The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today marks the Feast of the Holy Cross. I have heard two great homilies in the last two days. I will try to sum them up in a few words. In Sunday's Gospel we heard Jesus ask "Who do men say that I am?" Peter proclaimed the truth. But who do you and I say that He is? Is the Jesus we follow the one proclaimed by the Church and by the scriptures? Or is He merely one we have made in our own image, who asks very little of us? The real Jesus, the One that the Apostles proclaimed is demanding. He says to us “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

If we say we follow the real Jesus, have we taken up our cross for Him? The cross in Jesus' day was an object of deep shame. Only the lowest of the low were crucified. No citizen of Rome would ever suffer that death, only the most despised foreigners or slaves were crucified. Jesus took that emblem of shame in the world and by His obedience and love, turned it into a symbol of hope, glory and triumph. Jesus is telling us that if we are to follow him, we must identify with him, and take up our own cross and bear it before the world.

Reading II
Phil 2:6-11

Brothers and sisters:
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.


Gospel
Jn 3:13-17

Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And 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.”

For 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.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.