Sunday, September 14, 2014 - The Exaltation of the Cross - From the Cross to the Heavens

To read the texts click on the texts: Num 21:4-9;Phil 2:6-11; Jn 3:13-17

The Exaltation of the Cross is one of the twelve great feasts in the yearly liturgical cycle. Because the cross is at the heart and centre of all that we believe as Christians, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the triumph of the cross of Christ over the power of sin and death. The feast usually occurs on a week day. But when it falls on a Sunday as it does this year, it takes precedence over the ordinary Sunday liturgy. And so this feast provides us with another opportunity to reflect on the central mystery of our faith: that the one who was lifted up on the cross in crucifixion has triumphed over the power of sin and death, because God highly exalted him.

This feast commemorates two historical events: first, the finding of what was considered the Cross of Christ in the year 326 by the mother of Constantine the Great, St Helen, and second, its recovery from Persia in 628.

A story is told of Emperor Heraclius, who, in the year 628, after making peace with the Persians, carried what was considered the Cross on which Jesus hung, back to Jerusalem on his shoulders. He was clothed with costly garments and with ornaments of precious stones. But at the entrance to Mount Calvary a strange incident occurred. Try as hard as he would, he could not go forward. Zacharias, the Bishop of Jerusalem, then said to the astonished monarch: “Consider, O Emperor, that with these triumphal ornaments you are far from resembling Jesus carrying his Cross.” The Emperor then put on a penitential garb and continued the journey and carried the Cross into the church of Holy Wisdom where it was triumphantly exalted. It was then resolved that the Feast of the Triumph or exaltation of the Cross be celebrated by the Church in all parts of the world.

The Cross – because of what it represents – is the most potent and universal symbol of the Christian faith. It is a constant reminder of Christ’s ultimate triumph, his victory over sin and death through his suffering and dying on the Cross. The cross, once a tool of death, has become a means to life, an instrument of our salvation; it gives strength to resist temptation, it gives hope to seek new life and it dispels fear and darkness.

As Christians, we exalt the Cross of Christ as the instrument of our salvation. Adoration of the Cross is, thus, adoration of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who became man, who suffered and died on the Cross for our redemption from sin and death. The cross is a symbolic summary of the Passion, Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

In the first reading of today, we read of how Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in order to heal and bring wholeness to a broken people. This was God’s way of showing the people that He was primarily a God who wanted to save and redeem and not condemn and destroy. The evangelist John interpreted this lifting of the bronze serpent by Moses as a foreshadowing of the salvation through Jesus when he was lifted up on the Cross. The triumph of the Cross is the triumph of Jesus Christ whose love for us and obedience to his Father climaxed with his death on the cross. The deeper meaning of the Cross is presented in The Christological hymn in today’s second reading from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians. Jesus emptied himself completely. He died making a willing statement of love, filling the world with the love he had for his Father and his Father had for him. We are saved from the horrors of evil, from meaningless lives due to the love of the Lord. Because Jesus died on a cross for us we are able to proclaim to the world: Jesus is Lord. His love made this possible. When we venerate and adore the cross, we are saying: ‘Jesus is the Lord of our lives’.

To the world this act of surrender on the cross was an act of utter humiliation and subjugation and the height of folly. But what the world calls wisdom, God calls foolishness, and what the world calls strength God calls weakness. Therefore God highly exalted the Crucified on by raising him from the dead. In the weakness and foolishness of the cross we see the wisdom and power of God: Christ crucified. In him and his Cross, surrender becomes power, waste becomes gain and death and defeat become victory and new life.

The cross is at the centre of our lives every time we face sickness and death, in frailty and old age, when we feel utterly alone and abandoned, every time we are tempted to give in and give up. It keeps reminding us that only when we embrace the cross in the midst of suffering and abandonment can we understand the power of the resurrection.