THE CROSS, THE LANGUAGE OF GOD’S LOVE.

September 14, 2020
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

READINGS: NM 21:4B-9; PS 78:1BC-2, 34-35, 36-37, 38; PHIL 2:6-11; JN 3:13-17.

An Igbo proverb says, “Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” Another Malagasy proverb adds, “Crosses are ladders that lead to heaven.”

There is no glory without suffering, no success without hardship, and no love without sacrifice. That which brings you tears when you do it procures you greater joy when you harvest. That is a basic truth of life.

We are celebrating today a feast that defeats all our human conceptions and appreciations. The Cross, the instrument of humiliation has turned into an instrument of glory. The celebration of the Exaltation of the Cross reveals to our humanity the wisdom of God who transforms our tears into joy and the revelation of his Kingdom. The Catechism of the Catholic Church can state in its article 550, “The coming of God's kingdom means the defeat of Satan’s: ‘If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.’ Jesus' exorcisms free some individuals from the domination of demons. They anticipate Jesus' great victory over ‘the ruler of this world’. The kingdom of God will be definitively established through Christ's cross: ‘God reigned from the wood.’”

Christ, for us his followers, is king. He reigns from the wood of his humiliation, from the Cross where he died. Through the mystery and the merits of his Cross, the Lord Jesus has defeated man’s greatest enemy, death and its prince. The Cross, from the day of the death of the Lord, has turned into the key that opens the gate of life, the gate of God’s glorious kingdom. In Jesus Christ, our sufferings have become a school of virtue and life.

Beyond the biblical and spiritual teaching, this feast has as well a very historical foundation. It takes us back in 355, as say the historians; Emperor Constantine inaugurated consecutively two Basilicas, one that he erected on the Golgotha where Jesus died on the Cross and the second on the place where it is said, Jesus was buried, the Holy Sepulcher. It is held that, on that day, the Emperor revealed to the people the remain of the wood that bored the Holy Body of the Lord, that is said, to have been found by St. Helen, the mother of the king. Another historical ground is that of the rescue of the Cross from the Sassanid Persians, in 614.

Nevertheless, most important for us, are not the pages of history, but the vocabulary and deep message of the Cross. That is what gives meaning to our today’s liturgical celebration. The Cross tells us everything about God’s love. Or to say it well, God, in the Cross says everything about himself.

St. John, in the Gospel, speaks of revelation. We are told that God will reveal his glory through the exaltation of His Son on the wood of the Cross. The Cross, therefore, gets its meaning of instrument of exaltation from here. The Lord says to Nicodemus, “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Through the Son of God hanging on the wood of his execution, new life is procured to mankind and the glory of God plainly manifested. The Cross of Jesus speaks therefore the greatest language of God’s love and stimulates the fervent response of man to that love. Thus, eternal life is made possible when a man answers to the love of God with faith. He who sets his firm belief in God’s love and obey Him has life. He who refuses to believe, and therefore disobeys, condemns himself to death.

In the first reading, we have the case of disobedience and grumbling against God that has plunged the Children of Israel into death. The episode of the poisonous snakes sent by God to punish his rebellious people and his compassion after the mediation of Moses and the instruction to erect a bronze serpent shows how God’s love operates with sinners.

In all these, we learn that faith is what leads our life. Even though we sin out of disobedience, if we raise our eyes to the crucified and plead to him, through the merits of his death, he restores us to life. The Cross, like the Bronze Serpent, becomes the remedy, the antidote to the poison of sin.

St. Paul, in the second reading, sees the Cross of Jesus Christ, as the expression of God’s humility and humiliation. And because Jesus humbled himself and died on the Cross, he was consequently exalted in the highest glory of his Father.

The feast of today teaches us not only about how suffering can turn into glory but also and mostly, how God’s love is manifested to us through his death. In response to these messages, faith becomes what disposes us to rejoice and love back God. For, only he who sets his firm trust in the Lord will be exalted. Our today’s sacrifices, our selves-denials, and sufferings, if accepted with faith, can become instruments of glorification. While if we face trials and crosses without faith, we fall into despair and desperation.