Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Children
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Object: A book made up of several sheets of paper folded in half with the names of nations and denominations and races on each page. The front cover should have the picture of the Good Shepherd and the name “The Family of God.” When you are telling your story, show only one page at a time, not revealing the title until the end.
Good morning, boys and girls. Someone asked me this morning if he always had to smile when he was in church. Well, I don’t know if you always have to smile, but I think that my face would rather have me smile than have me any other way. Maybe your face would rather have you frown or do nothing at all, but since I have so many things to be happy about, I just naturally like to smile. I like to smile not only when I’m in church but when I’m other places as well.
Someone also asked me if there were two kinds of crosses in the Christian Church. Well, there are really many kinds of crosses and maybe some day we’ll bring in the different kinds. In some churches we see a cross with Jesus on it, while in other churches. the cross is empty. Let me explain why. Some people like to think about the great sacrifice that Jesus made for us by dying on the cross. They have a cross that is called a crucifix. Other people like an empty cross because it makes them think about Jesus being risen from the dead, alive and working in the world. Some churches and some people have both.
I’m glad that someone thought to ask me that question, because it helps me to tell the story I wanted to tell you this morning. I brought a book with me that is a do-it-yourself book. When I open this book there are not a lot of words written on each page, but rather there is only one word for each page. Would you like to help me read this book out loud? [Begin turning the pages, having them repeat the words aloud.] Nigerians, Presbyterians, Norwegians, Americans, Methodists, White Men, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Germans, French, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Black Men, Yellow Men, Brazilians, Canadians, Mennonites, Mexicans, Red Men, etc.
What a strange book this is for our lesson today! But this book has an important lesson for us to learn. I want you to look at the front cover and tell me who this is and what he is doing. [Let them answer.] That’s right, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and we are his sheep. All the people in the world belong to Jesus. He even said in the Bible that there should be one flock and one shepherd. He meant that we should all be able to live together as one people. All of us may have different names or live in different countries and have different color skin, but he wants us all to be one. We can be German sheep or white sheep or Lutheran sheep, but when he asks us who is our shepherd and to whom we all belong, we must be ready to answer. Jesus is our Good Shepherd and we are all Christians.
Look at the cover of this book and read what it says: “The Family of God.” If I took one page out of this book I would be taking away part of the family of God. Everybody in this book and every place in this book and every color in this book was made by God and belongs to God. We must be very careful to keep it the way God made it and be.
ADULT
For five years I lived in one of the most beautiful places in our country, believe it or not, in New Jersey. 2 summers I went to camp Saint Benedict run by the Salesians fathers. Then For three years I was a pastor of Saint Peter and Saint Paul’s church in Spring Valley NY which was literally a hop skip and a jump from New Jersey. Especially enjoyed when I was the pastor there on the feast of Saint John Bosco the Salesians invited us to their seminary to celebrate their just community and its founder. Few would believe that it was in Sussex County, the Northwest corner of New Jersey. This is an area of green rolling hills and the most colorful autumns you could ever imagine. It is hard to explain the hills of New Jersey to folks who have lived in the flat area of Florida all their lives. The hills just seem to pop up everywhere. Naturally the main roads are in the valleys between the hills.
When the Salesians of St. John Bosco, who ran Don Bosco Seminary, first arrived in Sussex County in the 1920’s they were greeted with a most unpleasant sight. On the hill directly across from the seminary, the local Ku Klux Klan erected a burning cross to welcome the Catholics. Anti-Catholicism was part of their many prejudices. Time went on. The seminary and the order grew. The KKK faded away, at least from Northwest New Jersey. Forty years later the Salesians remodeled their chapel. In the center of the sanctuary, they placed a large burnt cross as a sign that the hatred of men could not destroy the love of Christ. Sadly, this cross was replaced by a traditional crucifix, but the burnt cross made a lasting impression on me and on many others. I wish I could say that anti-Catholicism is gone but just this week I was talking to one of our political leaders was Catholic and he feels the brunt of it every time he does anything.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
We all want to be lucky. We all want that opportunity one day to be surprised when something happens that really helps our lives. A friend of mine was ecstatic when his visit to the casino brought winnings he could not imagine. And haven’t we just gone through another Lotto craze as millions of us bought two-dollar tickets so we could win at Powerball. Imagine having all those millions of dollars! “Hey, you never know,” was the slogan of a lotto many years ago. Something spectacular might happen to any of us!
Today’s feast is telling us we are lucky in a very special way. Luck happens randomly. But grace happens as the result of a decision. Today’s feast is saying that all of humankind has received grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Today’s feast is saying to the natural pessimism in our hearts: no, you are not doomed. God has given you the gift of his Son.
We call this feast now “the Exultation” of the cross. Certainly, we Catholics have not been shy when it comes to exalting the cross. You cannot go into any Catholic church without seeing an image of Jesus crucified erected prominently in the church building. Yet, we can still be missing the paradox: we are exulting an ancient Roman process that was gruesome, savage, and disgusting.
And that’s the point. Not even the most gruesome and barbaric practice of humankind, not even the brutal death of the innocent Jesus Christ through crucifixion, could be enough to overcome the love that God has for humankind, a love that is even more powerfully shown through this terrible instrument of death, the cross. In Jesus, God accepts the worst of us as the heaviest burden so we will know the extent of divine love. In the Crucifixion we see, in the words of the Gospel today, that “God gave his only son so that no one who comes to believe in him might perish.” Jesus’ death is God’s gift.
In this way, something astonishing and unexpected has happened to all humans through the grace that God extends to us. With the death of Jesus, and his resurrection, we have the opportunity to transform the human story. We are no longer strange animals on an insignificant planet, we are no longer mindless products of evolution, we are no longer people defined by our deaths and tombs. We are defined now by the eternal life that Christ won and offers every human being as a way of life.
Indeed, the way of life of Jesus is to live in the wonder of God’s love and life that has been poured out upon us. We Catholics can see this gift so clearly; after all, it is what we celebrate every time we pray the Mass. And we Catholics can help others to see it as well, by living our lives filled with the joy that flows from the grace that God gives to us.
Yes, we can live as victors, as winners, as incredibly lucky people. And the joy we experience can be a force for the transformation of human life.
The origin of this feast is shrouded in two events: The recovery of the true cross by St. Helena in 326 and the recovery of the cross from the Persians in 628. Which event is true, and which is mere legend? We really don’t know. I would think the first, but the feast itself dates from the second. Regardless, the Exaltation of the Cross is the Exaltation 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 as prefiguring Jesus’ cross which healed us all. 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.
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. For them the cross is merely a piece of jewelry. Other people treat the cross in a superstitious manner. They give a cross power 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 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 into 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 must 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? He loves 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.
