The Cross Exalted: Where Is the Cross in My Life?
MASS Nos autem gloriári
LESSON Philippians 2: 5-11
GOSPEL St John 12: 31-36
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.”
The Romans did not invent crucifixion, but they made terrible use of it. By the time of Our Lord it had become one of the most degrading forms of execution in the Roman world, intended not merely to kill but publicly to shame and terrify. Yet today the Church places that same Cross before us and calls it glorious. She sings Nos autem gloriari oportet in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi — “It behoves us to glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” The nails are still nails, the suffering is still suffering, and Calvary has not ceased to be terrible; but the Church looks upon the Cross from the far side of Easter and knows what the world could not see. The instrument intended to destroy Christ has become the sign of His victory.
Our Lord gives us the key in today’s Gospel: “Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.” St John immediately tells us that He spoke of the death He should die. Christ’s “lifting up” is His Crucifixion. His enemies think they are bringing Him down; in truth He is being raised before the world. His hands are fixed to the wood, yet those hands draw mankind to Him. His apparent helplessness conceals the decisive act of redemption. St Cyril of Jerusalem therefore told his catechumens that the Cross is the greatest glory of the Church. Christ healed particular men and raised Lazarus from one tomb; but upon the Cross, Cyril says, the whole world was redeemed.
The Epistle explains how that victory was accomplished. Christ “humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross. For which cause God also hath exalted Him.” The order matters. His exaltation comes through His obedience. Fallen man wants to rise by asserting himself and protecting his own will. Christ descends. Adam reached towards the forbidden tree in disobedience; Christ stretches out His hands upon the tree of the Cross in obedience. The first Adam brings death through a tree; the New Adam makes a tree the instrument of life. That is exactly what the Preface says: God established the salvation of mankind upon the wood of the Cross so that from whence death came, life might rise again, and he who conquered by a tree might by a tree also be conquered. The pattern of the Fall is reversed.
St Thomas Aquinas asks why it was fitting that Christ should die upon a Cross. He sees in it not an accidental circumstance of the Passion but a visible proclamation of Christ’s work. Raised between heaven and earth, Christ reconciles man to God. His arms extended upon the wood signify the breadth of His charity and the gathering of the nations. The tree of Calvary answers the tree of the Fall. Divine Wisdom makes even the manner of Christ’s death preach the Gospel. And so the liturgy can dare to sing in the Alleluia: Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dulcia ferens pondera — sweet wood, sweet nails, bearing the sweet burden. There is nothing sweet in crucifixion considered by itself. The wood and nails are called sweet because of Him Whom they carry and because of the fruit of His sacrifice. We do not love suffering for its own sake. We love Christ; and because we love Christ, we learn not to flee every sacrifice which fidelity to Him may require.
That is where this feast becomes personal. It is possible to venerate the Cross in church while resisting the cross which enters our own life. We may bow before a crucifix and then resent the person who requires our patience; speak reverently of sacrifice and complain when duty interferes with our convenience; admire the obedience of Christ while defending our own will at every turn. St Bonaventure begins his Tree of Life from St Paul’s words: “With Christ I am nailed to the Cross.” The Cross cannot remain merely an object before us. Its form has to enter the Christian soul.
Most of our crosses are not dramatic. That is partly why we fail to recognise them. We imagine that genuine sacrifice would be heroic, while the thing God actually asks seems irritatingly ordinary. It may be patience with someone whose faults we know too well; fidelity to a duty nobody notices; prayer when it is dry; accepting correction without immediately defending ourselves; resisting the same temptation again; forgiving someone who has not become easier to forgive; bearing illness or limitation without allowing it to make us bitter. These are not glamorous things. But they are often the exact places where self-will is surrendered and charity grows.
So there is an uncomfortable question in this feast: what cross am I refusing because it is not the cross I would have chosen? We are often quite willing to carry an imaginary cross. The imaginary one fits our picture of ourselves. It is noble, intelligible and perhaps even impressive. The real cross is usually less flattering. It arrives without consulting us. It touches the part of us which least wants to surrender. It may be the responsibility we cannot abandon, the relationship in which charity remains difficult, the grief which has not resolved itself, the hidden loneliness no one notices, the consequences of our own mistakes, or simply the daily demand to remain faithful when nothing feels heroic.
And we must make an important distinction. Christianity does not say that every painful circumstance is good, that injustice should never be resisted, or that suffering should not be relieved when it can be. The Cross is not an excuse for cruelty. What it teaches is that suffering cannot always be removed, and that when it cannot, it need not be wasted. In Christ, God has entered suffering Himself. The Son of God knows weariness, abandonment, humiliation, bodily pain and death. The Cross gives us more than an explanation of suffering; it gives us Christ within it. We may not understand what God is doing with a particular burden. The Apostles did not understand Good Friday either. But the fact that we cannot yet see the fruit does not mean that God cannot bring fruit from it.
There is therefore something very practical we can do when the cross comes. Before resentment settles in, before we make the burden the centre of our identity, we can place it consciously beside the Cross of Christ and say: “Lord, I do not understand this, and I do not pretend to like it; but I will not carry it apart from Thee.” That is not resignation. It is an act of faith. The burden becomes something offered rather than merely endured. And if our cross involves another person, we should also ask whether we ourselves are becoming an unnecessary cross to somebody else through impatience, harshness, selfishness or neglect. Veneration of the Cross ought to make us more attentive, not less, to the burdens others carry.
This is why today’s feast leads naturally to the altar. The sacrifice of the Mass is not another sacrifice added to Calvary. The one Sacrifice of Christ is made sacramentally present. The Body once nailed to the Cross is the Body given to us; the Blood once poured out is the Blood of the chalice. We do not carry our crosses by willpower alone. We bring them here. We place our poor obedience within His perfect obedience, our small sacrifices within His one Sacrifice, and our weakness beside His grace. The Christian does not save himself by suffering well; he is united to the Saviour whose suffering has redeemed him.
Before this Mass ends, then, each of us should be able to name one thing. Not ten resolutions and not some grand programme of spiritual improvement: one cross which we know God is asking us to carry more faithfully. One resentment to surrender. One duty to perform without complaint. One person to forgive. One habit to mortify. One hidden grief to unite deliberately to Christ. The question is not simply, “Do I believe in the Cross?” The harder question is: where is the Cross already present in my life, and where am I still trying to escape it?
If we can name that place, we know where today’s feast must begin to bear fruit. We need not pretend the burden is easy. We need only refuse to carry it apart from Christ. For what is truly given to Him is never wasted. Hidden fidelity matters. Costly forgiveness matters. Perseverance matters. Obedience matters. And death itself does not have the last word.
Nos autem gloriari oportet in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi.
It behoves us to glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
For there is our salvation, our life and our resurrection.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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