September 14^th 2014.  The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Gospel: John 3:13-17

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL John 3:13-17

Jesus said to Nicodemus:

No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who came down from heaven,
the Son of Man who is in heaven;
and the Son of Man must be lifted up
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so that everyone who believes
may have eternal life in him.
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.
For God sent his Son into the world
not to condemn the world,
but so that through him the world might be saved.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The forty years that Israel spent in the desert represents the spiritual journey in which I cease to be the reference point of my own existence and entrust myself to God. In the first reading, the people of Israel follow their own path and end up in a region of serpents. We too follow serpent-infested paths when we go our own way. How are we to undertake this journey away from a focus on ourselves and towards a life oriented utterly to God? It is the Cross that teaches us to abandon ourselves to the Lord. Often it is the incomprehensibility and pain of life that becomes the occasion for us to entrust ourselves to Jesus. It is in moments of desolation that I am challenged to either reject the existence of God or make him the meaning of my existence. When we give ourselves into the hands of God in our tribulation and pain, He is able to work wonders. The Cross becomes the scalpel with which God forms us into a new creation.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross brings the centrality of the Cross into relief

This year the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross falls providentially on Sunday. Most years it falls on a weekday and the majority of the Catholic faithful do not have the opportunity to celebrate it. The Cross is a central element in our faith. Without a shadow of a doubt, we cannot hope to understand the nature of salvation if we do not pass through this gateway of the Cross. The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was instituted in order that we might bring the importance of the Cross into central relief.

The forty years in the desert represents the journey in each human heart towards total entrustment to God

The first reading comes from one of the first five books of the Old Testament, the Book of Numbers. The book narrates the events in the desert after the people of Israel escape from Egypt. This period of forty years in the desert had paradigmatic status for the Israelites: it became emblematic of the interior spiritual journey of the person. The time in the desert was a time of transformation and it has lessons that must be applied today to our daily existence. The escape from Egypt required little time, relatively speaking, and consisted in the unfolding story of the ten plagues, the night of the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea. The Hebrew teachers used to say that just one night sufficed to take Israel out of Egypt, but to take Egypt out of the hearts of the Israelites took forty years. And that is how it is with all of us. It is easy to change our external circumstances, but a much more complicated thing to change our hearts.

The period in the desert represents the process of conversion. How can we escape from the prison that consists in the fact that we have made ourselves the focus of our own existence?

The time in the desert is filled with tests and temptations. Forty years represents an entire generation in chronological terms. In Old Testament times, forty years was the period required not only to reach adulthood, but to become a grandparent and to enter the stage of life when one became dependent on others. During the forty years in the desert, most of those who had escaped from Egypt would have died, and only their children would have entered the Promised Land. The time in the desert thus represents the transformation from the “old man” to the “new man”, the person prior to baptism and the person after baptism, the person before conversion and the person afterwards. What must the person prior to baptism overcome in order to change the old man into the new? What is required if one is to become a child of God who knows how to live in the Promised Land? The person must overcome the limits imposed on him by the self-referential nature of his prior existence. He must escape from the prison that consists in the fact that the person has made himself the measure and goal of his own existence.

As soon as we begin to follow our own paths, then we enter the region of serpents

In the first reading, the people do not understand why God has made them undertake this arduous journey and they begin to grumble. This account, which might seem rather archaic at first sight, has much to tell us about our own situations. When we begin to make our own vision absolute, failing to entrust our lives to God’s providence, then we too are bitten by the serpent. We are eaten alive by something that takes us into a kind of death. As soon as we begin to trust our own intelligence above that of God, presuming to tell God how one should journey through life, then we find ourselves with the burden of our lives upon our shoulders. The Sinai desert is composed of a series of identical hills, one after the other, and it is difficult to find the way through them because you can go around in circles a thousand times. The people of Israel decided to follow their own path and ended up among serpents. As soon as we begin to rely on ourselves for the direction we take in life, then we finish up among serpents.

The people are saved when they raise their eyes to behold God’s solution to their predicament

The act by which the Israelites are saved is genuinely strange. Moses raises a serpent made of bronze. The people must renounce their own intelligence, their own sense of which direction to take, and raise their eyes to gaze on the very thing that is afflicting them. In this way the Israelites are challenged to gaze upon the work of the Lord, on the thing that the Lord commands them to look at, and as a result they are saved.

The Cross is the place where we learn to entrust ourselves to God, where we decide that God exists and is the meaning of our existence. When we entrust ourselves to God by embracing the Cross, then we are transformed by him into a new creation

All of this becomes concrete in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved through the absurdity of the Cross. We go around in circles trying to avoid the Cross, but it is the place where we learn to entrust ourselves to God. The things that we find incomprehensible, the things that crucify us, these are the concrete situations of our existence where we consign ourselves into the hands of God. The Crosses that present themselves to us are the places where we decide whether God exists or not, whether the Father is the one to which we must entrust ourselves or not. If we abandon ourselves into His hands as Jesus did, then we allow ourselves to be formed by Him. The Cross is often the scalpel of God that transforms us into new creatures. When we give ourselves into the hands of God in tribulation and pain, He is able to work wonders! This is not something that we can justify rationally. Either we decide to entrust ourselves or we do not. Either we abandon ourselves into His hands one day, or we continue to follow our own paths that are infested with serpents. The love of God for us is only comprehended when we entrust ourselves to Him totally. Jesus loved us to the extent of delivering himself into our hands. He awaits until we do the opposite – entrust ourselves to Him and experience what He can achieve with our lives.