Ave Crux Spes Unica: Homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today is a doubly auspicious day, for not only is it the day of the Lord, but we also have the privilege of being able to celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This feast originates from the time when the relic of the true Cross – discovered by St. Helen, mother of the emperor Constantine – was first exposed for veneration in 335 A.D. in front of the newly constructed church of the Holy Sepulcher.

This is the historical context of this feast, but how do we exalt the cross, and why should we?

My dear brothers and sister, the ancient Fathers of the Church loved Our Lord, and the Cross, so much that when they read the Old Testament, they looked everywhere in it for a prefiguring of Our Lord, and in some cases, His Cross. Before I move on, let us pause and think for a second, they looked for Our Lord and His Cross everywhere! If only our hearts and eyes were filled with such fire my dear brothers and sisters.

It is because the Fathers read the scriptures with this eye, and of course, because Our Lord himself made the analogy, that we read about the episode of the bronze serpent on the cross raised by Moses, from the book of Numbers.

"And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

But why a serpent? Is the dying, or dead, body of Our Lord to be compared to that of a serpent? The answer in someways, is yes! Listen to St. Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians (5: 21):

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The human body, after the Fall, the same fall engineered by the ancient serpent, is sinful. This is not say that there is no good in our bodies, but that it is also the storehouse of much that is ill.

What was nailed to the cross was not just the body of Our Lord. It was also our sinful nature, tied to this flesh, that was nailed to the cross. We were rescued from the second, spiritual, death because even in pain, when temptation is greatest, Our Lord resisted temptation, and triumphed. In so doing, He, “who knew no sin”, and who willingly took on sinful human nature, but did not sin, also ensured that it was human nature that triumphed with Him.

It is through the death of this man on the cross that we know that there is life after death, and we know how to resist temptation, why we must resist temptation, and to what end to put suffering, which is the product of sin. Accept suffering, embrace the cross and we will triumph with Christ.

Listen to the exultation of St. Gregory Nazianzus, the first two sentences of which we often hear at Easter time:

O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? You are overthrown by the cross. You are slain by him who is the giver of life. You are without breath, dead, without motion, even though you keep the form of a serpent lifted up high on a pole.

As Saint Bede, patron of the seminary I was sent to, teaches;

Because death was from a serpent, it was represented by the brazen image of a serpent in the account in Numbers.

In other words, what was nailed to the cross was death. The snake represents the reign of the serpent, the Evil one, who introduced death into the world. His eventual death, through the cross, is foretold, through this episode in the book of Numbers and realized eventually by the sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross.

And so, the Cross does not exist for its own sake, as a pretty marker of our sect. But, as in the words of St. Andrew of Crete:

It is raised, not to receive glory (for with Christ nailed to it what greater glory could it have?) but to give glory to God who is worshiped on it and proclaimed by it.

So should it be with our lives, where we not just embrace the cross, but seek it, desire it, and love it, accepting our suffering because as in the words of St. Andrew the apostle, it is the cross which will carry us; no (!), restore us, to our maker.

O Bona Crux (O Good Cross), made beautiful by the body of the Lord, long have I desired thee, ardently have I loved thee, unceasingly have I sought thee, and now thou art ready for my eager soul. Receive me from among men and restore me to my Master, so that He, who redeemed me through thee, shalt receive me through thee. Amen.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful gathered at the Royal Chapel of St. Anthony, Old Goa, on 14 Sep 2025.)

(Image reference: Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Luigi Gregori, late 1870s, Basilica of the Sacred Heart, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.)