Feast of The Exaltation of the Cross

Embracing your Cross
By Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd

As Christians we start all things with the sign of the Cross. We are baptized into this sign, blessed by it, and when we die it marks our final resting place. It is the Cross of Jesus Christ that we see prefigured in Genesis In the Tree of Life, in the midst of the Garden of eden; and when little Issac carries the bundle of wood up Mount Moria, the same wood on which Abraham is willing to offer his only son’s life to God.

It is the Cross that we see prefigured in the gold scorpion, the symbol of sin and death, that gives life in today’s first reading. It is the Cross that Isaiah prophezies about when he fortells the coming of the Suffering servant, the Messiah—who will die for his people.

The Cross is everywhere in Scriptures because it is the fulfillment of God’s plan to save Man. However, even though all of scripture testifies to it the Cross is still a surprise and a great source of scandal to many people who can not imagine that God loves us so much. But this is the mystery of our faith: God became man, so that we could btecome like God. He became man so that He could die for us on the Cross and so that in His Body and His Blood, washed clean by the blood and water that flowed from his pierced side we could regain the image and likeness of God.

As we say during Lent: Lord by your Cross and Resurrection you have set us free, you are the savior of the world!

Take a second to think about this mystery, think for a second how bizare and revolutionary a thought it is, that our God, that the almighty creator of the world would humble himself and die for his creation. And yet this is what we believe, this is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions. At the center of our Catholic faith is the life giving Cross whose sacrifice we offer on this and on every altar a real event, a current event, happening not just two thousand years ago
but happening now, and every day, in each of our lives. And so we Christians MUST embrace the cross each day! If we truly believe that our God died for us then we must be willing to die for each other. This is the most perfect fulfillment of the law of love: there is no greater love, than to lay down your life for a friend.

That is why the Mass is so important to the Church, because at the Mass we remember and thank God for Christ’s cross and in thanksgiving to God we offer up everything in our life joining all our joys and all our sufferings together with Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary the Sacrifice of Christ’s Cross.

This is also why the priesthood is so important to the Church, Christ called twelve men, twelve Apostles, to preach the message of the Cross and to help those who believe and accept it to make it a reality in their lives. This is what priests, from the time of the Apostles o our very day have done for us, on our behalf. They stand, with Christ, as an intermediary between God and His bride the Church making present in word and sacrament the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is nothing less than the Love of God for us. How poor a representation is our worship of the reality of what is going at the Mass.

Like all Christians, Priests are called on to make real sacrifices for our bride, the Church and when we say the Church, we don’t mean the buildings ut all of you who are part of Christ through baptism. Priests make these sacrifices willing, out of love modling their lives on the life of Jesus, who made similar sacrifices and in spite of all that Priests give up, what I have found is that by giving up, good things, that would distract me from my work I have been filled with so many other joys and blessings.

I am not sure people like the idea of sacrifices, anymore of embracing the cross and suffering. But in case you get the wrong idea, you should know that its not just priests who are called on to make sacrifices. Those of you who are parents, or who know anything about raising children know that true parenthood is just a series of sacrifices. And in truth even before you have kids, true love, as married people, requires compromises and sacrifices for the good of your husband or wife. Similarly, while the sacrifices of the priesthood are different from the sacrifices that a religious, sister or brother, monk or nun, make they too make sacrifices.

All Christians are baptized into the cross, and if we love God we can’t escape the reality of sacrificial suffering. But just as in death Christ found life, when we die to ourselves when we sacrifice, all of us find life, and joy, and peace

God has a plan for each of us, He who made us, knows us better than we know ourselves and he has written into our heart an identity and a plan, a plan for how we are to grow in holiness, happiness, and love.

Following God’s plan, always entails the Cross, and yet it is the only way for our lives to be truly satisfying.

When I was young, a boy of just five, I felt a longing in my heart to embrace the Cross to serve God and His people as a priest. But in time I allowed myself to forget this thought afraid of the sacrifices and crosses it entailed. And while every now and them, my mind drifted back to thoughts of being a priest, each time I rejected this thought.

For a long time I was sucessful in ignoring the call. For a long time I followed my own plans and designs ignoring the fact that God has a plan for all of us and that he had a plan for me.

Before I had even turned 21 I had been blessed with so many great sucesses, I had great friends, I was finacially viable, my career was on track, and it seemed like the sky was the limit.

God’s tricky though: I think God blessed me with so many sucesses to show me that none of them would make me happy. True happiness, He taught me comes from listening to God’s plan and doing it. True happiness comes from taking up your cross and following Jesus.

In 2003 I was working for the US Senate, I had been just offered a job in the White House,
I had an apartment and car, a entire life in place and in the blink of an eye, I took a chance on God. I gave it all away—and listened to that calling that God had made me for.

I embraced the Cross, and I found that as Jesus promised it was light and pleasant. You see, the Cross, doesn’t sound like fun. Sacrifice and death don’t’ sound like a good time, but in truth—it is only in loosing yourself that you can find yourself.

It is only in dying on the Cross—that you can truly live.

The Cross is the center of Our Faith, and at the Mass we are reminded that it should be the center of our life. God has a plan for each of us, a plan for who we are meant to be a plan that will make us happy and holy and to bring us at the end of our life to eternal joy. But for all of us Christians, baptized into Christ’s death God’s plan involves the Cross.

Whether he calls us to be parents, or religious brothers or sisters, or whether he calls a young man to be a priest all of us are challenged to embrace the Cross. To offer our very life on the Cross, in love for our neighbor.

Today as we celebrate this Feast of the Triumph of the Cross I invite you to pray for the young people of this parish and of our diocese.

Pray that they hear and listen to the good news of the Cross
Pray that they listen to God’s plan for them
And pray that they take up their Cross and follow christ.

Pray especially for our young men, that they may consider a calling a vocation to the priesthood.

That in embracing their vocation, they might make the reality of the Cross present for us all here on the Altar.