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
All Scripture passages are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) unless designated NJB (New Jerusalem Bible), IBHE (Interlinear Bible Hebrew-English), IBGE (Interlinear Bible Greek-English), or LXX (Greek Septuagint Old Testament translation). CCC designates a citation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The word LORD or GOD rendered in all capital letters is, in the Hebrew text, God's Divine Name, YHWH (Yahweh).
God reveals His divine plan for humanity in the two Testaments; therefore, we read and relive the events of salvation history contained in the Old and New Testaments in the Church's Liturgy. The Catechism teaches that the Liturgy reveals the unfolding mystery of God's plan as we read the Old Testament in light of the New and the New Testament in light of the Old (CCC 1094-1095).
The Theme of the Readings for the Feast of the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross: God Calls the Church to Glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ
On September 14th, the Church celebrates the liturgical
feast known in Latin as "Exaltatio Crucis," Exaltation of the Cross, indicating
that the Cross of Jesus Christ is not a sign of shame, as it was before the
crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. Instead, the Cross is the sign of Jesus's
victory over sin and death and the hope of our eternal salvation.
This feast commemorates St. Helena's recovery of the precious relic of the Sacred Cross upon which Christ died and the dedication on September 14th, 335, of the churches she had built on the sites identified by Christians of the Church in Jerusalem as the places of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. The Exaltation of the Cross became a major feast in the Church in the East in the 4th century upon the dedication of the two churches. Later, they were combined into one church called the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The feast day was adopted in the West about three centuries later. The 40-day period between the Feast of Transfiguration (August 6th) and the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14th) became a celebrated time of pilgrimage to the Holy Land for those who could not make the journey in the spring to celebrate the feasts of Easter and the Ascension forty days later.
The Theme of the readings for the Feast of the Exaltation
of the Cross: The Church, Called to Glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ
(Num 21:4b-9; Ps 78:1-2, 34-38; Phil 2:6-11; Jn 3:13-17).
Christians in the Catholic tradition are often recognized by
their veneration of the Cross, a profound symbol in the lives of the Catholic
faithful. Western Rite Catholics make
the Sign of the Cross from head to chest and from the left shoulder to the
right (for Orthodox Catholics, from right to left) when we invoke the
name of the Most Holy Trinity in our prayers, when we say the blessing over our
food, and many other times. The symbol of the Cross of Jesus identifies our
buildings; we also have crucifixes on the walls of our homes, and we carry the cross
on our rosaries and around our necks in gold or silver necklaces to mark us as
Christians. We express our faith in the glory of the Cross on our journey
through life, and a symbol of the Cross marks our grave sites in death.
Today's First Reading relates how, near the end of their forty-year wilderness journey out of Egyptian slavery, the new generation of the children of Israel began to complain about their hardships and spoke against God and Moses. They accused God and His covenant mediator of conspiring to lead them to die in the desert by not providing food and water for them. As their punishment for such a great sin as accusing God of evil like the serpent Satan, He allowed poisonous snakes whose bites burnt like fire to afflict the people and to call them to repentance before dissatisfaction led to full-scale revolt. Unlike their fathers, the new generation of the children of Israel's response to Yahweh's redemptive judgment was to immediately acknowledge their sin, repent, and ask for divine intervention. God's response to the people's repentance was to provide a means of salvation. He healed them if they had the faith to look up to the image of a serpent that God instructed Moses to make and suspend on a wooden pole and if they believed that God had the power to heal them.
The Responsorial Psalm recounts the history of Israel's relationship with Yahweh. The introduction in verses 1-2 invites the people of Israel to learn from the past and not to repeat their ancestor's acts of rebellion against God's authority over them.
In the Second Reading, St. Paul gave a profound exposition of the true nature of Jesus Christ. He acknowledged Jesus's humanity, but he also clearly professed His divinity. Paul wrote that taking on a human body brought Jesus to a life of suffering and sacrifice, which reached its climax on a wooden Roman cross where the soldiers stripped Him of everything He had, like a slave. Then, Paul described Jesus's exaltation in glory. Having completed His mission, Jesus is made manifest again, clothed in all the glory of His divine nature, which His human nature has merited. For this great act of bringing salvation to humankind, St. Paul declares that Jesus deserves the worship and praise of every living creature and the confession that He is Lord of all!
The Gospel Reading is from Jesus's conversation with a Pharisee and Jewish leader named Nicodemus, who came at night to question Him. Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be reborn from above through water and the Spirit of God to have eternal life. Then, the conversation turned to a revelation of Jesus's true identity and a prophecy of His Passion. Jesus compared Himself to the image of the bronze serpent that God had Moses construct and raise up above the heads of the people as a means of their salvation in the First Reading, saying, "... so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." Jesus's comparison prefigured His crucifixion. Today, as St.Paul wrote, "... we proclaim Christ crucified" (1 Cor 1:23). We must also look to the crucified Christ, believe that He is the only Son of God, and be "lifted up" with Him" for our salvation from the poison of sin and the "bite" of eternal death. We can receive true salvation, the gift of eternal life if we believe.
The First Reading Numbers 21:4b-9 ~ The Bronze Serpent
4b With their patience worn out by the journey, 5 the
people complained against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up from Egypt
to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with
this wretched food!" 6 In punishment, the LORD sent among the people seraph
serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. 7 Then the people
came to Moses and said, "We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and
you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the
people, 8 and the LORD said to Moses, "Make a seraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live." 9 Moses
accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone
who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Near the end of their forty-year wilderness journey since leaving slavery in Egypt, the new generation of the children of Israel began to complain about their hardships and spoke against God and Moses. They accused God and His covenant mediator of conspiring to lead them to die in the desert by not providing food and water for them.
5 the people complained against God and Moses, "why have
you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or
water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!"
The people were, in effect, accusing God of being like the
subtle serpent in the Garden of Eden, whose lies lured Adam and Eve to eat the
forbidden fruit that brought physical death to humanity. They accused God of
seeking their destruction and forgetting His works of salvation on their behalf,
like their parents and grandparents during the Exodus out of Egypt (Ex 17:1-7;
Num 14:14).
6 In
punishment the LORD sent among the people seraph serpents, which bit the people
so that many of them died. The word seraph means "fiery."
As their punishment for such a great
sin as accusing God of evil like the serpent Satan, He allowed poisonous snakes
whose bites burnt like fire to afflict the people and to call them to
repentance before dissatisfaction led to full-scale revolt.
7 Then the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned
in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents
from us."
The new generation of the children of Israel's response to
Yahweh's redemptive judgment differed from that of their fathers from the
Exodus generation. They immediately
acknowledged their sin, repented, and asked for divine intervention.
So Moses prayed for the people, 8 and the LORD said to
Moses, "Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten
look at it, they will live." 9 Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and
mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent
looked at the bronze serpent, they lived.
Moses offered an intercessory prayer
for the people, and God's response to Moses's petition and the people's
repentance was to provide a means of salvation. If they had the faith to look
up to the image of a serpent and believed that God had the power to heal them, they
received His gift of healing. Ironically, they had to look at an image of
their judgment and affliction, which was also an image of humanity's great
accuser and adversary. The image of the bronze serpent became a relic called
the Nehushtan from nehoset = bronze and nahash = serpent
(see John 3:14, Wis 16:5-7, and 2 Kng 18:4).
One might ask, isn't making this image violating the commandment in Exodus 20:4-5 (also see Dt 5:8-9)? God commanded that the covenant people must not create any graven images with the intent of worshiping them. However, He did not prohibit images that He commanded or those that symbolized the promise of salvation. Examples of images that God commanded the covenant people to make were the cherubim over the Mercy-Seat of the Ark of the Covenant (Ex 25:18-21) and the images embroidered on the curtain in the Sanctuary that covered the entrance to the Holy of Holies (Ex 26:31). There were also two great winged cherubim statues whose wings spanned the walls of the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Jerusalem Temple and images of bulls around the consecrated water basin for ritual purification (1 Kng 6:23-28; 7:23-25). So long as these images were not worshipped or in any way viewed as divine, they were acceptable. Their function was not a violation of the commands of God any more than Catholic statues or the image of the Cross is a violation. The Catechism teaches: "Nevertheless, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the Ark of the Covenant, and the cherubim" (CCC 2130).
It wasn't the bronze serpent that had the power to heal. The healing came from God if the people had the faith to look up and believe God had the power to heal them. The inspired writer of the Book of Wisdom saw this event as a sign for the people to recall the Law, which commanded them to be obedient to God and to have faith and trust that God had the power to protect them as He had promised (see Wis 16:5-7).
In the Gospel of St. John, Jesus referred to the bronze serpent as a sign of the universal salvation promised by God. Jesus linked His crucifixion to this event when speaking to Nicodemus in John 3:10-17 and the people in John 8:27-30.
The bronze serpent is a Biblical "type" of the crucified Christ. A Biblical type is: "A biblical person, thing, action, or event that foreshadows new truths, new actions, or new events. In the Old Testament, Melchizedek and Jonah are types of Jesus Christ. A likeness must exist between the type and the archetype, but the latter is always greater. Both are independent of each other." Catholic Dictionary, John A. Hardon, S.J.
| The Bronze Serpent | Jesus Christ Crucified |
| The bronze serpent was God's plan to heal the people of the snake bites that caused the death of the people and was a judgment for their sins. | Jesus Christ crucified was God's plan to heal humanity and deliver humanity from the curse of sin and death. |
| The image was suspended from a wooden pole. | Jesus was suspended from the wooden Cross. |
| The people received salvation from death by looking at the image suspended from the wood and believing that God could heal them. | Humanity can be saved from eternal death by looking to the crucified and resurrected Christ, believing that He has the power to forgive sins and protect them from eternal death. |
| Michal E Hunt, Copyright © 2010; Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved. | |
Do you look to Christ crucified as the sign of your eternal salvation and the remedy to save you from sin and death? Do not be rebellious like the Exodus generation; be like their children who repented and accepted God's gift of salvation and lived.
Responsorial Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38 ~ Remember God's Mighty Works
The response is: "Do not forget the works of the Lord!" (see 7b)
1 Hearken, my people, to my teaching; incline your ears
to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter
mysteries from of old.
Response:
34 While he slew them they sought him and inquired after
God again, 35 remembering that God was their rock and the Most High God, their
redeemer.
Response:
36 But they flattered him with their mouths and lied to
him with their tongues, 37 though their hearts were not steadfast toward him,
nor were they faithful to his covenant.
Response:
38 But he, being merciful, forgave their sin and
destroyed them not; often he turned back his anger and let none of his wrath be
roused.
Response:
Psalm 78 is a very long poem that recounts the history of Israel's relationship with Yahweh. The introduction in verses 1-2 invites the people of Israel to learn from the past and not repeat the acts of their ancestors' rebellion against God's authority over them. The psalmist tells how past generations did not show their gratitude for God's mighty deeds on their behalf. God punished them in response to their rebellion until they repented and sought His fellowship again (verses 34-35). They continually rebelled, refused to trust God, and broke the laws of the covenant He made with them at Sinai (verses 36-37). God forgave their sin in His mercy and took them back as His covenant people (verse 38).
The psalmist was warning the people that the judgments God brought against Israel in the past could happen again if future generations forgot His mighty deeds and gracious protection. The question that the psalmist alluded to at the poem's end (verses 65-72) was, would the next generation fail to appreciate God's covenant with David and his descendants with the promise that the Davidic throne will endure forever?
The history of God's actions recounted in this psalm is also a warning for us who belong to the New Covenant people of God. The redemption wrought by Jesus Christ fulfilled the promise of the eternal Davidic Kingdom (2 Sam 7:16; (23:5; 2 Chr 13:5; Sir 45:25). Through His sacrificial death and resurrection, He established the new Israel of the universal Church and the promise of eternal life for those who profess their belief in Him and their obedience to His Church. The works of Christ on our behalf protect us from divine judgment, but only if we remember, are grateful, and believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. As St. Peter courageously proclaimed at his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin: There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved (Acts 4:12).
The Second Reading Philippians 2:6-11 ~ Christ Humbled Himself
6 Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God something to be grasped. 7 Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; 8 and found human in
appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross. 9 Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on
him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus, every
knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
In this passage, St. Paul gave a profound exposition of the true nature of Jesus Christ. He acknowledges Jesus's humanity, but he also clearly professes His divinity. Verse 6 and the beginning of verse 7 refer to Christ humbling himself in becoming a man. The end of verse 7 and verse 8 is the center of the passage in which Paul proclaims the extreme to which Jesus's humility brought Him: as a man, He obediently accepted death on the Cross. St. Paul wrote that Jesus's obedience in assuming a human nature is the supreme example of His humility. However, Jesus's humiliation does not reside in His becoming a human, like us, and hiding His glorious divinity in human form. Taking on a human body brought Him to a life of suffering and sacrifice, which reached its climax on the Roman Cross, where the soldiers stripped Him of everything He had, like a slave. Then, in verses 9-11, Paul described Jesus's exaltation in glory. Having completed His mission, Jesus is made manifest again, clothed in all the glory of His divine nature, which His human nature has merited. For this great act of bringing salvation to humankind, St. Paul declares that Jesus deserves the worship and praise of every living creature and the confession that He is Lord of all!
The Gospel of John 3:13-17 ~ Lifted Up on the Cross
Jesus said to Nicodemus: 13 No one has gone up to heaven except
the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 so
that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." 16 For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might
not perish but might have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into
the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
This part of our reading is from Jesus's conversation with a Pharisee and Jewish leader named Nicodemus, who came in the darkness of night to question Jesus. First, Jesus told Nicodemus that to have eternal life, he must be reborn from above through water and the Spirit of God (3:3, 5). Then, the conversation turned to a revelation of Jesus's true identity and a prophecy of His Passion (verses 13-16).
13 No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has
come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
The significance of Jesus's statement that He has "come down
from heaven," which no one had ever done before (verse 13), is that Jesus revealed
His divine nature. Then Jesus referred to an event during the children of Israel's
forty-year journey through the wilderness from the First Reading in
Numbers 21:4-9.
14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up
Jesus referred to what occurred when the new generation of
Israel, the descendants of the Exodus generation, traveled through the wilderness.
They rebelled against God and His prophet, Moses. As a result of their
rebellion, God punished them with poisonous snakes that began to bite the
people. When they repented, God offered the people healing if they looked up to
the image of a bronze serpent elevated on a pole (see the First Reading). Jesus
was comparing Himself to the image of the bronze serpent that God had Moses
construct and raise up above the heads of the people as a means of their
salvation. In the wilderness journey, when plagued by the bites of the snakes,
all the people had to do was look up to the figure raised above them on the
wooden pole and believe that God could save them from the deadly poison of the
snakes.
15 so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. This incident prefigures Christ's crucifixion. We must look to the crucified Christ, believe that He is the only Son of God, and be "lifted up with Him" for our salvation from the poison of sin and the "bite" of eternal death. We can receive true salvation and eternal life if we believe in Him. The necessity of Jesus's crucifixion is why St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:23 (NJB) that we preach Christ crucified, which is why an image of the crucified Christ hanging from the Cross must be present at every Catholic Mass. Notice that Jesus uses the title "Son of man" twice in verses 14-15. It is Jesus's favorite Messianic title for Himself. In verse 14, the title stresses Jesus's humanity as He suffered on the Cross, while verse 13 stresses His divine origin since no one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man. This verse may also refer to the Prophet Daniel's vision of the divine Messiah who had the appearance of a Son of man (looked like a man) in Daniel 7:13-14. Jesus would allude to these verses from the Book of Daniel at His trial by the Sanhedrin, which caused the court to condemn Him to death for blasphemy (Mt 27:64-66).
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only [only
begotten = monogenes] Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not
perish but might have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. [..]
= literal Greek translation IBGE, Vol. IV.
The significant Greek word monogenes means that Jesus
was not "created" by God as with all other creatures on earth. It is from mono
= "sole or only" and gennao = "to beget, be born, to cause or to generate
as in begetting." Monogene can also mean "one of a kind." See the word monogenes in
John 1:14, 18; 3:18;
1 Jn 4:9.
John 3:16 is one of the best-known verses in the Bible. It is the witness of the Gospels summed up in one sentence. When Jesus said that God the Father did not send Him into the world to judge the world, He said that in His First Advent, His mission was not the divine judgment of humanity. His name in Hebrew means Yahweh is salvation, and He was sent into the world to proclaim the Kingdom of His Church and to offer the gift of eternal salvation. Judgment comes later and depends on whether or not one receives Christ as Savior: Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18, IBGE, Vol. IV).
Do you look to the Cross as the hope of your salvation? Do you believe in the saving power of Jesus Christ, who shed His blood on the altar of the Cross for the forgiveness of your sins? It is wise to remember the words of St. Rose of Lima, who summed up the meaning of the Cross in a few simple words: "The Cross is the only ladder to Heaven."
Catechism References (* indicates Scripture quoted or
paraphrased in the citation):
Numbers 21:4-9 (CCC 2130*)
Philippians 2:6-11 (CCC 2641*, 2667*); 2:6-9 (CCC 1850*); 2:6 (CCC 449); 2:7 (CCC 472, 602*, 705*, 713, 876, 1224); 2:8-9 (CCC 908*); 2:8 (CCC 411, 612, 623); 2:9-11 (CCC 449*, 2812); 2:9-10 (CCC 434), 2:10-11 (CCC 201*); 2:10 (CCC 633*, 635)
John 3:13 (CCC 423, 440, 661); 3:14-15 (CCC 2130*); 3:16 (CCC 219, 444, 454*, 458, 706*) 3:17 (CCC 679*)
The Cross is the altar of the New Covenant (CCC 1182*)
Eucharist as the ever-present sacrifice of the Cross (CCC 1323, 1364*, 1365*, 1366*, 1382)
The Kingdom of God was established through Christ's Cross (CCC 550*)
Michal E Hunt, Copyright © 2014; revised 2023 Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved.