Sept. 13, 2009: 24th Sunday Ordinary (B) & Exaltation of the Holy Cross

This past Saturday night, I drove to a camp site where St. Aloysius high school youth were having their Fall Retreat. I was asked to hear confessions while young adults were giving presentations. I found a tiny closet where sound system is stored and began hearing confessions. After a young man entered and sat himself beside me, I handed him a quarter-sized thing to hold in his hand while he told me his sins. He asked, "What is it?" I replied, "Do you know the cross on which Jesus died on? This is a itsy-bitsy piece from that cross encased in this glass and metal. We call it, the relic of the True Cross. As you say your sins, I want you to remind yourself that your sins have been nailed on this cross on which Jesus died on." In awe, his eyes widened. It certainly made his confession very special. (On the altar today, we have a relic of the True Cross in honor of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on Monday, Sept. 14).

This past February, I was in the church of Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. Within this large church complex, you can see the Calvary and the site of the tomb where Jesus was buried. Also within this church complex is where St. Helena, the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine, found three crosses and nails around the year after 312 AD when Christianity was legalized.

In order to discern which one of the three was the real cross on which Jesus died on, St. Helena had each cross touched to a deathly ill woman. When the woman recovered after being touched to the third cross, they took it as a sign that this was the cross of Christ. Since then, they have distributed this cross into large and small fragments, of which Our Lady of Mercy has one of them here displayed on the altar.

Throughout the Gospel, Our Lord foreshadowed to the disciples the suffering and death that he needed to undergo.

It was even foreshadowed in the Old Testament. From our First Reading, Prophet Isaiah says, "I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting." St. Peter upon hearing Jesus say, "that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days," he took aside Jesus and protested that such things could not and should not happen. Then Peter heard heart sickening words from Jesus, "Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

As a priest I get asked a lot about this. "Father, I have prayed diligently and went to mass faithfully all my life. Why did God give me this cancer? Father, what have I done that my marriage is unraveling and causing me tremendous suffering?" This is really the mystery of the Fifth Station in the Way of the Cross--Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross. A seemingly innocent bystander named Simon of Cyrene gets pulled out of the crowd by the Roman soldiers to carry the heavy cross and suffer the same humiliation, spitting, and buffets that Jesus does. I'm sure Simon asked himself, "Why me? I'm innocent!" The movie, "Passion of Christ" illustrates the transformation that happens in Simon. He begins the Fifth Station as a resenting bystander. But as he experiences the spits, the rocks, and the buffets upon Jesus, he gets angry at the soldiers and the crowd. Simon becomes protective of Jesus and willingly helps him carry the cross. Upon reaching Calvary, as Simon is told to leave, he realizes that he wasn't carrying Jesus' cross; he realizes that Jesus was carrying Simon's own cross. Simon departs Calvary with tears of sorrow and gratitude to the real innocent lamb who is about to be nailed to the cross. Perhaps Simon came to the same conclusion as St. Paul who said, “In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Col. 1:24)

I heard a beautiful example of this. A couple of evenings ago, a high school student at our church function approached me and said, "Father, guess what I did at school today?" "What?" She said, "I rummaged through four large trash cans during lunch." "Why did you do that?" She replied, "A girl I did not know told me at lunch that she threw away accidentally her teeth retainer. So I helped rummage through trash. I remembered when I lost my retainer. I had no friends who would help me then. When I got to class, the teacher frowned and commented about how badly I smelled." I asked her, "Well, did you not tell your teacher what you did?" She replied, "No." Here was a beautiful modern day Simon of Cyrene who in her flesh she completed what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church."