Fr. Billy Swan – Word on Fire Blog
From being a sign of malediction, the Cross was transformed into a sign of blessing, from a symbol of death into a symbol par excellence of the love that overcomes hatred and violence and generates immortal life.
Pope Benedict XVI
The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross draws our eyes and hearts to the mystery of Calvary, where the cross is lifted up as both a mirror and a window. First, the Lord’s cross is a mirror; it holds up before us the sin that is in us all and the dysfunction that needs healing. A precedent is found in the first reading for today’s Mass, Numbers 21:4-9, where Moses prescribed a healing remedy for the Israelites who were bitten by fiery serpents. To recover their health, he instructed them to gaze on a bronze serpent fixed to a standard and raised on high. This ritual seems odd to say the least, but its healing power centers around the need to look our own rebellion straight in the eye. Somehow, in that reality check, the outward sign functions as a mirror in which we can see the ugliness that we must acknowledge as a first step to healing. We find something similar with the prophet Isaiah in the first reading on Good Friday. There, it speaks of a man brutalized by torture being “lifted up, exalted, rising to great heights” (Isa. 52:13). Before such a sight, we are told that “kings stand speechless before him” (52:15). And before his cross, we too fall on our knees praying “Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner” as we see our need for his mercy and healing.
In the Gospels, Jesus is revealed as the one lifted up before the world, not only as a mirror but as a window into the depths of God’s saving love: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). The horror of the cross externalizes the horror of sin, but it also reveals the love that swallows it up. That is why Jesus linked his lifting-up on the cross to his mission of love, sent by the Father: “For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish” (John 3:16). With the cross as a window, we catch a glimpse of the extent to which divine love was prepared to go in order to seek out and reach those who were lost. Jesus’ love was even greater than his unimaginable suffering.
Christ your life is hanging before you, so that you may look at the Cross as in a mirror… Nowhere other than looking at himself in the mirror of the cross can a person better understand how much they are worth.
St. Anthony of Padua
… In the cross as in a mirror, we see our own need for salvation and the ugliness of our own sin. In the cross as a window, we see the truth of Dostoevsky’s words that love is indeed a “harsh and dreadful thing.” Yet this was the greatest love the world has ever known that overcame every darkness and evil that afflicts humanity and whose power is still active and triumphant in the lives of Christians. Here lies the real meaning of today’s feast as a sign of hope.