Homily

This feast commemorates September 14, 335, when a great crowd of the faithful gathered in Jerusalem for the dedication of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been renovated by Constantine. The celebration also commemorated the discovery of the wood of the Cross. Every year since that day this memory has been celebrated in Jerusalem, and during the celebration the priest has lifted up the cross and pointed it in the four cardinal directions to indicate the universality of salvation. And this spiritually significant celebration did not stop at Jerusalem; it soon spread to the different Churches of the East, beginning with Constantinople, and the West, beginning with Rome. The cross had to be "exalted" in the whole world, because it was on the cross that Jesus was lifted up for the salvation of all men and women.
The first reading of today’s liturgy reminds us of what happened to the people of Israel when they were in the desert and many were dying from the bites of poisonous serpents. This episode is not so foreign to the circumstances of many people today. There are many poisonous serpents slithering around the world, even if today it is men and women themselves who often bite other men and women with sometimes fatal poison. Moses lifted up a bronze serpent and whoever looked at it would not die. In truth the serpent prefigured the cross. The evangelist John says so explicitly: "and just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up," (Jn 3:14), and then, as if to revisit the Biblical scene, adds: "they will look on the one whom they have pierced" (Jn 19:37). The cross still needs to be exalted today. It needs to be lifted high so that everyone can see it.
But how can we exalt an instrument of torture to the point of giving it a feast day? It is as if we were to celebrate the electric chair today and put its image up everywhere and carry it around our necks. We would be taken for eccentrics if not worse. Unfortunately we are so used to the image of the cross that we have lost all sense of the cruelty it represents. We no longer think about how it was one of the worst instruments of torture of its time. But without a sense of what the cross meant we cannot understand how far the love of the Crucified One went. What the Church is really trying to do by exalting the Cross today is exalt the indescribable love that Jesus has for each one of us. That is why it is truly a good thing to give thanks to God for the cross. In the preface to today’s Mass we sing: "On the tree of the Cross, O God, you secured the salvation of humanity, because from where there was once death, now rises life." This is why it is right to exalt the cross. On that wood love for the self was defeated once and for all, and love for others finally triumphed. The cross is like the synthesis or, to say it better, the culmination of Jesus’ love for us. As the apostle Paul writes in the hymn of the letter to the Philippians, Jesus began his journey towards the cross when he "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited." Because of love "he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave;" because of love "he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." And the Father himself was so moved by the Son’s completely selfless love that He "exalted him and gave the name that is above every name."
The cross is the moment in which life and death confront each other in one last battle, a battle which is fought in Jesus’ very body. He dies, it is true, but as he dies love for the self is defeated once and for all. Everyone around him, on the ground and at his side, was shouting: "Save yourself." But how could he save himself if he had never lived for himself? In fact his Gospel was the total opposite of saving himself: "I came not to be served but to serve" (cf. Mt 20:28); in other words: I did not come to save myself, but to save others. Jesus could have avoided death; all he had to do was give in to Peter and the other disciples who were trying to dissuade him from going to Jerusalem. Or he could have worked out a deal with Pilate, who had tried to do just that. But in doing so Jesus would have betrayed his Gospel, which he set against the Gospel of the world that has always said: "Save yourself." Dying as he died, Jesus saved love. We can say that there is finally someone among us who loves others more than himself. There is someone who is willing to give his whole life, to the point of losing it, for each one of us. The apostle Paul makes us think even more deeply about this when he writes: "Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Rom 5:7-8).