(Dear Reader: A central sign of our Catholic faith is the cross. It is a prominent feature in Church architecture and in the Church’s liturgy, indeed in the Church’s life. What follows is my own meditation on the cross for the recent feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and how it connects with our daily lived experience. Bishop Lucia)
A few years ago, the Christian Century magazine ran a short article about a North Carolina priest and his church. As part of their Holy Week observance, the parish placed three crosses in front of the church and draped them with black cloth. Shortly afterward, he got a phone call from the North Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce. The caller informed the priest: “We’ve been getting complaints about those crosses. … The tourists will not like them. … It will not be good for business. People come down here to get happy, not depressed.”
Now I don’t know about you, brothers and sisters, but it is no cross that is getting me depressed these days — school shootings, political violence, Congress and Parliaments fighting over praying, families being torn apart, the lack of civility and care for one another — now that is downright depressing! Actually, in my own prayer, I have been focusing on the cross as a means to lift us out of such madness and despair. That was the nub of my prayer late Wednesday afternoon in the Interfaith Chapel at LaGuardia Airport, waiting for a late flight to Syracuse after hearing the news of the shooting in Utah of Charlie Kirk. I sat in that space trying to make sense out of the senseless, thinking of the one “though He was in the form of God … emptied Himself … taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:6-7).
As one liturgical commentary writes about this Sunday: “This can feel like an odd feast; we raise up and exalt an instrument of torture, the means of our Savior’s death. But it is not about the cross itself; it is about the whole story, the love story of God never giving up on humanity. God’s love is self-emptying and life-giving; God enters into human life, enduring even suffering death, in order to unite us with God. It is this love that makes the cross beautiful. It transforms it from a death-dealing device to a sign of hope. If God can make this transformation happen, truly anything is possible with God” (Living Liturgy, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024).
In other words, brothers and sisters, the cross is a great gift. He who hung upon the cross understands our suffering because He suffered, and more greatly than one can imagine. You and I never have to wonder if Christ understands our suffering. Christ suffers with us when we hurt. His suffering is not just to forgive our sins but to be with us — to accompany us through the working of the Holy Spirit — as we each work our way through some of the great challenges of life.
One of the unforgettable images for me in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, was that of a cross perfectly formed from steel girders rising from the ashes and rubble of the World Trade Towers. It became a compass and symbol of hope for those facing the tragedy unfolding before them. In speaking of it, Franciscan Fr. Brian Jordan, who ministered to families at Ground Zero, said that the steel-beamed 17-foot cross was a “symbol of hope … [a] symbol of faith … [a] symbol of healing.” Another minister at the site spoke of when a family of a man who died in the attacks came to the cross shrine and left personal effects there: “It was as if the cross took in the grief and loss. I never felt Jesus more.”
The origins of today’s feast paint a similar picture. Back in the early fourth century, St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, made it her goal to discover the place of the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem. A divine sign enabled her to locate the site within the city, which she then had excavated. The Romans had built a Temple to the goddess Venus on Golgatha to cover the crucifixion site so as to discourage early Christians from making pilgrimages there. What happened instead was that it actually preserved the site from the elements and when the site was excavated, three crosses, the plaque on Jesus’ cross, and nails were all found. To determine which was the true cross, St. Helena took the three fragments to an ill person, but only one of the fragments brought healing. Helena then had a Church built over the site, which exists still today in Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, also known as the Church of the Resurrection.
So, sisters and brothers, after a week (if not weeks) in which we too may feel our patience worn and of letting out a few complaints, this holy feast stands before us, recalling the extraordinary grace and power of the cross of Christ. The religious order known as the Congregation of the Holy Cross (think Notre Dame University or Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass.) puts it this way in its Constitution 8, on “The Cross: Our Hope”: “There is no failure the Lord’s love cannot reverse, no humiliation He cannot exchange for blessing, no anger He cannot dissolve, no routine He cannot transfigure. All is swallowed up in victory. He has nothing but gifts to offer. It remains only for us to find how even the cross can be borne as a gift.”
This idea of “gift” turns me to one more important moment in the life of the Church of Syracuse this Sunday, the beginning of the Hope Appeal to support the ministries of our diocesan Church. This year’s theme uses the image of a tree as it invites you and me to be “rooted in faith, growing in hope.” What better way to honor today’s feast than by recalling that the cross of Jesus is also known as the Tree of Life. Yet, the fruitfulness of the cross — the hope Christ brings to our world — can only be seen if you and I take to heart Jesus’ words to his disciples while washing their feet before He would carry and mount the cross: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do” (Jn 13:15).
This is the heart of the Hope Appeal — the Heart of Jesus — and aren’t we looking for a way (I think most of us would agree) to put some heart back into our world. So let me leave you with this thought as I invite you to be part of this year’s appeal and its pilgrimage of hope in our diocese:
“Jesus never wrote a book. … He never owned a home. … He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. … While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. … He was nailed to a cross. … When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave. … Twenty centuries have come and gone, and He is still the central figure of the human race — all the armies that marched, all the navies ever built, all the parliaments sat — have not affected the life of man and woman upon earth as powerfully as this One Solitary Life.”
We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world!
