Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity/Holy Cross Day
“They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh,
with the affections and lusts” … “Go and do thou likewise”
A double text. Words from today’s Epistle and Gospel, yet words, too, which illumine and are illumined in turn by another feature of this day, namely, Holy Cross.
I have often been struck by the coincidence of the early beginning of Fall and the return to School with The Feast of the Holy Cross on September 14th, and especially, with one of its early and associated titles, namely, the Invention of the Holy Cross. It speaks profoundly and yet paradoxically to the nature of the intellectual enterprise. Inventio crucis.
Invention? Yes, but not in the sense of something fabricated out of our fevered imaginations. The feast derives from the historical and celebrated visit of Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, to Jerusalem, and from her so-called discovery of the Holy Cross in the early fourth century as well as the exposition or “Exaltation” of the supposed true cross in the seventh century. Inventio does not suggest fabrication and invention so much as discovery and disclosure.
In the Christian understanding, humility and sacrifice are de rigueur in the passionate search for understanding, the eros of intellectual and spiritual life. The cross is the meeting place of lovers which demands our action of loving service, our acting out of the charity of Christ, something which belongs to the deep meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is the true neighbour? “He that showed mercy on him.” But what is that mercy except exactly that which is ultimately seen on the Cross of Christ.
