Dear brothers and sisters, happy Sunday.
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in which it recalls the discovery of the wood of the cross by Saint Helena in Jerusalem in the fourth century, and the restoration of the precious relic to the Holy City by the work of Emperor Heraclius.
But what does it mean for us to celebrate this feast today? The Gospel that the liturgy proposes to us helps us to understand it (cf. Jn 3:13-17). The scene takes place at night; Nicodemus, one of the leaders of the Jews, an upright man with an open mind (cf. Jn 7:50-51), goes to meet Jesus. He has a need for light, for guidance; he seeks God and asks for help from the Master of Nazareth, because in Him he recognizes a prophet, a man who performs extraordinary signs.
The Lord welcomes him, listens to him, and in the end reveals to him that the Son of Man must be exalted, «so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal Life» (Jn 3:15), and adds: «God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but may have eternal Life» (v. 16). Nicodemus, who perhaps at that moment does not fully understand the meaning of these words, will surely be able to do so when, after the crucifixion, he helps to bury the body of the Savior (cf. Jn 19:39). He will then understand that God, to redeem men, became man and died on the cross.
Jesus speaks of this to Nicodemus, evoking an episode from the Old Testament (cf. Nm 21:4-9), when in the desert the Israelites, attacked by poisonous snakes, were saved by looking at the bronze serpent that Moses, obeying God’s command, had made and placed on a pole. God saved us by showing Himself to us, offering Himself as our companion, teacher, physician, friend, even becoming Bread broken for us in the Eucharist. And to accomplish this work, He made use of one of the most cruel instruments of death that man has ever invented: the cross.
That is why today we celebrate its “exaltation”; we do so because of the immense love with which God, embracing it for our salvation, transformed it from a means of death into an instrument of life, teaching us that nothing can separate us from Him (cf. Rm 8:35-39) and that His charity is greater than our own sin (cf. Francis, Catechesis, March 30, 2016).
Let us now ask, through the intercession of Mary, the Mother present at Calvary beside her Son, that His saving love may also take root and grow in us, and that we too may know how to give ourselves to one another, as He has given Himself entirely to all.
Léon XIV