The cross was the ugliest and most degrading death the devious and ingenious Romans could invent. In fact, they had help inventing it; they learned it from their most dangerous enemies, the people and kingdom of Carthage, who had sworn to destroy Rome. Rome fought back, and eventually won, but in the process they learned something from the culture of Carthage: brutal and cold-hearted execution, applied not only to criminals but to their political enemies.
Our own culture is sliding down the same slope. As we fight bravely against various forms of modern tyranny and evil, we seem to be taking on some of the characteristics of the cultures we oppose. And one of those bad qualities is murder for political ends. I will mention three recent victims of political murder, because recent events require some reflection and response.
On August 27, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski, children worshiping at daily Mass in Minneapolis, students of a Catholic school; were wickedly slaughtered as they prayed; and on September 10 Charlie Kirk, a Christian and a patriot, was wickedly slaughtered as he was inviting conversation and discussion about the issues that divide our nation. The actions were specific and isolated, but they were planned and targeted, and they show that at least in some ways our culture is in a downward slide. Can we change course?
There is something wonderful and powerful about each of the three readings for today, Numbers on the bronze serpent, Philippians on the incarnation, and John on the salvation of the world.
Each of these readings shows us a going down, and then a going back up. You may think of this as the first meaning of the Holy Cross: when you come to the cross, you have the opportunity to look down at the root of the cross, set in the earth, the very earth of Calvary, where our Lord Jesus shed his blood; and then to look up, at the top of the cross, leading up to heaven, showing you that the cross no longer bears the human body of Our Lord, but has yielded him up to be received back into the arms of the Father.
In our reading from Numbers, we find the people of Israel following what by this time has become a very familiar pattern, going down into sin, the specific sin of complaining, of looking for reasons to grumble at God, at why things are not the way they should have been. But then we find the people of Israel touched by grace, hearing the loving invitation of the Father, raising their eyes upward to see the bronze sculpture of a lethal serpent, carefully made by Moses and lifted up by Moses to be at this time the means of their salvation, their healing, their outward healing from the poison of the living serpent, and their inward healing from the poison of their own bad attitude. They went down into a very bad place, and were lifted up and out of that place by God in his grace. There is no place so bad or so low that God’s grace cannot retrieve us from it and take us to himself. Never despair of God’s love for you. He knows how low you can go; he knows where to find you; and he is not afraid or ashamed to go there to get you out.
In Paul’s beautiful hymn to Christ from Philippians, we also have a going down and a going up. The Son in his divine nature goes down to take a human nature, and is forever now one of us, our friend and teacher as well as our Lord. Then in his human nature he goes down again, to that ugly and degrading death provided by the Romans, the death of the cross. From there, of course, he goes back up, in Resurrection destroying the power, not only of the Romans and of all the evil human powers of this world, but also of the devil and all his tricks to try to keep us from God and God’s grace. His going up from that death of the cross is also our going up with him into a very special victory, a victory which is also God’s victory, us rejoicing to have found and to hold eternal joy with him, him rejoicing to have found and to hold us, his precious possession, his children. Christ’s going up in his human nature undoes all the evil the Romans could do; Christ also goes up in his divine nature into a kingdom which had been planned by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit from all eternity and is now the reality in which we live and move and have our being, called the Kingdom of God but equally and as truly called the Kingdom of His Beloved Son.
And the holy Gospel according to John also gives us a going down and a going back up. First we hear of the only Son of God coming down from heaven, not that he ever could leave heaven empty, for he fills all things; but that he made his focus for thirty-three years this earth, this world, our world, the world of needy humans, wandering in confusion, blaming themselves and each other and even blaming God for their misfortunes, not knowing that God is always within arms’ reach, not knowing until Jesus came down to reach those arms to each of us in welcome and friendship and love and renewal.
That is His coming down, according to John; and the going up is in John his being lifted up on the cross, so that on the cross Jesus accomplishes his life’s purpose and shows us our life’s purpose. His life’s purpose was to gather together the scattered people of God, us, and to take and keep us forever as his own. Our life’s purpose is to allow ourselves to be so filled with his healing love that others can see that there is a way to everlasting happiness, a way as close as the reaching out of a hand or a heart to one who is closer to us than we are to ourselves, to the man who is God, the God who is man, and who on the cross both lives and dies entirely out of love for us.
Today we celebrate the exaltation of the Holy Cross. The very wood itself of the cross on which Jesus died has been raised out of obscurity into light by the travels of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, to the holy land where she discovered Calvary and the Cross; and by the devotion of Constantine the emperor her son who honored the Cross and invited all the empire to honor the cross with him.
Constantine did many things. He made Christianity welcome in his empire, throughout the Roman world, east and west. He also permanently abolished crucifixion as a judicial punishment, seeing clearly that once Jesus has died such an intense death it no longer makes sense to subject anyone else to such a thing.
Let this be an example for us. Christ suffered that suffering might stop. Not all suffering will stop quickly; we still await the glorious second coming when he will wipe away every tear. But at least he can heal our hearts from the needless suffering of guilt and shame and despair, by bringing us forgiveness and love and restoration. Recent events make it clear that not all hearts have been healed, and that there is still much to do in prayer and forgiveness and in the outreach of friendship even to our enemies. But receiving, again and again, as often as we need it, the love of Christ as it flows from the cross, we can reach out in kindness to those around us, and to all whose paths cross ours, by extending with our own heart and hands that love which was born on Calvary and which can never die. It lives this moment in each of our hearts. Let that love flow freely wherever you go.