Homily: September 14 - Exaltation of the Cross - The Cross, Our Only Hope

Today marks the celebration of what Saint John Paul II called THE symbol of Christianity. Most of us marked ourselves with it upon entering the Church today, we began mass with it, we’ll end Mass with it.  Essentially, every time we Catholics pray, we begin and end our prayer with it.  Many of our bedrooms and dining rooms have one.  All types of people where it around their necks, from bishops to baseball players to teenage rockstars.   The priest holds his arms in this shape during the Eucharistic prayer.  It is the central focal point of every Catholic church.  Of course, I’m speaking of the cross.

The early Christians called the cross Spes Unica our only hope.  For the cross is the throne upon which Jesus showed his kingship, it is the key that opened the gates of heaven, it is the new tree of life from which flows the fruit of eternal life. Ave, O crux, they used to sing. O Crux ave, spes unica.  Hail O Cross, Our Only Hope. Piis adauge gratiam, reisque dele crimina, grant increase of grace to believers and remove the sins of the guilty.

Without that which Christ done on the cross, we would have no hope of heaven.  And unless we embrace that cross, unless we internalize what that cross symbolizes, unless we take up our cross, as we heard in the Gospel yesterday, we will not have God’s life in us.

This is a day that the Church wants us to place ever more our hope in what Christ did on the cross for us and wants us to do with Him in the cross.  We heard in the second reading, that beautiful hymn from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, how Jesus, totally empty of any pride, any self-willfulness, was obedient unto death to the will of the Father. 

Worn around our necks, adorning our homes and churches, the cross is not a good luck charm, it is a reminder to Christians to embrace doing the Fathers will even when it will cause us to suffer.

Today’s feast is called the Exaltation of the cross.  Literally, from the greek, exaltation means, ‘to bring to light’.  The Christian is charged with bringing the light of the cross to the world and bringing the world to the light of the cross.

Sometimes we do that with our words, and sometimes we do that through the silent, sometimes tearful embrace of our own cross, and offering our sufferings up for the conversion of sinners and the mortification of our own rebellious spirits. 

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world…for the glory of God and salvation of souls.