On the liturgical calendar, September 14 is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Even though the feast (is replaced by our celebration of the vigil for Sunday/was yesterday) I’d like to focus on the cross a bit, after all, we hear about the cross in our Gospel, where the Lord tells us that whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
A little girl at the funeral yesterday, seeing all the crosses and crucifixes here at St. Ignatius asked her father, “why are there so many Jesus’ in this church.” Our church is adorned with many crosses for a reason. Saint John Paul II called the cross THE symbol of Christianity. Most of us marked ourselves with the sign of the cross 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 the sign of the cross. Many of you have crosses throughout your homes, perhaps in your bedrooms—so that the cross is the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.
All types of people where crosses around their necks, from bishops to baseball players to musicians. The priest holds his arms in this shape during the Eucharistic prayer.
Worn around our necks, adorning our homes and churches, beginning and ending our prayers, the cross is not a good luck charm, it is a reminder that by the cross we are saved. As is sung on Good Friday every year, “Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.”
St. Anthony of Padua in a sermon on the cross said: “You cannot better appreciate your worth than by looking into the mirror of the Cross of Christ; there you will learn how you are to deflate your pride, how you must mortify the desires of the flesh, how you are to pray to your Father for those who persecute you, and to commend your spirit into God’s hands.”
Let’s consider his words in depth. Firstly, St. Anthony called the cross a mirror in which you can appreciate your worth. The cross is proof—a visual reminder--that God believes that your soul and mine are worth dying for. Jesus willingly embraced the cross, taking upon himself the weight of all of our sins because we are worth something to God. God believes that saving our souls from hell is worth suffering the greatest suffering. And he wouldn’t believe that unless he loved us more than we love our own children, friends, and family—with love beyond all telling. So the cross is a mirror in which we can see our worth to God.
Secondly, St. Anthony says looking at the cross deflates our pride. How so? Well, again, it shows us that God’s ineffable love. It humbles us to fully realize how much we are loved, and how much Jesus suffered. His willingness to suffer puts our willingness to suffer—and often our unwillingness to suffer—to shame. Many of us are willing to suffer for even those who are good to us, but Jesus suffered for all, including the most despicable, the most perverse, the most wicked, the most obstinate of sinners. So, the cross humbles our inflated pride.
Next, St. Anthony says looking at the cross show us how we must mortify the desires of the flesh. What does that mean? Contemplating Jesus’ embrace of suffering on the cross, reminds us of the need to practice self-denial as well, turning away from indulgence and the pleasures of the flesh in order to pursue the higher calling—the will of God. St. Anthony is echoing Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
The self-denial that Jesus is talking about here, which every Christian must pursue, involves voluntarily giving up personal desires, comforts, and preferences in order to follow God's will more closely, grow in virtue, and resist the temptations of sin
We are to detach from any worldly comforts and pleasures that distract us from their relationship with God, especially those pleasures that are expressly forbidden by the Word of God and the teaching of the Church.
This is one good reason why it’s good to have a cross in your bedroom. If the cross is the first thing you see upon waking up, it’s a reminder that I’m in this life not just to pursue my own wants and desires, but the will of God, which will likely involve turning away and saying “no” to a lot of things today, so that I can more fully say “yes” to God.
Next, St. Anthony says that the cross shows us how we are to pray to the Father for those who persecute you. The Gospels tell us that the Lord prayed for his persecutors from the cross. He prayed for everyone responsible for his crucifixion—the romans, the jews, and all of us as well. He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
We do not really comprehend how terrible are sins are—the damage that they do to our minds and souls and to one another. Every sin wounds us. Every sin wounds our relationship God. And every sin wounds our relationship with others. And most of us choose not to really think about the terrible wounds our sins inflict. But we’ll hold grudges against others for smaller slights than we commit, won’t we? We’ expect others to forgive us, we expect God to forgive us, but we’re really quick to trash talk those who we perceive as threats to us.
Well, the cross is a reminder that we are to pray for those who threaten us, for those who commit injustices against us and our families and nation. The cross reminds us to pray as Jesus prays, to forgive as Jesus forgives. Instead of carrying around anger over the injustices we encounter, it is better for us to pray, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Lastly, St. Anthony says, the cross shows us how to commend our spirits into God’s hands. The cross shows us to practice another thing that many of us are not very good at: trusting God. In his final breaths, jesus said, “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit”.
To "commend" means to entrust or place something in the care of another. Jesus deeply trusted his Father, even from the cross—that his cross, his suffering, his death, would bring about the supreme good. Jesus was fully aligned with the Father's will, even when it involved death. And the crosses that we put in our homes and churches, whenever we make the sign of cross, remind us of the daily trust, the daily faith, we are to cultivate and practice.
In the week ahead, I invite you, as a spiritual exercise, to spend 10 minutes meditating upon a crucifix, considering how it is a reminder of God’s love for you, how is calls you to deflate your pride, mortify your desires, pray to forgive others, and entrust yourselves for fully to the will of God, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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