The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Sunday, September 14, 2025

John 3, 13-16

 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.

This Feast, commemorates the finding of the True Cross by St. Helen in the fourth century and also its recovery in the sixth century after Jerusalem was raided by the Persians.

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.