September 14, 2025: Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

A central idea of our faith is that God is more powerful than evil, and He has demonstrated His power by transforming the cross, once regarded as a heinous symbol of death, and has redeemed it to be a means to Life.

This act of redemption resulted because Christ obediently submitted Himself to the Father's Will, humbling Himself even to the point of a horrible death on the Cross.

Having established our redemption, God exalted the Cross.  Indeed, Christ was raised up, just like Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness.  The people who were bitten by the snakes looked to an image of the snake and were cured.  We look to what was once something horrible and now we praise Christ and His Cross because we see our path to salvation in it.

Notably, the phrase Eternal Life is used more than once in the short Gospel passage from John 3.  It is truly a manifestation of God's power that an instrument of death could provide a way to Eternal Life, so that we could be free from sin and live united with God.  Even as we look toward the full manifestation of that reality, we rejoice in how we can experience Heaven now and share in the victory that made it possible.

Surely, this reality motivated St. Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton to overcome the sorrow of her husband's passing and the shaming of those close to her when she became Roman Catholic to live out her call to holiness and do so much good serving others in religious life, including the founding of schools.

We also rejoice in Pope Leo XIV's birthday of 70 years today, and how he has taken on the role of Supreme Pontiff, leading us toward God so that each of us does our part in the Church to confess the name of Jesus, Who submitted to the Father's plan to be our means to salvation.