The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2020

John 3:13–17

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who 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 might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

On October 28 in the year 312, the general Constantine fought his rivals for the imperial throne at the Battle of Milvan Bridge.  According to the Church Father Lactantius, before the battle, Constantine received a vision of the Cross of Christ, and he was told that, “In this sign, you shall conquer.”  Subsequently, Constantine had the Cross marked on the shields of his soldiers.  After fierce fighting, the opposing general drowned in the Tiber River as he tried to escape, and Constantine emerged as the victor.  One of his first actions as emperor was to make Christianity a legal religion within the empire.  Later, his mother, St. Helena, went to Jerusalem and funded an excavation which resulted in the finding of Golgotha and three crosses, one of which was thought to be the Cross of Jesus Christ.  Another Father, writing around the year 400 tells us that these three crosses were touched to a woman who was deathly ill, and at the touch of the last, she fully and instantly recovered.  This was deemed proof for the true Cross.  A feast was later celebrated in honor of the Holy Cross on September 14, the date on which it was brought into the new basilica Constantine had built for it.  

Interesting legends surround the origin of the wood for the Cross.  One, from the Middle Ages, tells that it came from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which Adam and Eve ate, committing the Original Sin.  The idea that the Lord was crucified on the hill in which Adam had been buried is perhaps connected with this.  Another, from the same time, has it that the wood came from the bridge over which the Queen of Sheba walked to meet King Solomon.

What we honor on this feast is not so much the wood itself as the fact that our Lord and Savior died upon it for our sins.  We celebrate a love stronger than death, more powerful than hell (cf. Song of Songs 8, 6).  We regard the wood of the Cross as a relic and honor it accordingly.  We show our love for the Cross of Christ on Good Friday when we kiss or otherwise venerate the crucifix during the celebration of the Lord’s Passion.  When we kiss the crucifix, we kiss the infinite love Christ continuously pours out upon us.

In the Gospel reading for this feast, Jesus says to the Pharisee Nicodemus, “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven”, thereby claiming his divinity, but in the next breath he tells him, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”  Here, the Lord speaks of the fact that he has taken up a human nature purposely that he might be “lifted up”.  By believing in him as God and man, we might be saved: “So that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  But what is it to the eternal God, supremely joyous in himself, and having no need of anything, as to whether sinners are saved?  According to the punctuation in the lectionary, the following words were a commentary by St. John on what the Lord had just said. From ancient times, it has been held that the Lord himself said them: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  That is, God did this for the sake of his love for us.  Love does not act out of need, but out of desire for the good of the beloved.  Even a partial realization of his love stuns us.  By essentially trading his Son for us, he shows how great is his love is for us.    “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Even with all the contempt the people of the world have shown the Lord throughout our history, he sends his Son into the world to tells us of his love for us, and even more, to show us how great his love is by dying on the Cross for us, as though to say, There is nothing, my beloved, that I would not do for you.