Today would typically be the twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time but instead, we celebrate the Cross of Christ in a special way. Most feast days are not celebrated when they happen to fall on a Sunday but, in the case of the Exaltation of the Cross, it takes the place of this Sunday in Ordinary Time.
As Bishop Barron says it would have seemed strange to early Christians to celebrate the Cross. Kind of like us celebrating the noose or the electric chair today.
But, of course, in hindsight, the Cross is different. It is the way God satisfied the debt that was owed by man for his sinfulness. What happened on that awful Cross at Calvary allowed man the possibility to be reconciled with God and be saved. That’s why today is a feast, a celebration.
The second part of today’s Gospel reading tells us why God did this. It is because He loves us so much. That most famous of Gospel passages explains the why and how of our faith.
And how are we to respond to such wondrous love? By loving God and each other. Given the events of this past week and the way many are reacting to those events it doesn’t look like, as a people at least, we’re doing too well.
It goes without saying that political violence has no place in our society and certainly not in the heart of a Christian. If we allow evil to be our guide we will end up excluded from Heaven. In the old song American Pie there is a line that says Satan was laughing with delight. I can only imagine that’s the case right now in our country and world.
It’s our responsibility to take God’s great love for us and pass it on to others, even others we disagree strongly with. That doesn’t mean we’re all the same and differences don’t matter. They do, but we still have to love them. Maybe all we can do in love is to pray for them, but that’s a concrete step making the intellectual idea of love manifest.
So this week, as we think of God’s love for us and what it has meant, I encourage you to think about those we dislike or disagree with, and how we might pass on God’s love to them as well as to those we naturally like and agree with. Perhaps that’s our cross to bear.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
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