My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ; the reading from the book of Numbers, about the placing of the serpent on the cross never made any sense to me for the longest time. We cannot possibly be saying that Our Lord was like the serpent? Why would the people of Israel look upon the serpent in the same way that they looked, and still look, upon Our Lord on the Cross?
To resolve this conundrum St. Gregory of Nazianzus came to the rescue and explains:
That brazen serpent was hung up as a remedy for the biting serpents, not as a type of him that suffered for us but as a contrast. It saved those that looked upon it, not because they believed it to live but because it was killed, and killed with it were the powers that were subject to it, being destroyed as it deserved.
To repeat the point, the serpent is not representative of Our Lord, but a contrast. It was sin, and the sinful body of man, that was pinned to the Cross. The Son of Man survived the Cross becoming for us the cause of our redemption.
Think of the words of the angels on the Sunday of the Resurrection to Mary Magdalene:
He is not here; he has risen, just as he said (Mt 28: 6).
Indeed, He is no longer on the Cross, for through His Passion, Our Lord nailed sin to the cross, and released us from the ancient curse, so that, as on Easter, we can say:
My soul like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the hunter (Ps. 124:7).
In other words, through His sorrowful Passion, Our Lord demonstrated that the Cross is the tool through which we too can purge our sinful bodies. The Cross is exalted today, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, because it is the remedy for the children of those who suffered the bitterness of being expelled from the garden.
And yet, despite recognizing this fact in principle, too often our behaviour is like those of our spiritual ancestors, the sinful people of Israel, who in their relationship to God
flattered him with their mouths
and lied to him with their tongues,
Though their hearts were not steadfast toward him,
nor were they faithful to his covenant.
Too often, the Cross is not exalted, it is most certainly not the raison d’etre of our lives, but simply an ornament, a decoration.
I will offer you a couple of examples. There have been times when priests are told: “Father, please make sure that the Mass is over by x time, because xxxx have to go to work.”
Behold, brothers and sisters, the exaltation not of the Cross, but of time, and work!
Now the Mass is not long because the priest offers long homilies. It gets lengthened because one takes time with the prayers, so that they are enunciated properly, and make sense to those who may hear them. They are slow, above all, because many of the prayers of the Mass are directed toward God. Could my conversation, could our conversation, with God be rushed?
There is also a complaint that the Mass is lengthened when we use the first Eucharistic canon, which, as you will see today, contains the names of a number of saints. “What does he take the long prayer,” we grumble when we hear this particular Eucharistic prayer. The counter-question that could be posed would be, why are we in such a rush to get the Mass over and done with? Is the Mass such a chore that we want it to be done in as short a time as possible? When we come to Mass, do we realise that we are here to exalt the Master of the Cross? If so, should we not crave to spend as much time with Him as possible?
Moreover, it would be worthwhile remembering that many of the names of the saints in the Eucharistic canon are those who like Our Lord embraced their cross and shed their blood, not just for Our Lord, but for us. It behooves us, therefore, to be faithful to, and cherish their memory!
Indeed, too often, the Mass has become the place where it is not the Master of the Cross that is exalted, but the community, or worse the priest! The community exalts itself by preferring forms of worship that affirm itself – we prefer happy-clappy songs that make us feel good, that raise our spirits, rather than help us contemplate the state of our relationship with Our Lord. Too often, we make the Mass about the rhetorical capacities of the priest, rather than his faithfulness to the rubrics. Too often more time is spent on a well-delivered homily, so that the rest of the Mass, and particularly the canon, the Eucharistic prayer, is rushed through. Too often, we spend more time in thanking the members of the community who have helped in the organization of the Mass, rather than in the Mass itself.
The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross offers us an opportunity to pause, and to ask ourselves, who, or what, is it that I am exalting in my life? Is it Our Lord, the author of life, who made the Cross the Tree of Life? Or is it the wiles of the serpent who continues to slither among us and drag us bodily into the pits of hell?
Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi,
quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum
We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you,
because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world!
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish church of Our Lady of the Immacualate Conception, Pangim on 14 September 2026.)
No comments:
Post a Comment