Today we
celebrate the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. This feast goes back to the
seventh century when the Cross was recovered from the Persians and exposed for
veneration in Jerusalem. 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.
Moses lifted up the serpent on the cross in the desert. People looked at this cross the prefigured
Jesus’ cross and were healed. In John’s
Gospel we hear Jesus telling Nicodemus that he would be lifted up so that all
who see him and believe in him would have eternal life. For God so loved that world that he gave his
only Son that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life[1].
The cross is the
symbol of the Christian. It is our sign
of our personal relationship with our Savior.
He died not just for people in general but for me and for you. He calls us to join him on his cross not just
as a people but as individuals. The
ideal that he realized is the goal of our lives, to make real the only true
love there is: sacrificial love.
Some people
treat the cross as a trinket. Other people treat the cross in a superstitious
manner. Some people will give a cross powers that belong to God. These people have seen too many cheap horror
movies and act as though a cross can defeat evil spirits. It is not the object
that conquers evil; it is the power of Christ whose presence the object reminds
us of that conquers evil.
The deeper
meaning of the Cross is presented in today’s second reading from the Letter of
Paul to the Philippians. Jesus emptied
himself completely, not just becoming a human being but accepting the worst
public death of the society he was in to demonstrate the extent of the love of
God for us. He died making a willing statement of love, filling the world with
the love he had for his Father and his Father has 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 wear a cross we are
saying: Jesus is Lord of our lives.
This is the
ideal set before us: as followers of Jesus, as people with a personal
relationship with the Lord who loves each of us, we have to be willing to
sacrifice everything we have to fill the world with the Father’s love. Our daily turmoil, our problems, our pains
all take on an infinite value when we trust them to Jesus, when we unite them
to his cross, to our cross.
How much does
God love the world; so much that he gave his only son to the world so that when
he would be lifted high on a cross all might be saved through him. Praise be
Jesus Christ in whose cross we find meaning in this life and eternity in the
next ■
[1] Exaltation of the Holy Cross,
September 14, 2014. Readings: Numbers 21:4b-9; Responsorial Psalm 78:1bc-2,
34-35, 36-37, 38; Philippians 2:6-11; John 3:13-17.
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