(Given at the 4:30 pm Saturday Mass and the 5:30 pm Sunday youth Mass)
(Reader Discretion Advised)
Imagine walking into a building of a brand new religion. You enter the doors, walk up the aisle, and see at the forefront of the back wall an image of a man hanging by a noose. Then, as you look, you see nooses all over the place. In the windows, in the pews, even the people making noose signs with their hands. What?! I think it would be quite odd at best and quite disturbing at worst. Then, learning from these believers that this guy in the noose died, by hanging, to bring salvation. I think there would be a moment of, huh? My brothers and sisters, you have just entered the minds of the pagan world entering the first Christian churches. Images of the Crucifixion and even of just a bare cross would have been down right weird to people unknown to Christianity. Like the noose or electric chair or guillotine with us today. But, this is what the first Christians and the subsequent generations have preached: as St. Paul says, we preach Christ crucified. It has become so familiar to us today that we might not think about it. How scandalous the cross was. You’re telling me that this torture death device was the means by which your God saved you? What?! And yet it’s true. God in his providence used the wood, the iron, and the nails to save us from sin, hell, and the devil. And the cross has been precious to Christianity ever since. The sign of the cross is one of the most ancient prayers. We can make it often and should make it often. If the Lord cared enough to use it for our salvation, so should we. The exaltation of the Holy Cross that we celebrate today invites us into this great mystery. Jesus entered into suffering and death via a cross. And he wants to enter into our sufferings, our crosses as well. To redeem them, to help us carry them, to bring a greater good out of them. When we make the sign of the cross, we let him do just that.