Benedict at Lourdes
Pope Benedict celebrated the liturgy of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross this morning at Lourdes. He afterwards gave an important address to the gathering of the French episcopate, and concluded his day with a rich reflection on the mystery of the Eucharist at the end of a candle-light eucharistic procession. The Vatican Radio website has all these reflections.
Here is an excerpt from his homily at Mass:
“What a great thing it is to possess the Cross! He who possesses it possesses a treasure” (Saint Andrew of Crete, Homily X on the Exaltation of the Cross, PG 97, 1020). On this day when the Church’s liturgy celebrates the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Gospel you have just heard reminds us of the meaning of this great mystery: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that men might be saved (cf. Jn 3:16). The Son of God became vulnerable, assuming the condition of a slave, obedient even to death, death on a cross (cf. Phil 2:8). By his Cross we are saved. The instrument of torture which, on Good Friday, manifested God’s judgement on the world, has become a source of life, pardon, mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace. “In order to be healed from sin, gaze upon Christ crucified!” said Saint Augustine (Treatise on Saint John, XII, 11). By raising our eyes towards the Crucified one, we adore him who came to take upon himself the sin of the world and to give us eternal life. And the Church invites us proudly to lift up this glorious Cross so that the world can see the full extent of the love of the Crucified one for all. She invites us to give thanks to God because from a tree which brought death, life has burst out anew. On this wood Jesus reveals to us his sovereign majesty, he reveals to us that he is exalted in glory. Yes, “Come, let us adore him!” In our midst is he who loved us even to giving his life for us, he who invites every human being to draw near to him with trust.
This is the great mystery that Mary also entrusts to us this morning, inviting us to turn towards her Son. In fact, it is significant that, during the first apparition to Bernadette, Mary begins the encounter with the sign of the Cross. More than a simple sign, it is an initiation into the mysteries of the faith that Bernadette receives from Mary. The sign of the Cross is a kind of synthesis of our faith, for it tells how much God loves us; it tells us that there is a love in this world that is stronger than death, stronger than our weaknesses and sins. The power of love is stronger than the evil which threatens us. It is this mystery of the universality of God’s love for men that Mary came to reveal here, in Lourdes. She invites all people of good will, all those who suffer in heart or body, to raise their eyes towards the Cross of Jesus, so as to discover there the source of life, the source of salvation.
In my own homily this morning, I quoted words written to commemorate this feast on September 14, 1939. They were written for her fellow Carmelite sisters, as they prepared to renew their vows in the convent at Echt in Holland, by Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross).
Ave Crux, Spes unica! The world is in flames. The conflagration can also reach our house. But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven. It will lift one who embraces it in faith, love, and hope into the bosom of the Trinity.
The juxtaposition of today’s “exaltation” of the Cross, as “a source of life, pardon, mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace,” with tomorrow’s feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows is a reminder, at least to me, that the Cross was also a source of incomprehensible pain for Mary on Good Friday, As Flannery O’Connor might say, faith is an arduous road, with many opportunities for failure along the way. Yet Mary, as human as we are, never faltered.
Why did Jesus have to die? And why did he have to be crucified? Some
Christians have a pat answer: it’s because you are a sinner. And
Jesus died to save you, a sinner.
I heard an agnostic object to this, saying that he wasn’t that big a
sinner, and that he didn’t want anyone to kill Jesus. So he didn’t
want Jesus to have to die for him. Is the world truly that wicked
that it needs an innocent God-man to die for it?
St Augustine saw in himself a darkness: the willingness to turn a
blind eye to evil, to consent to evil, and usually just for the heck
of it. St Augustine is a realist. There is something about all of us
that inclines to making this world more like hell than like heaven.
So we don’t need to be convinced that the world needs redemption. We
just need to be convinced that we need redemption.
Quite possibly the most well-known biblical quote comes from the
Gospel we heard today. You see it everywhere, on signs at bus-stops,
supermarkets, football stadiums:
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’
Although it’s true that God loves the world a great deal, the
word ‘so’ is often misinterpreted here. It doesn’t mean ‘so much’ in
the sense of ‘For God loved the world so *much* that…’ but it’s in
the sense of ‘thus’ or ‘in this way’.
The passage really means:
‘For God loved the world *this way*: that he gave his only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’
Could God have saved us another way? Quite possibly. But the passage
tells us simply that *this* is the way God chose to show us his love.
So God loves the world, and the world rejects the Son. Would we have
crucified Jesus if we were there? But we are part of a world that
would, that did, reject Jesus. And it prepared a cross for him.
Although the world crucifies God, the initiative and power is always
God’s. It is Jesus who embraces his cross, embraces the worst the
world has to offer — and killing God is the worst possible thing the
world could ever muster. Jesus is not a passive object in his arrest
and execution. He goes to it willingly, knowing that his hour has
come. It is he who lays down his life, and no one takes it away from
him.
Jesus says, ‘When you lift up the Son of man then you will know that
I Am’ (John 8.28). It is when Christ is on the cross that we see his
divinity manifest.
Medieval images show the Father supporting the arms of the cross,
breathing out the Holy Spirit as a dove upon the crucified Christ. On
the cross we see the eternal love of the Father for the Son, given
freely and utterly in the Holy Spirit. The worst thing in the world,
killing God, reveals the best thing the world could ever know: the
love of the Trinity.
Later in John’s gospel Jesus says, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all to myself’ (12.32). Not simply ‘all men’ as
most translations have it, but ‘all things’ are drawn to Christ,
lifted up on the cross. Christ on the cross becomes the head of all
things.
The worst the world has to offer is just not bad enough, nor ever
could be. On the cross we see most clearly that love which is the
Trinity, drawing an instrument of evil, the cross, and turning it
into something glorious. By the cross Jesus draws all things to
himself, with himself as head.
And as for us, no matter how dark our shadows, our sins — there is
nothing that cannot be lit by the glorious cross.
~ Leon Pereira O.P.
(Prior of Holy Cross, Leicester, England preaches on its patronal
feast.)
http://torch.op.org/preaching/sermon/1245