Just last Sunday in the Gospel reading from Mark (Mark 8:27-35), Jesus told his disciples and the crowds that if they wish to be his followers, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him; they must lose their life for his sake and the sake of the Gospel in order to save it. Today’s liturgical celebration has a similar theme: the exaltation of the Holy Cross, a liturgy that focuses our hearts and our minds on the cross of Christ.
This feast celebrates the recovery of the cross in the 4th century by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, and then the new recovery of this cross from the non-Christians who had seized it. The main focus of this feast is the meaning of the cross, the mystery that we attempt to understand in our faith.
In the book of Numbers, we hear how the people of Israel died and suffered in the desert after having been bitten by snakes, how God gave them the remedy of a bronze serpent mounted to a pole so that when they looked at it, they would be healed. The serpent that we are bitten by in our modern world is sin. Sin often leads us away from our journey of faith. In our need to be healed of our sinful state, we are invited to look not at a bronze serpent on a wooden pole, but to the cross of Christ. From that look, we can be healed just as the people of Israel were healed in the desert.
Looking at our modern secular culture through the lens of our faith, we see a culture often encourages sins of all types, as well as an indifference to the spiritual values of our faith. In our modern culture, many seem to think and act as if there is nothing we could do that could truly harm us spiritually.
Yet, the Gospel message today is that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but rather to be saved through him. This is the message of the cross. We don’t celebrate the cross because we want to suffer for the sake of suffering. We are to be saved through Christ and his death on the cross as his cross brings meaning to our sufferings. In addition, we are to unite the crosses we carry to Christ’s own cross and Christ’s own sufferings.
The feast we celebrate today invites us to reflect upon how we are saved by the cross, how we can give thanks for God’s compassion and love for us. May we rejoice that we have been saved by Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, that we are able to journey through life as followers of Christ.
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