Friends, this year, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross falls on a Sunday, so we have the great privilege of reflecting a bit more deeply on this marvelous and, frankly, disconcerting and odd feast. The Roman cross was a horrific, terrifying symbol of tyrannical power. And yet the first Christians emerge exalting the cross of Jesus. They don’t hide it or pretend he died some other way; on the contrary, Saint Paul says, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” How do we begin to explain this?
Daily Reading
First Reading
Numbers 21:4b–9
The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.
And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”
So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
Psalm
Psalm 78:1bc–2, 34–35, 36–37, 38
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
When he slew them, they sought for him;
they repented and sought God earnestly.
They remembered that God was their rock,
the Most High God their redeemer.
But they flattered him with their mouths;
they lied to him with their tongues.
Their heart was not steadfast toward him;
they were not true to his covenant.
Yet he, being compassionate,
forgave their iniquity,
and did not destroy them;
he restrained his anger often,
and did not stir up all his wrath.
Second Reading
Philippians 2:6–11
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel Reading
John 3:13–17
No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”