The Exaltation Of The Holy Cross

First Point

The feast celebrated by the Church today was originally established when Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, discovered the Holy Cross and when it was presented with great honor and received with much glory throughout the world by all Christians. However, this feast became much more important when the Emperor Heraclius brought this Holy Cross back in triumph, carrying it on his shoulders and placing it in Jerusalem on the same spot of Calvary where Jesus Christ was attached to it. We ought to unite ourselves with the joy that the Church displays on this day by the great solemnity with which she honors this sacred wood. At the same time, we ought to enter into the sentiments of Saint Paul when he says that we must glory in the cross of Jesus Christ.¹ It is indeed in this cross that we must place all our glory, says the same Apostle, casting our eyes on Jesus Christ, our divine Master, who placed his glory and all his happiness in suffering and dying on this cross, despising the shame and ignominy² that accompanied the cross. For this Holy Cross (which has since become so venerable toChristians) was, as the same Apostle says, a cause for scandal to theJews and a folly to the Gentiles.³The Apostles, according to the expression of the same Saint Paul, made it an honor for them to preach Jesus Christ crucified throughout the world,⁴ because they professed to know nothing but the same Jesus crucified,⁵ quite far from voiding the cross of Jesus Christ,⁶ which is for us the virtue and the power of God.⁷ Let us, therefore, spend this day and the rest of our life in great respect and profound adoration before this sacred mystery, which, as the same Saint Pauladds, was hidden before Jesus Christ for our glory. The princes of this world did not have the advantage of knowing it,⁸ although the Crossis the instrument of our salvation and has procured for us the life of grace and our resurrection.

Second Point

It is not fitting that the honor we must pay to the cross of our Lord be limited to showing it respect and to adoring it. Rather, we must love it with all the affection of our heart and desire to die attached to it as Jesus Christ our divine Master desired. For, as the author of the Imitation says, those who embrace the cross of Jesus Christ with a good heart need not fear the dreadful sentence of damnation. Because we have been freed from sin by means of it, we must not doubt (and we ought to have this confidence) that if we love the cross in union with Jesus Christ, who loved it tenderly and bore it with extreme joy, all the miseries of this life will become pleasant and agreeable to us. In this way we will be truly happy, having found our paradise in this world, because we will have entered into the sharing of the suffering spirit of Jesus Christ, who has reconciled us by his death on this holy cross, as Saint Paul says, and made us holy, pure, and beyond reproach before God.⁹ Let us, then, consider attentively how much we owe to this sacred wood for having contributed this way to our sanctification. By a zeal of ardent love, let us raise it up to Jesus Christ to unite it to him, for he still loves it now, as he loves our salvation, and is glad to have borne it for our sanctification. Therefore, when you have some trouble, unite with Jesus suffering. Love his cross, because you are one of his members;¹⁰ this union and love will soothe your pains and make them much more tolerable.

Third Point

All the external and internal honors we can pay to the Savior’s cross will be of little use to us unless we honor it in another way, by bearing constantly,¹¹ as a good and faithful servant, the cross¹² that the same Jesus, our Master, wishes to give us, who remember that he was quite willing to be crucified for love of us. As Minucius Felix so well says, although Jesus Christ requires that we adore his Holy Cross, this is not what he asks the most. It is that we drink cheerfully of his sacred chalice if we desire to be his friend and to have a place with him in his kingdom.¹³ Let us, then, like Saint Paul, place all our glory in bearing in our bodies the sacred wounds of the suffering Jesus,¹4 so as to make ourselves conformable to Jesus crucified and to honor his Holy Cross in the manner that will be most pleasing to him and most efficacious and advantageous for us. We judge well that the entire life of Jesus was nothing but a cross and a constant martyrdom. We will never appear better as his servant, his friend, and his imitator than by imprinting on ourselves the sign of his Holy Cross and by suffering pain like his. How could we dare look for another way to please God, to honor God, and to offer an agreeable sacrifice except by the way of the blessed cross. Jesus, our Savior, did not spend a single hour of his life without suffering in order to honor his Father, and no saint has ever lived in this world without suffering and without the cross.

Historical Context

The feast of the Triumph of the Cross, as it is called today, focuses less on the occasions of its origin (the Finding by Saint Helena, around 320, and the Exaltation, or rescue, of the Cross from the Persians by the Emperor Heraclius, in 629) and more on the mystery of the Cross in the work of salvation. As in his meditation for May 3, De La Salle stresses the importance of carrying the cross of suffering daily out of love for Christ.

Scripture Citation

1. Gal 6:14
2. Heb 12:12
3. 1 Cor 1:23
4. 1 Cor 1:23
5. 1 Cor 2:2
6. 1 Cor 1:17–24
7. 1 Cor 1:24
8. 1 Cor 2:7–8
9. Col 1:22
10. Eph 5:30
11. Lk 9:23
12. Mt 25:21
13. Mt 20:22
14. Gal 6:17