“Rather, he emptied himself… he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”1 In doing so, God’s true nature was revealed by Jesus Christ. What the Lord emptied Himself of were all the false human ideas about the divine, under which many people still labor.
Known as the Kenotic Hymn, our reading from Philippines sets forth the theology of the Holy Cross succinctly. It was because Christ Jesus humbled Himself even to the point of accepting death on a cross (an unjust death), that “God exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”2 My friends, we've all been bitten by the poisonous snake, the devil. As Saint Paul wrote: "all have sinned are deprived of the glory of God."3 Our remedy is the Cross of Christ.
Jesus Christ is the fulness of divine revelation. Everything God could reveal He revealed in and through Christ. It’s important to note that God’s Son did not come into the world as the next Caesar or even as a member of the ruling class of His own people.
Instead, He came as a marginal person, a man from Nazareth, which prompted Nathaniel to ask, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”4 The Jews themselves were a marginal yet troublesome people who, by conquest, belonged to the Roman Empire.
The Lord’s ministry was never political activism targeting the Roman empire or Jewish authorities’ policies. Instead, He came to bring about a true revolution: to disrupt the workings of a lost and fallen humanity. Christianity is not an ideology, though some may try to make it one. It is something far more radical—a revolution that, at some level, subverts every political system, all of which will ultimately perish.
Standing in Saint Peter’s Square looking at the Vatican Obelisk, which was brought to Rome from Egypt, Msgr Lorenzo Albacete said, “It is the Church flipping the bird to all the ideologies of the world.” Being eternal, the Church has survived all political systems for over 2,000 years. In Saint John’s Passion narrative, Jesus tells a suspicious and agitated Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”5
Christ shed all misconceived notions of divinity to bring about this revolution of love. But that is to state it too ambiguously. Our passage from Paul’s letter to the Church in Philippi puts flesh on the bones of what we find revealed elsewhere in scripture: “God is love.”6 Originally written in Greek, the word for “love” in this sentence is agape.
Being one of four Greek words that refer to different types of love, agape refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. This is the highest form of love. Christ on the Cross is agape par excellence. One reason Catholics have crucifixes everywhere is to remind us how much God loves us. Our Gospel reading for today bears this out, does it not?
God loved us so much that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him “may have eternal life.”7 Elsewhere in Saint John’s Gospel, praying to His Father, Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”8
The crowning moment of Jesus’ earthly life was being lifted up on the Cross. This is why our Gospel for this year’s observance of the Feast of Christ the King is Saint Luke’s account of the Lord being mocked on the Cross.9 "He mounted the Cross," insisted Luigi Giussani, "to free us from the fascination with nothingness, to free us from the fascination with appearances, with the ephemeral."
During the Stations of the Cross, as we reach each station, genuflecting, the leader says, “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.” To which, while genuflecting, all respond: “Because by your holy cross You have redeemed the world.” By this and other devotions, we heed the exhortation of our Responsorial: “Do not forget the works of the Lord!”10 This is especially important when you experience difficulties in your own life. Christ is by your side even as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
How do we face our present circumstances? It isn’t by being sucked into the vortex of daily events through media and social media. Nor is it by sowing further division when there is already too much. It is by shedding His blood, according to scripture, that Christ “is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh.”11
And so, as Pope Leo wrote on Friday, far from banging the drums of an unwinnable culture war fueled by political ideologies and propaganda, the Holy Father:
would like that today we may together begin to build a culture of reconciliation. We must meet one another, heal our wounds, and forgive the wrongs we did and did not do, but whose effects we still carry. There are no enemies — only brothers and sisters. What we need are gestures and policies of reconciliation12As Christians, we face the harshness of reality by accepting the challenge of living the Gospel in its fullness. This not only goes against the grain of human society but often runs contrary to our own fallen nature. This includes obeying the Lord’s hard sayings: to love, earnestly pray for, and do good to those who hate you. To return good when what you receive is evil. To turn the other cheek. To walk the extra mile. To be a peacemaker. To make yourself a neighbor to those in need. Let’s not forget an important part of our Catholic tradition and heritage: to make penitential acts a part of our lives. Living in this self-sacrificial, other-centered, as opposed self-centered, way is revolutionary.
In last week’s Gospel, teaching what it means to be His disciple, the Lord said, “Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”13 The cross is “the narrow door” referred to by the Lord in our Gospel from three weeks ago.14 In our Collect for this Mass, referring to the mystery of the Cross, we prayed “that we, who have known this mystery on earth, may merit the grace of redemption in heaven.”16 Finally, as the familiar hymn puts it, “only they who bear the cross may hope to wear the glorious crown.”16
1 Philippians 2:7-8.↩
2 Philippians 2:8-9.↩
3 Romans 3:23.↩
4 John 1:46.↩
5 John 18:36.↩
6 1 John 4:8.16.↩
7 John 3:16.↩
8 John 17:3.↩
9 See Luke 23:35-43.↩
10 Psalm 78:7.↩
11 Ephesians 2:14.↩
12 X. Pontifex- Sep 12, 2025.↩
13 Luke 14:27.↩
14 Luke 13:24.↩
15 Roman Missal. Proper of Saints. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross.↩
16 Charles W. Everest, “Take Up Thy Cross.” 1833.↩
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