (2025)
Readings:
Numbers 21:4b-9
Psalms 78:1bc-2, 34-38
Philippians 2:6-11
John 3:13-17
The most endearing and likable portraits of Jesus, I feel most would agree, are those we see at Christmas – an innocent child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. It is peaceful and serene, with no real signs of the hardships that are meant to come some thirty-three years hence. Yet our visuals of the glorious stable are largely limited to the Christmas season. More pervasive in its presence is the unsettling vision of the cross, which hangs around our necks and decorates the walls of most Christian homes. The cross really has no particular season, in spite of its prominence during Lent and Easter, for this instrument of torture has been transformed by a loving God’s embrace. In spite of how refined and gilded our crosses have become, the cross we celebrate today is rough-hewn and stained with blood, and chosen from a stack of similar crosses, all of which are forgotten and never venerated. The cross chosen by the Father for His Son, becomes the gate of heaven, for it is through the cross of Jesus that we have been redeemed.
When we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, we also celebrate the incarnation, for, as Paul’s letter to the Philippians rightly points out: “Christ Jesus, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped at. Rather, [Jesus] emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance (as a baby in a manger), [Jesus] humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” Jesus’ self-emptying displays a God whose humility (which we spoke of last weekend) is without limit. It is that humility which allowed Him to accept the will of the Father for Him, no matter how repugnant on the human level that choice might be. As our gospel from John states, recalling our first reading from the Book of Numbers, “and just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man (Jesus) be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”
The gospel from John for today’s feast contains one of the most favorite passages in all of Scripture, John 3:16. It is seen on the fifty yard line in football, off court at basketball games, and at tennis matches all over the world, and the numbers 3:16 connote everything we need to know about our faith: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might nor perish but might have eternal life.” It is sometimes hard to believe, deeply believe, that this is true. We live in a world where believing that God could love us that much is difficult. Indeed, some fire and brimstone evangelicals, as well as some traditional Catholics, think that God continues to insert Himself into our world to judge or condemn the world. But the gospel of John speaks the ultimate truth when he states that “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” Even with the assurance of John’s gospel, some are satisfied with a God who is intent on judging us, intent on catching us at our worst moments, and condemning us to eternal punishment.
The Exaltation of the Holy cross that we celebrate today proclaims our redemption, and with that redemption, God’s forgiveness goes hand in hand. There cannot be one without the other. There should be no discussion of our worthiness or lack of worthiness, for WE ARE NOT WORTHY of God’s redemption. It is pure gift, born of the forgiveness that is part of the very nature of God, it is born of the generosity which characterizes who God is. The goodness of God means that God wishes to share His eternal life with us, but God’s wishes don’t happen automatically. Our hopes for eternal life with a loving God can only happen if we truly believe in Jesus and embrace the message that He shared with us. Believing in Jesus does not merely mean assenting to His historical existence, or believing in all of the events described in the gospels. One can accept the truth of all of that without ever really changing one’s life, and wasn’t that the point of Jesus humbling Himself in taking on human flesh? Believing in Jesus should help us to understand that we need to be committed to the same unselfish love that we see in Jesus and that found its most perfect expression in His dying for us on the cross. We have great difficulty in believing what John has to say in 3:16, but it is true: “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Armed with John 3:16, and truly believing what John says there, we are equipped with what we need to change the world for the better.
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