Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross
September 14, 2014
SAVED BY GOD’S LOVE THROUGH THE CROSS
By: Br. DJ Garcia [cjm]
We are loved by God. In Jesus, through the Cross, God showed how much he loves us. The cross, once an instrument of death, of shame and humiliation, became life-giving in and through Jesus. Pope Francis says, “Jesus on the Cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it, he defeats it with his resurrection,” Indeed, the Cross of Jesus was transformed from a curse to a blessing through the love and mercy of God. The Cross then becomes a sign of God’s love for the whole world.
We are then called to “believe” – in Jesus. To believe is not merely an intellectual assent to the truths about Jesus or a warm feeling in the heart. To believe entails an attitude of love and trust in God which can only be possible through an all-embracing relationship with Him. A saving belief in Jesus involves a commitment to continuously live as His disciple, and to live as his disciple is to embrace the cross, not for its own sake but as a means for our purification and salvation. Our crosses become our blessings for this help us in our pursuit for holiness. Humanity has a natural aversion to suffering and at all cost would want to avoid it. For us Christians, our crosses become the way to victory. Just as Jesus emerged triumphantly through the Cross, so through our crosses we will emerge victorious. But it is only in embracing our crosses and attaching our crosses to that Cross of Jesus that our crosses become our blessings. It is Jesus who transforms our crosses into blessings, just as the Father transformed Jesus’ cross into a blessing.
Jesus is God’s gift to the world – to save us and bring us to eternal life. In Jesus lifted up on the cross, God’s love shines in all its radiance, a reminder of the cost of God loving us. In Jesus and His Cross we can find healing. In Jesus and His Cross we can conquer evil. In Jesus and His Cross we can find strength to bear our crosses with joy. Let us then exalt the Cross—the new Tree of Life which provides nourishment for all of us redeemed in Christ!
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