We Should Glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ – Exaltation of the Holy Cross – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; September 14, 2025

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son… These are perhaps the most famous words of the Bible, and rightly so, but to grasp their full power we must realize that without this gift we were perishing.

This is very important. I would wonder if perhaps one of the biggest obstacles these days, both to catechesis and evangelization, is that people think that they are “good people” and that they “know Jesus”. Therefore, they have nothing to learn and nothing for which they need to repent.

I think of a man who shouted at me at an interstate rest stop, “I know Jesus.” When I asked him his religion, he simply repeated, “I know Jesus.” Please God, he really did know Jesus, but he did not inspire me with any great confidence in that regard.

Or, we can think of last week’s Gospel and Jesus’ call to calculate the cost of building a tower. Well, if the spiritual tower is only a one-story affair, that is no big deal, but if it must reach to heaven and needs God’s help in the construction – unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do the builders labor – we will take more seriously the construction. (cf. Lk 14:28-30; Ps 127[126]:1)

St. Augustine wrote, “It is not as if a good life of some sort came first, and that thereupon God showed his love and esteem for it from on high, saying, ‘Let us come to the aid of these men and assist them quickly because they are living a good life.’ No, our life was displeasing to him; whatever we did by ourselves was displeasing to him; but what he did in us was not displeasing to him. He will, therefore, condemn what we have done, but he will save what he himself has done in us.” (Sermo 23A, cited in Liturgy of the Hours, Vol IV., pg. 188) St. Augustine goes on to cite St. Paul that Christ died for the ungodly … God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Rm 5:6,8)

One thing the daily news reveals to us are crimes committed, from the big stage of world actors to the little stage of petty criminals.

We could talk about the public shootings, and we have had quite a run recently; Annunciation School, the Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, and now Charlie Kirk.

It is strange, but for whatever reason, it is the latest in this sequence that I personally felt most strongly. I have not been a fan or follower of Charlie Kirk and was only vaguely aware of him up until now. What is so disturbing here? We had a man exercising the American right of free speech in an exemplary fashion, going into hostile environments and having discussions, debates, on controversial mattes, but never demeaning his adversaries or descending to personal attacks. That is what he was doing this past Wednesday at Utah Valley University. A man had asked, “Do you know how many transgender mass killings there have been in the past 10 years?” Charlie Kirk replied, “Too many.” The man responded, “Five. And now, do you know how many total mass killings there have been the past 10 years?” The man is making as statistical argument and statistics can be very misleading, so Charlie Kirk replied with a question, seeking to break through illusions, seeking the truth. He said, “Including or excluding gang shootings?” Those were his last words. He was a man committed to reasonable discussion, seeking the truth. It was as though the bullet that killed Charlie Kirk sought to kill reasonable discussion. That is especially disturbing if you consider that we worship the Word made flesh, the supreme reason of God, through whom all things were made, embodied in the man, Jesus Christ.

In any case, these spectacular crimes, which seem to be becoming more frequent, are symptoms of the continued breakdown of a society that has turned its back on God. Indeed, the perpetrators who generally turn out to be very disturbed individuals, are the fruits of a society that does not give its members guidance in the way of truth, but, at best, leaves them to figure things out for themselves.

Yet, if these disturbing events reveal a society that has turned its back on God, that also means that we should not simply rely on our own belonging to God but should rather seek always to turn back to him, to be ever more faithful to him. If the faithful are not faithful, where will the rest of the world be? I saw one headline, “Charlie Kirk is dead. Just stop everything and pray.” I will say something more, “Go to confession.” (cf. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/charlie-kirk-is-dead-just-stop-everything-and-pray/)

Let us consider something that belongs more to the fabric of ordinary life, something that apart from the alligator, might happen here in Burns. There is a woman who was charged with negligent homicide in New Orleans for the death of her son who wandered off and was killed by an alligator; the sort of neglect involved, following a prior history of abuse, is alas all too common. (https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-charged-negligent-homicide-after-child-killed-alligator/story?id=125369015) Again, while sin has been a human reality since the time of Adam, this sort of crass neglect and abuse, so contrary to nature, seems also to be a fruit of our godless society.

All these things rightly shock us and repel us and we separate ourselves from them. Yet, we need to recognize that the same human flesh that we all share is involved; we see what human beings are capable of. These things should make us feel shame for our nation, that has descended so far, but also for the human race to which we belong. We are reminded now of the repeated prayer of the chaplet of Divine Mercy, “For the sake of his sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”

Anyone who has ever told a lie, even a little one, and nothing worse, has played on the first step of a stairway that goes into a very dark and ugly basement; we encounter that basement when we meet with those we regard as “pathological liars”. So also, anyone who has committed even a small action out of petty meanness or spite, has played on the first step of the stairway to the basement. We could give many more similar examples, but the recognition that the little sins we have committed during our life – if that is all that we have done – could have been the seeds of much worse things, reveals the profound truth behind the famous saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…

Because God gave his Son to save sinners, that is who we are of ourselves, he did not just give him to become man, born of the Virgin Mary, he gave him up to death on the Cross, to expiate our sins. That means those sins we have personally committed and those sins that we share, we might say, by our natural solidarity with the human race to which we belong. The gift of God’s Son reveals the evil of sin, but also the fundamental goodness of the nature that God created and regards as worthy of saving.

In the world today, the gift of God’s Son, in Bethlehem and on the Cross, made long ago, is continued and made present to us in the Holy Eucharist, which is not just the presence of Jesus Christ, God and man, nor just food for our soul, but is his Body and Blood, offered anew in the unbloody sacrifice, which reproduces in all its power the bloody sacrifice of the Cross, “for the forgiveness of sins”.

Again, we can think of the chaplet of Divine Mercy, “Eternal Father, I offer thee the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.” That is the spirit of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, who had become enchanted by arguments that they needed to submit themselves to the law of Moses, O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? (Gal 3:1)

How was Jesus Christ crucified publicly portrayed? No narrative description, no Mel Gibson movie, can be as powerful a public portrayal of the crucifixion of Christ as what is accomplished in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, at the words, This is my Body; This is the chalice of my Blood, whereby his Body and Blood are made present really, truly, and substantially, and this living reality of his Body and Blood is offered anew to God, concretely representing, here and now, his sacrifice on the Cross.  At this moment the Cross of Christ is truly exalted as the fruit of his redemptive work is made actual and poured out not just upon the present assembly, but upon the whole world, reaching even to the souls in purgatory, and giving glory to the saints in heaven.

The Cross purifies us for the vision of God; the Cross is the heaven’s ladder upon which the angels of God ascend and descend (cf. Jn 1:51); the Cross is the cure for the serpent’s venom that courses through our veins, the venom of pride and rebellion against God. The Cross has the power to rescue us from the power of darkness, under which we were born, and transfer us into the kingdom of Christ. (cf. Col 1:13) The Cross has the power to free us from our sins and sanctify our souls, rendering us holy and blameless in the sight of God. (cf. Eph 1:3-10)

To benefit from the Cross, we must learn to contemplate the Cross in faith, the way the Israelites gazed upon the bronze serpent, recognizing who it is that hung upon the Cross and why. It is the eternal Son of God who became man for our salvation, who hung upon the Cross to expiate our sins, to reconcile us to God, and to open the gates of heaven.

Contemplating the Cross, our life must become conformed to the reality we contemplate. Through the Cross we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, who makes us to be true children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order to be glorified with him. (Rm 8:17)

Through our baptism we have already been configured to the Cross of Christ: We were buried with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life, the life of the children of God, life in the Holy Spirit. (Rm 6:4) Yet, that pattern of the death and resurrection of Christ, that was stamped upon our souls in our baptism, must shape and fashion our life from day to day, that we might grow ever more into the likeness of Christ, until united with him, we breath our last breath and so enter into eternal life.

Perhaps the bullet that killed Charlie Kirk did this much good: it united his blood to the Blood of Christ for his salvation.

Even if the world should go up in flames around us, “We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.” (Entrance Antiphon for the Exaltation of the Cross)