Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Cross
“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me”
There is something quite wonderful about saints’ days and holy days, whether major or minor. They often bring out connections and associations which belong to the spiritual coherence of our life together in the body of Christ, the Church. In September, for example, there is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary that already points us towards the Nativity of Christ at Christmas. Though there is not a shred of biblical or scriptural reference to Mary’s birth, only later legends and many depictions in art, it is a necessary and reasonable deduction that she was born and that her birth (like her conception) is part of the divine economy, part of God’s plan and purpose for our humanity. She is the chosen vehicle and vessel through whom God becomes man and those ideas as tied to the Annunciation illumine the mystery of the Incarnation. Her active acquiescence to the divine will conveyed by angel’s words is the essence of faith. “Be it unto me according to thy word.” The purpose of her whole being is discovered in her willing the divine will for our salvation.
That in turn leads to another feast, The Feast of the Holy Cross. It actually refers to the post-biblical event of the supposed discovery or invention and subsequent exaltation of the true Cross by the Empress Helena in the fourth century. It is a way of calling our attention to the deeper purpose of Christ’s Incarnation. His conception and birth through Mary is now seen in the light of his passion. The passion concentrates on the cross. The Feast of the Holy Cross focuses our attention on the purpose and meaning of the cross.
At once a hideous and uncouth thing, a symbol of the reality of cruelty and torture, of death and shame, it has become the means of our being joined to Christ, to our being gathered to him in love and joy. But only if we look upon the cross. In his being lifted up on the cross and our looking upon him there is the hope of our being lifted up into the love of God.
