Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Readings: Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 78:1-2.34-38; Philippians 2:6-11; John 3:13-17

Today the Church throughout the world celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This feast marks the day when, in AD 326, the true cross, purportedly discovered by Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother, was lifted up (exalted) for veneration in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Today marks the 1,700th anniversary of that event.

Like a few other major observances, such as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this feast is observed today not only by Roman Catholics but also by Eastern Catholics and most Eastern Orthodox Christians. Today is also Pope Leo’s seventy-first birthday. It is due to the importance and universal nature of this feast that the Liturgy of the Word features three readings.

The readings for today’s feast seem to me perfectly harmonized. Elsewhere in Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus also alludes to our first reading from the Book of Numbers. This happens when, during the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, some Greeks asked his disciples to meet him. In declining their request, the Lord says, referring to his death, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (See John 12:20-36)

Indeed, far from being a humiliation, Jesus being lifted on the cross is his exaltation, the revelation of who he really is. This is made wonderfully clear in our reading from Philippians. Saint Paul likely took this passage from what New Testament scholars agree was probably an early Christian hymn, now known as “the kenotic hymn.” This inspired passage shows us who Jesus really is. It does so by giving us a deep glimpse into God’s very nature.

“Because of this,” we hear in the passage, “God exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Phil 2:6). The “this” that is referred to is his emptying himself (“to empty” is what the Greek word kenosis means) to become a slave and to be subjected to an unjust and, in the ancient world, deeply humiliating death. He did not use divine omnipotence to save himself. Rather, for our sake, he commended himself to the Father- this same Father who did not take the cup of his passion away from him.

It is on the cross that Jesus shows us the height, depth, and width of God’s love. On the cross, Jesus shows us that genuine strength is made manifest in weakness. He demonstrates that real power, which is the power of divine love (i.e., agape), is made perfect through weakness (2 Cor 12:9-10). Nearly two thousand years on, the cross of Christ remains a scandal not only to many non-believers, but to many Christians as well.

Returning to history, let’s not forget that the Church’s lowest ebbs came when she either exercised or sought to exercise worldly power. It is during such times that God sends saints, like Francis of Assisi, the 800th anniversary of whose death the Church is celebrating this year as a Jubilee, who remind us of the power of the Holy Cross.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
   By your holy cross you have redeemed the world
(Lectionary, Gospel Acclamation, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross)

Year A Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 103:1-4.9-12; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

In today's Gospel, we are faced with one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings. Harmonized as it is with our first reading from Sirach, the Lord’s teaching about not just the importance but the necessity of forgiveness is set forth in a very direct way. In a word, today's teaching is provocative.

I dare say, forgiveness is a challenge to us all. It doesn’t matter whether it is about big or small things. And, in this passage, Jesus doesn’t leave wiggle room. This is what makes his teaching on forgiveness one of his most challenging , if not his most challenging.

What does it mean to forgive someone who has wronged you? It means intentionally choosing to let go of resentment, bitterness, and anger towards that person. Quite literally, as we see in the parable Jesus gives, forgiveness means choosing not to collect a debt owed.

Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. Neither does it mean making wrong into right. While forgiveness is required for reconciliation, it isn’t the same thing. In many instances, though not all, forgiveness opens the door to reconciliation.

In recent years, much psychological research has focused on forgiveness. Far from weakness, forgiveness requires a great deal of emotional strength. Forgiving wrongs reduces your own negative emotions and cultivates compassion and understanding toward the one you are forgiving.

The person most freed by forgiveness is the one who forgives. Just as it is physically easier to smile than to frown, forgiving others is easier than being weighed down by anger and resentment.

From a Christian perspective, forgiveness is a grace. A grace is something you don’t deserve. You can’t earn grace. This is where Jesus’ teaching begins.

Perhaps the best way to approach the parable found in our Gospel is as an allegory. In this allegory, God is the merciful king who forgives an enormous debt owed to him by his servant. The servant, who has no way of repaying the debt, stands in for us sinners. The king graciously forgives his servant's huge debt.

You would reasonably expect, as the merciful king in this parable clearly does, that someone who has been shown great mercy would extend that same mercy to others. It’s almost shocking that the forgiven servant is so utterly merciless to the person who owed him a very small debt. If we stick with the allegory, the parable shows the predicament of the Christian who, as the old bumper sticker said, is not perfect, just forgiven, but who nonetheless refuses to forgive.

Just as we can truly love only because God first loved us, we can truly forgive because, through Christ, God has forgiven us.¹ We even pray this, also from Saint Matthew’s Gospel, together at each Mass: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”²

Jesus’ parable serves as an illustration of his teaching about forgiving as many times as I am wronged. It also further explains our quite pointed reading from Sirach. True forgiveness, as the Lord teaches it at the end of our Gospel, must be from the heart.³

As C.S. Lewis observed: “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”⁴ In other words, it’s easier said than done. But forgiveness is not merely done for the love of a neighbor but is also done out of a just love of oneself and for one’s own salvation.

Because God is infinite, his mercy is infinite. As Pope Francis taught: “God always forgives us. He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”⁵ This is good news!

To be like God is to be like Jesus, who shows us the face of the Father. To be like Jesus is to forgive. While it’s hard to be like Jesus, by God's grace, it is not impossible. As his followers, the Lord calls us to follow him; not only to do what he taught but to do as he did.

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1 1 John 4:10.^↩
2 Matthew 6:12.^↩
3 Matthew 18:35.^↩
4 C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. Book III, Chapter 1, Section 7, "Christian Behavior.^↩
5 Pope Francis. Vatican Radio via America magazine: “God Always Forgives Everything: ‘He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.’” 23 January 2015.^↩

Year 2 Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Corinthians 5:1-8; Psalm 5:5-7.12; Luke 6:6-11

Today is Labor Day. Somewhat ironically, our Gospel is about “working” on the sabbath. It is always the work of a Christian to do good and certainly to save life.

From a narrow perspective, like that of Jesus’ interlocutors in our reading, the Lord’s relationship with the Law can seem complicated. But it isn’t, really. Before the time of Jesus and even during his time, for many rabbis, adherence to the Law was not just about keeping a list of rules, avoiding what was forbidden, and doing what was prescribed.

What is at stake in these kinds of incidents found in the Gospel is our relationship with God, both personal and communal. It is very human to make my relationship with God transactional. I do this or don’t do that. As a result, God does something for me in return. Conversely, when I fail to do what I am supposed to do or do what I’m not supposed to do, God will punish me.

Try as we might to make him that way, God isn’t like that. God loves us. His disposition towards us doesn’t change. His love is not conditional, dependent on our often-whimsical behavior. Jesus shows us this repeatedly.

Detail from Christ healing an infirm woman on the Sabbath, by James Tissot, 1886-1896,in public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By curing the man with a withered hand on the sabbath, in the eyes of at least some of those in the synagogue, Jesus violated the commandment forbidding work on the sabbath. He did the very thing some of those present were hoping he would do. They came looking for a reason, any reason, to condemn him.

He blatantly did what those looking to accuse him hoped he would do: cured someone on the sabbath. They were not swayed by the mercy to which the Lord appealed. Jesus is the Mercy King. In our epistle reading from yesterday, taken from his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul asserted that to love your neighbor by doing good to her/him is the fulfillment of the Law (see Romans 13:8-10).

Of course, Paul takes this directly from Jesus’ teaching. You see, the Law was given to provide a means to the end of loving God with your entire being by loving your neighbor as you love yourself. There is no higher commandment. All other rules are subordinated to the Two Great Commandments (sticking with Saint Luke's Gospel see Luke 10:27-37).

I can genuinely love because I am first loved (see 1 John 4:10). Far from a transaction consisting of a quid pro quo, obedience is my loving response to God, who is love.

Careful now

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95:1-2.6-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

The first part of our Gospel today is one of those passages that can easily cause more harm than good. It's a passage that requires careful handling. Being juridical in nature, it sets forth a procedure for resolving disputes within the primitive Christian community.

These procedures set forth in the passage pertain to serious matters, the kinds of things that today would lead to excommunication or serious ecclesial penalities, matters now codified in the Code of Canon Law. In other words, it doesn't green light providing grist for the rumor mill. It doesn't promote division within the community.

Nonetheless, the injunction to go to the person against whom you have a grievance privately with an eye towards reconciling is, on the whole, good advice. Now, there are situations, like instances of sexual or other kinds of heinous abuse, to which this does not and cannot apply. But then, the penal section of the Code of Canon Law and, in some cases, even criminal law are brought bear on such egregious matters (see first paragraph).

When dealing with everyday kinds of disputes or offenses, real or perceived, seeking to work it out person-to-person and then perhaps with a mediator is a good way ahead. It also cuts gossip off at the source. Ideally, we seek reconciliation, not judgment, and certainly not retribution.

During Ordinary Time, effort is made to harmonize the Gospel reading with the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. Today, this could easily compound the problem. Not only can misreading and mishandling this passage cause harm, it can lead to abuse.

I think our reading from Romans provides us with much-needed perspective. It provides us with a Christian perspective. "Juridical" refers to judicial (i.e., legal) proceedings. Any good and well-ordered community requires such things (see first paragraph). What our "epistle" reading, which seems well-harmonized with the other readings, reminds us is the basis of Christ's law, namely the second of his Two Great Commandments.

Saint Paul stated it quite simply when he wrote: "the one who loves another has fulfilled the law" (Rom 13:8). Even more to my point, "Love does no evil to the neighbor" (Rom 13:10). In this passage, "love" is a translation of the appropriate form of agape.

By way of reminder, agape refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Sometimes efforts are made to distinguish between liking and loving someone. This means that you can love someone and really not liking them. While I suppose this can be a useful distinction in certain circumstances, pressing this distinction too hard can make Christian love (agape) cold and mechanical, procedural and not personal. While love is a choice, not merely a feeling, it has an indispenable affective dimension.

Later in this same chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, in teaching about not the importance but the necessity of forgiveness, Jesus clearly states you must forgive your brother from your heart (Matt 18:35). Depending on the perceived offense or actual injury, this can be very difficult and take time, maybe a lot of time. But for Christians, it must be a matter of the heart.

Yesterday I read an article about the experience of an Evangelical pastor in a church he had pastored. Because of the way he was treated, he wound up leaving that Church scarred and somewhat broken. Several years later, while pastoring another Church in a different state, the current pastor of the Church he left, knowing what happened, invited him back to preach.

Reluctantly, the ousted pastor accepted. At the start of one of the meetings he was preaching at while visting his former church, in walked a man who had made him miserable while he served there. He wrote,

No, the man did not apologize for the torment he brought to my family, but it didn’t matter. God gave me peace. Forgiveness at that time was not conditional on what he did. Instead, it was a gift from God to me

Then it became a gift from the pastor to the man. Indeed, "love is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom 13:10).

Year 2 Friday of the Twenty-second in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Psalm 37:3-6.27-28.39-40; Luke 5:33-39

It is impossible to separate Jesus from what we now call Judaism. Without Judaism, Christianity is incoherent. Today’s Gospel sets forth the kind of cognitive dissonance Christ often caused and that the Christian life still causes today.

Today, this dissonance, which is kind of a dialectic, is often a painful source of division. “Dialectic” is a big word. In this context, it refers to a way of thinking and argumentation through which what seem to be contradictions are shown to be paradoxes. A paradox (another big word) is something that looks like a contradiction but, on close examination is shown not to be.

For an example of this, we need look no farther than today’s Gospel. Instead of dedicating themselves to prayer and fasting on certain days of the week, as the Pharisees and even the Baptist’s disciples did, Jesus’ followers ate and drank. They feasted instead of fasted.

Jesus doesn’t say his disciples don’t fast because fasting is no longer an important spiritual discipline. He uses an analogy: do you fast at a wedding after the bridegroom arrives? No! You feast.

Jesus is the bridegroom, and his bride is the Church. Every Eucharist is a feast, a celebration, especially Sunday Eucharist. This is why Sundays don’t count as days of Lent. To arrive at 40 day of Lent, you must subtract Sundays.

The Church still fasts. Catholics are obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The normal way Fridays are still observed as days of penance is by abstaining from meat. But there is no Friday abstinence when a solemnity falls on a Friday.

Like all spiritual disciplines, fasting has rules. But when it becomes rule-bound, this discipline goes from being a means to becoming an end in itself. Turning these means into ends makes engaging in spiritual discipline worse than not doing them at all. The end to which all spiritual disciplines are but means is love of God and neighbor.As we read even the Old Testament: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (See Hosea 6:6 and Matthew 9:13).

As interesting and even important as this is, it isn’t the point of our reading. The point of our readings is about judging others. Saint Paul, who experienced plenty of judgment during his years of ministry, much of it quite harsh, wrote that he doesn’t even judge himself.

Many people think that self-judgment leads to more lenient judgment. While I suppose this is sometimes the case, I’ve found, in working with quite a few people over the past few decades, that a lot of people, probably most, judge themselves quite harshly. I know people who are very merciful towards others yet merciless towards themselves.

There’s a podcast I often listen to that is hosted by a pastor, Steve Cuss, who, along with his wife, is also a counselor. At the end of each episode that features a guest, Cuss has them endure what he calls “the gauntlet of anxiety-inducing questions.” The first of the three questions he asks is, “What’s one way that you treat others that if you started treating yourself the same way, your life would be better?"

Many times, the guest answers the question along the lines of, “My life would be better if I extended as much grace and mercy to myself as I do to others.” As Christians, we’re often sadly programmed to be quite merciless with ourselves from a young age.

Years ago, I participated in a memorial service for someone with whom I had the blessing to work as he returned to the church. Sadly and unexpectedly, Casey, who was a successful and much-beloved guy, took his own life. At each table setting at his memorial service was a card that read: “Be gentle with yourself and with others.” I keep this card on a shelf in my den as a reminder.

Time and again, Jesus shows us the face of the Father. God is not an angry tyrant. He is a merciful and loving Father, one who constantly works for your good. As scripture states it: “God is love” (1 John 4:8.16). God isn’t just love in a generic sense, but is agape, that is, self-sacrificing, self-giving love.

Christian morality makes no sense until you’ve experienced God’s love. Genuine morality is a loving response to the love of God. It is the fruit of a life grounded in and lived from God’s love, made manifest by loving your neighbor as you love yourself- don't too quickly forget not only to love yourself but let yourself be loved.

Year A Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 63:2-6.8-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

Following Jesus, being his disciple, is what it means to be a Christian. Where does Jesus lead those who follow him? To the cross.

While the Lord’s crucifixion was centuries away, the prophet Jeremiah experienced what the Lord, in today’s Gospel, tells his followers to expect. Despite himself, despite the ridicule he endures, Jeremiah can’t stop speaking. He can’t quit crying out. Try as he might to resist, he can’t quench the burning fire God places in his heart.

Now, we need to put what Jeremiah says into its proper context. He was calling Israel back to fidelity to her covenant with God. He warns his fellow Israelites of the consequences if they do not heed his inspired warnings. We know that the consequence was exile.

Despite his dire warnings, Jeremiah also spoke of hope through a new covenant God would establish. In addition to repatriation, God would, through this new thing, bring about internal transformation and a renewed relationship with his people.¹

It isn’t so much that God will directly punish them as it is that he will simply allow them to experience the natural consequences of their choices and actions. Even so, God remains merciful. God’s mercy is made evident by Israel’s return from exile. Instead of being absorbed into the Babylonian population, the Israelites maintained their unique identity as God’s people.

Being a Christian also means, as Saint Paul wrote in our passage from Romans, discerning God’s will. According to the apostle, the ability to know God’s will in the different circumstances life presents requires an internal transformation. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote about having the mind of Christ.²

It is by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, that one has the mind of Christ. Hence, a Christian life produces the fruits of the Spirit.³ One of the fruits of the Spirit is patience. Patience is also the fruit of the fourth Sorrowful mystery of the Rosary; the mystery itself being Jesus carrying the cross.

In the Salve Regina recited at the end of each Rosary (and that we frequently sing at Mass), we cry to our Blessed Mother as Eve’s “poor banished children,” making our way through “this vale of tears.” Being a Christian doesn’t spare anyone life’s sorrows, disappointments, and trials. The Lord’s response to Peter in today’s Gospel should dispel any notions of that.

You don’t have to go looking for crosses to carry. Inevitably, life will provide in this regard. Patience in suffering is made possible by hope. Hope comes not just from knowing or being told that Christ walks with you. It comes from experiencing his presence during times of trial and uncertainty.

Vaclav Havel, a Czech dissident during that country’s years under authoritarian rule and who later served his country as president, put it this way:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons⁴

Taking Havel’s “take” on hope as her starting point, Tata Trapani observed:

Hope is the friend who sits with us in the dark, so we are not alone and shines for us so we can make it through. If we expect it to be more than this, we are doing it a disservice and we will always be crestfallen⁵

For Christians, hope is not merely a concept, an idea, an abstraction. Even to say that hope is the flower of faith, while a beautiful and, I believe, lovely and true image, is to pull up short. Logically, faith requires an object. In Christian terms, it requires a subject, that is, someone, not merely something.

For the Christian, this friend who sits with us in the dark and shines a light in that darkness has a name: Jesus Christ. And sometimes, more often than not I'd say, the Lord sends along friends, people, a person, someone willing to sit with us and shine a light in the darkness.

Turning to Havel again, hope “is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.”⁶ As human beings who bear the image of God, an image that cannot be eradicated, hope is a dimension of the soul. It is part of what it means to be human. Hope is that light, however dim or flickering, that keeps shining through the darkness, drawing our attention, even when completely distracted by circumstances.

Of course, the Lord doesn’t lead you to the cross to leave you there. He leads you there to take you beyond it, to life everlasting. But the only way beyond the cross is through it.

It’s easy to forget that Jesus’ cry of abandonment from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the beginning of Psalm 22.⁷ It’s even easier to forget that about two-thirds through, this Psalm turns from one of lament to one of joy, culminating with these verses:

For he has not spurned or disdained
the misery of this poor wretch,
Did not turn away from me,
but heard me when I cried out.
I will offer praise in the great assembly⁸

My dear friends, attend to hope. Foster hope in others. Be that friend willing to sit in the darkness, who, unlike Job’s friends, can offer encouragement even if only by your silent presence. Above all, patiently trust in the Lord, who is always true to his word. As Scripture exhorts: “Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.”⁹

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1 Jeremiah 31:31-34.^↩
2 1 Corinthians 2:16.^↩
3 See Galatians 5:22-23..^↩
4 Vaclav Havel. Disturbing the Peace. Trans. Paul Wilson, 181-182.^↩
5 Tata Trapani. “Vaclav Havel on Hope.” Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology blog. 24 August 2023.^↩
6 Disturbing the Peace, 181-182.^↩
7 Psalm 22:2.^↩
8 Psalm 22:25-26.^↩
9 1 Peter 5:7.^↩

Passing over, not away

Ah, it's Friday once again. In addition to Dolly Parton, actor Tim Curry also died this past week. Not nearly as prominent as Parton, Curry was a tremendous actor. Like many actors of his generation, seeing it as a craft, Curry could act. He had amazing range.

Timothy James Curry (19 April 1946 – 25 August 2026)

Something I learned about Curry upon learning of his death is that his father, James Curry, was a Methodist minister. Beginning with the Second World War, James served as a Royal Navy chaplain. From what I can tell, it looks like he remained as a chaplain for some years after the war ended. As a result, the family, which included Tim's mother Patricia and his sister Judith, moved frequently.

Sadly, James died in 1958 from pneumonia. Tim was only 12 years-old. Prior to his fatal bout of pneumonia, like his son years later, James suffered a debilitating stroke. After his father's death, the family settled in South London.

In addition to enjoying and appreciating Curry's acting, I post this because I am still very surprised at how many prominent English people are children of clergy. Even John Mortimer's great literary character, Horace Rumpole, was the son of a Church of England vicar. Certainly during the time of Tim Curry's upbringing, English Methodists, which are an offshoort of Anglicanism, were very strict and kept things very simple.

Curry's range as an actor is demonstrated by the variety of roles he so successfully played. He rose to prominence in the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I remember driving from Ogden to Salt Lake City as a high school junior (fall of 1982) with my friends Anson and David to see this movie at the Blue Mouse theater. While we enjoyed our experience, let's just say we were not prepared for it!

Tim also played Rooster Hannigan in the 1982 film Annie as well as Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers. Memorably, Curry was cast as Pennywise the clown in the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's It. In this role, he certainly did nothing to abate anyone's coulrophobia.

Among the roles he played on Broadway: Mozart in Amadeus and Alan Swann in My Favorite Year. Released in 1982, the latter remains a wonderful movie. The movie was adapated into a Broadway musical featuring the same title. In the film, Swann (based on Errol Flynn) was played by Peter O'Toole. Let's not forget that Tim also played Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island. Here's a link to a slightly spicey but very funny video concerning his interaction with Muppets. He did a killer impression of Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live back in 1981.

Curry was also a world class gardiner and horticulturalist. Published late last year, Curry wrote a critically well-regarded and bestselling memoir: Vagabond. Tim also recorded four albums. He did some musical touring.

As mentioned previously, Curry suffered a debilitating stroke. This occurred in 2012 when he just 66 years-old. He was wheelchair bound from then until his death this past Tuesday. He continued working for several years after his stroke.

Our Friday traditio is a live audio recording of Curry singing "When a Man Loves a Woman" at a club in New York City way back in 1979.

An alternate traditio is Dolly singing a duet with Kenny Rogers: "Islands in the Stream." She and Rogers had a very special friendship. Kenny made no bones about the fact that he loved Dolly. She loved him, but as a friend, committed as she was to her marriage. The way she so warmly takes his hand moves me.