Fellow St Jude Parishioners:
On the Church’s calendar, every year on September 14, we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
An athlete steps out onto the ball field, with a Nike swish on his or her uniform. No lettering, no words, no music, no billboard, no explanation, and yet that swish speaks.
We see a truck drive by, on it an emblem of a blue circle, with the script letters GE inscribed, more direct in communicating to us.
We drive down the road and see the Golden Arches, and our stomach grumbles for a Big Mac.
Ad executives make or break their companies on how well the associations work.
Does the swish on the hat and shirt lead us to purchase Nike products? Similarly, the truck driving by with the GE logo… does that lead us to purchase a GE appliance? Do the Golden arches lead us to pull over and purchase that Big Mac?
The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. That is our corporate logo. The cross. As much as we might like it to be otherwise, no, the symbol of Christianity is not a “smiley face.”
Our founder warned his followers that he would be put to death. He was honest from the get-go.
In imitation of Jesus’ straightforward honesty, we point to the cross. Our lifetime does have joy, yes, but also self-sacrifice, putting the other first, and forgiving them, and once again making ourselves vulnerable to them.
From the moment that the first people who walked this earth – our first parents, Adam and Eve – disobeyed God, suffering entered into their lives, and the lives of their children, namely us. We hear God say to Eve, among other things, about childbearing: “in pain shall you bring forth children.”
We hear God say to Adam, “In toil shall you eat the yield of the ground. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat.”
As Jesus said it the way it was some two-thousand years ago, so did God the Father stated to Adam and Eve, on the dawn of their appearance here on earth. The same consistent message.
Of course, this was not their entire experience of life. Rather, the experience of suffering was added to the experience of joy that was already theirs, as God intended, from before the fall.
And so the experience is for us. Our life is filled with great joys, as well as great suffering. So it was with Adam and Eve. So it was in the time of Jesus. So it is today.
What we see in the celebration of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is life as it really is and making sense out of it.
We are to grow in our faith to the point that we accept that suffering will be a part of life, but that the suffering is not the end.
We do not simply celebrate the Cross or suffering today. We celebrate the exaltation of the Cross. We celebrate that Jesus, in his suffering and death on the cross, conquered sin and death. Lift high the cross. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
So let us enter into the celebration that is the exaltation of the Holy Cross, and let us hang on for the ride to the end where the suffering leads to a glorious resurrection.
Yours in Christ,
Fr Henry
