(If interested there is a short history of the feast given at the end, following on praying with scripture)
[The Israelites in this passage are tired and disgruntled from their wandering in the desert. The people complain to Moses about the hardship of their life. The author interprets one of the hardships of their journey, snake bites, as punishment for the peoples complaining. The people realise they have sinned and ask Moses to intercede with God on their behalf.
Jesus uses this story in the Gospel. Just as the Israelites who looked at the serpent were spared physical death, those who look to Jesus and believe in him are spared spiritual death.]
They left Mount Hor by the road to the Sea of Suph, to skirt the land of Edom. On the way the people lost patience. They spoke against God and against Moses, 'Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? For there is neither bread nor water here; we are sick of this unsatisfying food.' At this God sent fiery serpents among the people; their bite brought death to many in Israel. The people came and said to Moses, 'We have sinned by speaking against Yahweh and against you. Intercede for us with Yahweh to save us from these serpents.' Moses interceded for the people, and Yahweh answered him, 'Make a fiery serpent and put it on a standard. If anyone is bitten and looks at it, he shall live.' So Moses fashioned a bronze serpent which he put on a standard, and if anyone was bitten by a serpent, he looked at the bronze serpent and lived.
[In today’s feast we ponder on one of the deepest mysteries of faith: the necessity of the cross. Jesus, in order to reveal his Father’s love and redeem the human race allowed himself to die, shamefully, on the cross. Jesus Christ. What are we to learn from this mystery? Every human being has to struggle with the mystery of suffering. By meditating o the cross we are not only rowing in our understanding of God’s profound love for each of us, but find purpose and hope in our own suffering as well.]
His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God
but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are;
and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death,
death on a cross.
But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names
so that all beings in the heavens, on the earth and in the underworld,
should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of the Father.
[In this passage Jesus is telling Nicodemus, one of the Jewish leaders,(1) that he should trust what Jesus says about spiritual things because Jesus alone has already been to heaven. He is the Son of Man who has come down from heaven. (2) That those who believe in him will have eternal life and (3) that Jesus came to earth, suffered, died and rose for the express purpose of revealing God’s love for all people]
No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven; and the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.
Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.
For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.
A
1. What word or phrase stands out for you? Why?
2. With whom in the readings do you most identify? Why
3. Do you feel attracted to anything in today�s readings? Do you feel
resistant to anything? Do you know why?
4. In what way do these readings affirm you?
5. In what way do these readings challenge you?
6. What can you do to respond to this challenge?
B
1.Jesus says that those who believe in him have eternal life. What do you think believing in Jesus involves?
2.What role has suffering played in your life? What have you learned from suffering?
3.The cross became the Christian sign at the beginning of the Church – why was that? (St Paul says: “Here we are preaching a crucified Christ” (1Cor 1:22) and “The only knowledge I claimed to have was about Jesus, and only about him as the crucified Christ.” (1Cor 2:3)
4.Name the cross that you carry. How is it bringing you closer to God?
I would do anything...” That’s a phrase we hear often. It may even play an important role in our own lives. “I would do anything to have your good looks”—and some people go to great lengths to try to change their appearance.
“I would do anything for your love”—and many people actually compromise themselves in order to gain affection. “I would do anything for you.” Unlike the previous two examples, this expression often flows from unselfish love. True friends and lovers, parents and children are often willing to do anything for those they love. Such self-emptying love is a reflection of the unselfish love that God has toward each one of us.
This feast, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, reminds us of the somber but hopeful rites of Good Friday. At that time we concentrated on the immense suffering that Jesus endured for us. Today, as we commemorate the finding of relics of the true cross by Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, we focus on the power of the cross in our lives.
Although Jesus is not quoted in the reading from Paul, behind Paul’s words we can clearly hear Jesus say, “I would do anything for you.” Paul insists that this is exactly what Jesus did. He not only emptied himself of life, but he emptied himself of any divine privilege that might have preserved him from torturous suffering and shameful death. Paul further states that it was not so much because Jesus suffered and died that God exalted him, but because he was willing to empty himself, to do anything for us. “Because of this, God greatly exalted him.”
We should not be surprised at Jesus’ willingness to do anything for us. That seems to be the nature of our God. Creation itself is the child born of God’s desire to share, to give. And each one of us is a unique expression of that unselfish love. Besides the fundamental gift of life and the human ability self-consciously to reflect on life, we have each been generously blessed in more ways than we can imagine, much less count. All of these gifts cry out the love of God: “I would do anything for you.”
The cross has become the ultimate symbol of God’s willingness to do anything for us. Today’s other readings call our attention to the healing and life-giving powers of the cross. The serpent fashioned by Moses and lifted up on the pole became the source of healing for anyone who looked upon it. These were not sinless people. The affliction from which they were healed was a punishment for their murmuring against God. God turned things upside down; the serpent that originally plagued them is now the symbol of their healing. We can see that it was out of love that God gave them another chance at life.
In the Gospel, Jesus refers to this traditional story in his instruction to Nicodemus. Jesus too will be lifted up, and anyone who looks upon him (believes in him) will have eternal life. As before, we see that God reverses the way we understand. The cross, which was a sign of shame and misery, becomes a symbol of glory and exaltation. Once again we see that God is willing to give people another chance at life. And why? Because “God so loved the world.”
What does this mean for us? How might we revere the cross without making it merely a relic to be brought out for devotional veneration on stated feast days? Perhaps it would be best to focus not simply on the cross itself but on what it symbolizes—namely, God’s desire to do anything for us and Jesus’ willingness to empty himself for us. Once again it is the reading from Paul that provides us with the real challenge. He presents this picture of Jesus to the Christians in Philippi not simply for their edification, but for their imitation. With them, we are summoned to pattern our lives after Jesus, who emptied himself for the sake of others.
Our tradition tells us that we have been saved by the cross. Do our lives show this? Are we any better than the people in the wilderness who murmured against God when they found themselves in a situation not to their liking? Like those smitten by serpents, are we suffering from the poison with which our world is infected? Or have we turned to God for healing? And have we become the avenue of healing for others?
The readings for this feast focus on healing and new life, which were purchased at the price of great suffering. Our societies, our families and our church certainly need both healing and new life. And they are available to us if we look to Jesus who, having been lifted up, is there for us as the supreme model. A model of what? A model of self-emptying love. That is the challenge placed before us today.
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (Jn 3:14)
Today we step aside from the usual sequence of readings for the Sundays in Ordinary Time to celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Since many Catholic institutions (schools, churches, religious communities, etc.) bear the name of “Holy Cross,” the expression may be so familiar to us that we fail to appreciate the paradox and challenge it represents.
In the context of the first-century Roman Empire, crucifixion was a terrible and shameful mode of execution. It was reserved for slaves and rebels—a public action aimed at deterring others from rebellious activities. There was nothing “holy” about it. So when Christians use the expression “holy cross,” they are making a surprising, paradoxical and even shocking statement.
From earliest times Christians have claimed that through the crucifixion of Jesus, God has enabled us to put aside our past sins, to relate to God in a new way and to gain an access to God that had not been possible before. In that sense the cross is indeed holy. In that sense the crucifixion of Jesus was and is a triumph or exaltation rather than a defeat or shame.
The conviction that the cross of Jesus was a victory rather than a defeat is expressed neatly in today’s reading from John 3: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” To appreciate that claim it is necessary to recall the mysterious episode of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21. There the image of a bronze serpent being lifted up on a pole brings healing instead of death to the people of God wandering in the wilderness. It also helps to know that in John’s theological vocabulary the verb “lift up” is his way of talking about Jesus’ being lifted up on the cross (his crucifixion) and his being lifted up to the heavenly Father (his resurrection and exaltation). This is why we can speak of the “holy cross.”
An even more striking and theologically significant text about the holy cross appears in today’s reading from Chapter 2 of Paul’s letter to the Christians at Philippi in northern Greece. Paul wrote it in the mid-50s of the first century A.D., 25 years or so after the crucifixion of Jesus. In writing to what is often described as his favourite community, Paul’s purpose was to provide theological advice about certain pastoral problems that had arisen in the Christian community there.
Today’s Pauline passage seems to be a quotation from a very early Christian hymn that both Paul and the Philippian Christians knew and affirmed. Paul used it as a stimulus for the Philippian Christians to show greater unity and respect toward one another. But as the text stands, it also provides precious testimony about what early Christians believed concerning Jesus. It offers concrete evidence for what has been aptly described as an explosion (rather than a mere development) of doctrine regarding Jesus.
According to the hymn, early Christians believed that in the beginning Jesus was in the “form” of God and possessed a certain equality with God. Remember that the earliest Christians, like Paul himself, were predominantly Jews, and that the fundamental theological principle in Judaism of the time was monotheism—that there is only one God and only one Lord. Yet Paul and other early Christians saw no conflict in describing Jesus in these exalted (divine) terms. Furthermore, early Christians believed that in becoming human, Jesus in some way had “emptied himself” (kenosis in Greek) and humbled himself in obedience to his Father’s will, even to the point of enduring a shameful death on the cross. His incarnation, his taking flesh and becoming human, led to his death on the cross. Thus Jesus became one with us in the most complete sense imaginable—by sharing and embracing suffering and physical death.
But the cross was not the end of Jesus’ story. Early Christians also believed that Jesus, who suffered death on the cross in obedience to his Father’s will, had been raised from the dead and was exalted to his heavenly Father once more, and that God had bestowed on Jesus the name of “Lord” (Kyrios in Greek)—the name that Greek-speaking Jews reserved for God. According to this very early hymn, therefore, it was and is appropriate that all creation should join in the confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” In this narrative of our salvation, the cross is the pivot between the incarnation and the exaltation of Jesus. That is why we can call the cross “holy.”
• What immediately strikes you when you hear the phrase “holy cross”?
• In what sense does the cross of Jesus bring healing? Have you experienced such healing in your own life?
• How might you bring the self-emptying love of God to the people whose lives touch yours in some way?
In the first centuries of Christianity, during the years of persecution, the pagans wished to destroy all evidence of the life of Jesus Christ, and the Cross on which He was crucified disappeared. With the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great, Christians were at liberty to worship openly and build churches. The emperor's mother, St. Helen, longed to find the True Cross of Christ. She traveled to Jerusalem and was told by a very old Jew that the Cross was buried beneath the temple of the pagan goddess Venus, built in 119 AD by the Roman Emperor Hadrian.
The temple was torn down, and digging in the earth below uncovered three wooden crosses. The small board which had hung over Christ with the inscription ' Jesus King of the Jews,' had long since fallen off, and -there was no way of telling which was the True Cross and which were the crosses of the two thieves crucified on either side of Christ. A sick woman was brought and likewise a dead man who was being carried to burial. The three crosses were laid in turn one by one upon the sick woman and upon the dead man. Two of the crosses had no effect, but through contact with the third cross, the sick woman was healed of her infirmity and the dead man came to life. These miracles clearly indicated which of the three was Christ's Cross.
Hearing of this discovery, all the faithful desired to see the Cross of the Lord and to venerate it. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Makarios, took the Cross onto a raised platform and lifted it on high, 'exalting' it, for all to see. The people fell to their knees, bowing down before the Cross and crying out repeatedly: "Lord, have mercy!"
To house the relic of the True Cross, St. Helen had s church built over the Holy Sepulchre. The church was consecrated on Sept. 13, 335, an event also commemorated in the service hymns of the Feast. The finding and exaltation of the Cross was appointed to be celebrated annually on the following day.
The Life-giving Cross was kept in Jerusalem until the year 614 when the Holy City fell to the Persians who looted the Church of the Resurrection and took the True Cross back with them to Persia. Fourteen years later Emperor Heraclius concluded a peace with the Persians, and the Holy Cross was brought to the imperial capital of Constantinople. The Emperor, taking off his shoes and his imperial robes, carried the Cross into the Church of Holy Wisdom (Agia Sophia) where it was once again triumphantly exalted. It was then resolved that the Feast be celebrated by the Church in all parts of the world, for which reason it is called the Universal Exaltation.