THE FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS

1. The exaltation of the Holy Cross allows us to know an aspect of the heart of Jesus Christ that only God himself could reveal to us: the transformation of pain into glory.
2. The wound caused by sin and by man’s ingratitude becomes the source not only of an overabundance of love, but also of a new creation in glory.
3. Through “the foolishness of the Cross,” the scandal of suffering can be transformed into wisdom, and the glory promised to Jesus can be shared by all those who wish to follow him.
4. Death, illness, the many wounds that man receives in the flesh and in the heart, forgetfulness, ingratitude, slander and all that is most painful, can also become, in that “monster of the cross” that is, many times, the great bureaucratic machinery of the Church for the small, anonymous and fearless Christian, an opportunity to be taken more intensely by the very life of God.
5. With this feast the Church invites us to receive divine wisdom, which Mary lived fully before the Cross of Christ: the suffering of the world, madness and scandal, become the blood of Christ, a cry of love and the seed of glory for each Christian, even in a worldly Church that forgets the poor, the needy and the hungry.

Mgr. Jaume González-Agapito