Exaltation of the Holy Cross Sunday
By now, I’m sure we’ve heard the story of the young Ukrainian woman murdered last month on the light rail transit system in Charlotte, North Carolina. Having just finished the late shift at the restaurant where she worked – trying to make a better life for herself after having escaped the unending war in her home country – she had her life taken from her by a mentally-ill man seated directly behind her. She did nothing to provoke him; he gave no warning that she was upsetting him in anyway.
Within minutes, this young woman breathed her last as the trolley continued making its stops in Mecklenburg County.
There will be plenty of discussion in the days to come which will undoubtedly politicize the tragedy, and many talking-heads and podcasters will renew conversation about mental illness and criminality in this country. As with the Annunciation Church shooting in Minneapolis, we are once again awakened to the forces of evil that consistently try to drown-out light, purity and life.
It always has, quite frankly, from the fall of the angels and the beginning of time up until our present age. Evil always tries to conquer good. Many times, it seems like it has, and we wrestle with understanding a loving God who seems to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the sufferings of the human race.
Why didn’t God stop the Minneapolis massacre? Why didn’t God step-in with the murder of the young woman in Charlotte or Charlie Kirk or Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman? Where is God when we are suffering as the result of another’s sin (or our own)? Why does He seem powerless to stop hatred in the human heart?
I suppose we’ve always asked the “why” of evil, as is evidenced by our first reading: “With their patience worn out by the journey, the Israelites complained against God and Moses.” When we get tired and lost and mired in sin – when we let evil decisions rule our hearts and our land -- we often lose our way and rebel against the only Physician who offers the lasting remedy.
Isn’t it funny? When we need God the most, we often seem to run from Him. When we are drowning in the results of sin, we reach for more of it. Oftentimes, we simply allow ourselves to become numb to the seraph serpents – whatever that may be for each of us – which attack us time and again until our spiritual lives wither away in the desert of dryness, apathy and more sin.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we allow it to happen to others? Why does sin seem to keep winning in our hearts and our world?
I know it does. Many have claimed it is. Maybe you are feeling this in your own life: that the sin and darkness that your wrestle with keeps returning time and time again, no matter how much you pray or how many Confessions you make. The seraphs keep attacking, and God seems silent, or angry, or both. What to do in these places in our lives?
The only answer that I have found is this: bring it all to the Cross.
The Cross upon which Christ our Savior died is the remedy for all of this: our own sins and the sins of the world. The Cross is the answer and the only way. The Cross is the conqueror of sin and death. The Cross lifted high is everything.
How incredible is our God that the very thing we humans used to crucify the Remedy for every evil is the very thing He uses to bring us back to Him? How loving is our God that He chose to die for our sins on the very instrument of sin that was transformed into the life-saving solution for us and for the whole world?
“For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son” in order that we may be saved from sin and death. Pure Love laid down His life for us who often turn away from it. He still went anyway. Pure Love allowed Himself to be poured out in order to open our hearts to Mercy and Salvation, even when we say we’d rather dance in the desert with snakes. He went anyway.
Pure love went to the Cross for you. For me. For the Ukrainian girl murdered on the Charlotte Light Rail and for the Annunciation school kids shot through stained-glass windows while attending daily Mass. But pure Love also went to the very same Cross so that the murderers of these modern-day holy innocents may also find salvation in Him.
And that might be the craziest thing of all in this walk of Christian discipleship: we should want eternal salvation for them, too. Are we bringing not only the victims but also the perpetrators to the foot of His Cross? Are we making room for them to receive the Blood of Christ outpoured so that they might find His Mercy? Are we “praying them all the way to the Cross” so that their souls are not lost for all eternity?
I know this saying is hard … but then again, what isn’t in the Gospel? If Jesus and the Christian faith become too soft and easy, we’re doing it wrong. If it becomes too wishy-washy, we are nowhere near Calvary, the remedy for it all.
On this most beautiful feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, today is a stark reminder and wake-up call for all of us: we must stay firmly rooted in Christ’s Eternal Sacrifice. We must bring to His Cross every sin and struggle; every moment of fear and evil and darkness. We bring it there so that He can transform it; heal it; and bring resurrection moments from it.
Evil does not have to have the last word in Minneapolis or Charlotte or Utah unless we allow it to. Bringing these moments of sin to the Cross of Christ should also spur us to act as a courageous disciple should: to not sit back and let innocence be snuffed-out around us. It should also spur us to make the changes we are asked to make in our own lives and souls, for that is always where the root of evil begins: when we make the personal decision to choose selfishness and hate over forgiveness and mercy and love.
May we never be afraid to do the hard work of bringing our sins to the Cross and asking God to heal us. May we never be afraid to be the ones who pray for those who are most in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
I can’t help but think back to that moment in the desert when Moses held-up the symbol of the seraph on a pole – God asked him to raise-up the very thing that was killing the people and then offer to them the remedy found only in Him: only by looking-up could they find life. Only by looking up could they find the way forward. Only by acknowledging their sin could they find the remedy.
How many Israelites refused to look-up that day?
What about us now?
The Lord longs for our salvation – all of us, no exceptions. Are we willing to meet Him where salvation is found? Are we willing to lay at His crucified feet all that we have done to allow darkness and hate to spread? Are we willing to go to His Cross for others?
For the Annunciation kids and the Ukrainian refugee?
For the young man and the mentally-ill passenger who took their lives?
For the political figures who share a different view than I do?
Are we willing to look-up and find the true and only Answer for everything that tries to destroy us? And then, when we do, are we willing to act boldly and courageously to make the merciful changes that need to be made?
If we aren’t willing to go to the Cross and look-up, the seraphs will continue to bite.
I don’t know about you – that’s not the world I want to live in.