“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.” John 3: 13-17
The Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14th every year because that was the day in the Year 320 AD on which St Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, was believed to have discovered the remains of the Cross on which Jesus had been crucified.
Early in John’s Gospel Jesus described to his disciples how he understood his mission in life and what it was that gave him great satisfaction: “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4: 34). Much later in John’s Gospel where we are given a lengthy description of Jesus’ farewell address to his disciples at the Passover meal we now refer to as the Last Supper, Jesus referred to his imminent death on the Cross as the moment of his anticipated glorification: “Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you, most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains but a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest” (John 12: 23-24). Jesus’ final words before he died were to announce that the work he had undertaken, recorded in John 4: 34, had been brought to completion at his moment of glory on the Cross: “‘It is now accomplished’, and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.” (John 19: 30)
Our Good Friday liturgical celebration and participation in the Stations of the Cross have led us to direct our attention to the ignominy and brutality of Jesus’ Crucifixion. What he had to endure was the most humiliating, shameful and gruesome form of execution imaginable. It was designed by leaders of the Roman Empire to discourage people under their rule from even contemplating any challenge to the “peace and order” they had imposed on their ever-expanding Empire. Paradoxically, the very early Christians had been quick to look at the death of Jesus on the Cross as the greatest expression of love ever experienced by humanity. Ironically, the conversion to Christianity by Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD and the devotion of his mother Helena meant that the ruling Roman family had, in faith, come to recognise Jesus’ death on the Cross as the triumph of God’s love for the world and the triumph of that love over domination, evil and death. In raising Jesus from the tomb, God vindicated Jesus and all that he had taught and done out of love for humanity.
Below is a replica of the Cross that hung in the church of San Damiano in Assisi and from which Jesus spoke to St Francis appealing to him “to rebuild my Church”. This cross does not present a Jesus whose body was wracked in excruciating pain. Rather, Jesus on that cross is an icon of peace, serenity and the love of God which he expressed to everyone he encountered throughout his life on earth. The early Christian community was able to speak of Jesus’ death on the Cross as his exaltation, only in light of the fact that God had raised him from death.
We hear Paul’s confirmation of that in today’s second reading from his letter to the Philippians: “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave…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 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 God the Father” (Philippians 2: 6-11)
Still, just as Jesus had declared that his hour of glorification would be when he was raised high on the cross, so the early Christians held firm to the belief that Jesus was already being exalted and glorified by God as he hung, dying on the cross and that God was already hovering over him, vindicating him and affirming that his life of love and service demonstrated that he was truly faithful to the mission that God had given him. It was his utter fidelity to that mission that led to his rejection, condemnation and crucifixion. The irony, of course, was that those, who saw to his execution as a way of terminating the mission God had entrusted to him, opened the way for him to complete his mission of revealing God’s immense love for humanity. That immense love is so inexhaustible and unstoppable that it continues to embrace us day in and day out.
The original Cross from the church of San Damiano now resides in the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Assisi