Homily for The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2025

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross.   

It must be the biggest oxymoron of all ages: the slapping together of two ideas that clash because they are the opposite of each other. 

The two words that our Catholic Church slaps together are “exaltation” and “cross.”  

Maybe some of us don’t see the problem yet: it must be because we got so used to the sight of crosses and crucifixes everywhere.  

To get the full impact of this oxymoron, let one try to say: “exaltation of the guillotine” or the “exaltation of the gallows or even “the exaltation of beheading.” 

Now, the cross that we are called to EXALT is much, much worse than any of those.   

It was the most horrific, the most painful, the cruelest form of capital punishment ever devised, and perfected by the Romans.   

Basically, it was the most radical way of depriving one of everything (dignity, freedom of movements, control over bodily functions, everything) while inflicting the most excruciating and most intense sorts of pain until the total collapse of the unfortunate victim. 

Perhaps the first concept that we are called to accept is the fact that the exaltation of the Holy Cross ought to be seen as the ultimate evidence of what Yahweh God said in the Old Testament: “My ways are not your ways. As far as the east is from the west so far are my thoughts from yours.” Isaiah 55:8-9 

In other words, we are expected to appreciate all the absurdity of the contrast between exaltation and cross and prove with deeds, with our lives, that we can live and gauge our lives with this oxymoron! Truly, genuine Christian life makes no sense to those living by the standards of the world. To them the cross is pure madness and the Gospel a bunch of unbearable paradoxes. 

The second concept that we ought to swallow is similar and just as weighty.  

We ought to do violence to our minds and to conventional wisdom. 

After reflecting (even if only briefly) on the first reading (Numbers 21:4-9) we are expected to embrace the obvious absurdity of expecting a cure for deadly snake bites from a piece of bronze shaped like a serpent and mounted on a pole. 

Making this absurdity the foundation of our frame of reference is what God demands, so that only he alone can claim that nothing is impossible with him.  

And nothing is more ineffective than a cross, the ultimate instrument of defeat, of shame, and of total loss of control and mobility.   

As Nicodemus found out, there is a steep mental price to be paid for relying on God’s ways for our salvation. It is to believe that the Son of God, at the most palpable moment of his defeat, lifted high on the wood of the cross, completely immobilized by ropes and nails, has the power to save the world and to prove how much the Father loves us. (John 3:13-17) 

The cost of our belief would be much less if we were asked to believe in the love of God as evidenced in Jesus, at the peak of his success, acclaim and miraculous power. 

Finally, here is the third and most challenging aspect of our adherence to the Exaltation of the Cross: as the Body of Christ, we are expected to share in every stage of his numbing experience of the cross, starting with his passion. 

This emptying of ourselves, this taking the form of a slave, this obedience until death, is necessary.  It is the only way to share in his glory. (cf. Phil 2:5-8) 

All three of these points on which we reflected are re-presented and re-lived by us at Mass. 

The table of God’s Word feeds us the necessary reasons, explanations and divine teachings to help us embrace with our minds and hearts, God’s shockingly unusual, absurd ways.  

And, to live out the third point, we are encouraged to share in the Supper of the Lamb.   

The Lamb is slain, yet he lives forever.  He has shed his blood, yet he is not only fully alive but he is the source of Life for all those invited to his heavenly wedding feast.  

Thus, through Holy Communion, we indeed become one Flesh with our God; we have his very Blood running through our veins.  

Through this awesome yet frightening action, consciously, deliberately, we vow to endure what the Lamb of God, Jesus, the Head of the Body, the Bridegroom, has endured, so that we may be found worthy to share also in his endless glory.              

This is the only correct way of growing “comfortable” with the concept of the cross, his, and ours too. 

This is the only way we participate with our whole being in the most absurd, paradoxical celebration ever, the Exaltation of the Cross.