Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
September 14, 2024
Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
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.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Jesus recounts the day when snakes swarmed the Israelites because of their bitterness and resentment at having to wander through the wilderness. In response to Moses’ prayer for mercy, God sent a remedy. When venom found its way into their veins, all the Israelites needed to do was look upon a bronze-sculpted serpent lifted up by Moses, and they would be healed. Jesus tells us this is what his crucifixion is like—gaze upon his crucifixion, and you will be healed.
Imagine seeing a crucifix for the first time without any context. Exaltation is perhaps the furthest thing from your mind as you gaze on an emaciated and dying man. But since the church’s earliest days, Christians have understood Christ’s crucifixion to be his supreme moment of triumph: his exaltation. Hence the name of today’s feast, the Exaltation of the Cross.
Our hearts naturally rebel from the prospect of the Cross as exaltation: “Suffering is evil! It comes from sin! It can’t be glorious!” This reaction is understandable. But if you sublimate your rebellion to the wisdom of the church, you can see that in Christ, our venom is changed to a remedy. God has brought us a paradoxical kind of healing in his great love and providence: the suffering one lifted high.
To be a human being is to be infected by the deadly poison of sin and its effects. Pain, loneliness, grief, fear, and bewilderment course through our veins. With all this poison coagulating our blood, we must gaze on Christ crucified. Look and believe. This may not take your suffering away. Christ had to endure his passion unto death. But it can transform your suffering into something beautiful. Suffering, by God’s grace, becomes the avenue of his light and healing. This is why we exalt the cross.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, we confess that we have done many things that we are ashamed of, which we would prefer be kept hidden in the dark. Yet we also need to remember that no sin of ours is greater than your love for us. So please grant us the courage to stop hiding and come out into the light of your forgiveness and mercy. Amen.
Saint of the Day
For centuries, the Church has gathered on this date to venerate the cross upon which Jesus died.
On this date in 320, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, St. Helen discovered the site where local Christians believed Jesus was crucified. Underneath this site of a pagan temple, she found three buried crosses—Jesus’ own, and the crosses of the two thieves executed beside him. How did Helen identify which cross was the one on which Jesus died? A sick woman was told to kiss each cross, and when she kissed the third cross, she was healed.
Helen also discovered the inscription that was placed on the cross above Jesus’ head and the nails that pierced his hands and feet. When she was certain she had found the true cross, it was lifted up for all to see and the gathered people responded in acclamation of praise.
The date of this discovery was remembered and used to dedicate churches that were later built over the places of Jesus’ death and burial. Pieces of the true cross were kept in a silver reliquary box in the church that was built over Jesus’ tomb. Early authors all agree that the relics were comprised of pieces of the true cross; the cross was not preserved in its entirety.
In the centuries that followed, conflicts overran the Holy Land multiple times, and invading forces claimed the relics as a prize. When Emperor Heraclius recovered the pieces of the cross in 629 after one incursion, he gathered the people on this date for a solemn liturgy to venerate the relics. When the pieces were lifted up for veneration, many sick were miraculously cured.
The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross is one of the great feast days of the Orthodox Church. Pieces of the true cross are part of the reliquary collection in the Basilica, and brought out for veneration, especially on Good Friday. The reliquary also holds a piece of the rock of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified, as well as pieces of his tomb.
Learn more about Golgotha, and why they called it the "place of the skull" in our virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where you can make an online visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the ancient church built over the place of the crucifixion and Jesus' tomb, where Helen visited over a thousand years ago.
On this feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, let us remember Jesus’ suffering and death and look to the cross for healing and life!