On today’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the Church offers us the story of people of Israel being bitten by serpents in the desert as the first reading for Mass. In it the people of God recognize their sin in complaining against the Lord and they approach Moses, repentant and begging that God have mercy and save them from the serpents. In response God instructs Moses to create a bronze serpent and lift it on a pole for all the people to gaze upon. These instructions must have seemed crazy to Moses, and certainly to the people. The serpents were killing the people, were the cause of their misery. Why would God want them to gaze upon a symbol of their destruction? But they did so, and when they did so they were cured. The source of their misery has been transformed into the instrument of their salvation. (Numbers 21: 4-9)
This incident in the desert was a type, a forerunner, of what Jesus Christ would do with the cross. It pointed forward to and illuminated today’s glorious feast. Christ lifted high on the cross at His crucifixion transformed an instrument of torment and death into the source of salvation. The crucifixion of their Messiah was not what the people of God expected as an answer to their prayers any more than they had expected the mounting of a serpent on the day they approached Moses with their misery in the desert.
Once again God worked in a way that was both more mysterious but also much more powerful than they could have conceived. This continues to be God’s way with His people. Jesus was quite clear with His disciples, telling them, telling us, that they must lift up their crosses in order to follow Him. As it seemed strange to them it continues to mystify us as well. The sorrows, sufferings, hardships we encounter along this pilgrim journey, the things we so often want to flee from, are the very things that draw us closest to our Beloved Lord, make us most like Him. How am I to grow in patience if I am never asked to wait, and to do so longer than seems possible to me? How will I grow bold and courageous if I never face any battles or fears that seek to overwhelm me? It is only in bearing the cross that I become strong.
The crosses we encounter daily must be borne. Lifting them is an act of obedience to the Lord, is a concrete way in which we demonstrate our trust in and love of Him who has chosen these very crosses for us. To exalt the cross though is to do more than simply bear it, it is to lift it up on high in celebration and rejoicing. Our own crosses, and much more so, the cross of Christ is worthy of such exaltation for it is by His cross that we are redeemed. The instrument of death has become the source of life and by it God has done much more than we could have ever hoped for, trampling our enemies and setting us free for the power of sin and death. Praise be to God now and forever!
Prose for the sake of Poetry 