Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
/Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
St. Damien Church
14 September 2018
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I want to thank Fr. Pelster for agreeing and permitting us to schedule this Solemn High Mass in what is a time of penance and reparation for the Church, called for locally by Archbishop Coakley in his letter to us on August 31. Today’s feast gives us the opportunity to join together at Calvary and to plant the saving reality of the Holy Cross, not in dirt outside the walls of Jerusalem, but in the midst of the filth and dirt of heinous sin in our time. This Holy Mass is offered for the intention of the healing of victims of clerical abuse and for conversion of the clergy. Let nothing bring out of focus our attention to victims and the real harm done to them. No excuses, no dismissals should lessen our focus on victims. Let only our tears bring that attention out of “focus” because we weep due to unspeakable betrayal of the innocent and unspeakable betrayal of the Innocent Lamb without blemish!
None of us appreciates or likes how our beloved Church appears in this moment. She’s not supposed to look this way. She’s not supposed to be filthy. The Lord gave up his life to make her spotless. She’s supposed to be upright and standing tall. Instead she is knocked down and in the dirt. We hate this moment. We hate what has happened. We hate what it does to the Church and to us. We are conflicted by the mystery of the human elements of the Church and how they are united to the divine. How will she ever be better? How will she return to her proper glory? Just make it all go away. We are tempted to fall prey to ill-advised silence and cowardice. From the introit: “But it behoves us to glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ….” It behoves us to glory in the Cross!
If what I just expressed is true about how ill at ease we are with the disfigurement of the Church, how much more ill at ease are we with the disfigurement of Jesus, which today’s feast calls to our mind? When we think of the Cross can we possibly like the way the Lord appears? It doesn’t seem proper that he look so disfigured. It doesn’t seem proper for him who is God to be filthy and covered in blood. He’s not supposed to be thrown to the ground, but rather standing tall. Yet, if he could lower himself to such depths for our salvation… then perhaps our conflict about the Church in this present crisis can be seen with different eyes. What might cause us to view things differently when we are so disgusted by what is going on in the Church? The reality that the Church, the Body of Christ, is united with her Head might cause us to see with different lenses. What causes us to view this differently does not come about primarily by focusing on the Church, but rather by focusing on the Lord. You see, the Lord is united with his Church in this shame. We don’t want him in such a situation and we don’t want her, the Church, in it either. Recalling also that the Lord chose to lower himself from his proper glory in heaven to endure the Cross also reforms our vision. Certainly, it is a travesty to consider our Lord bruised, bloodied, and broken, as Isaiah prophesied about him: “As many were astonished at him – his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men” (Is. 52:14). Yet, do we forget that in the Incarnation the Lord had already condescended mightily by leaving his heavenly glory to take on our flesh? Considering the infinite greatness of God are we numbed to how unfitting it was for him to take on our flesh? Isaiah again speaks of how low God made himself: “He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Is. 53:2). And yet, this seemingly inappropriate lowering of self, this condescension of God to plant Himself in our lost state was already a disfigurement of sorts (at least as regards divinity), well before we ever get to the far greater disfigurement of the Cross. Only the immense love of God for us helps us cast aside our apprehension to accept what the Lord freely chose to do in order to save us. What we make of this is that God’s choosing of this path, is what helps us see the Cross and this present moment in Church life differently. Where we only see brokenness and filth and hopelessness, we believe in faith that divine eyes see something more. Why can we endure thinking of our Lord so disfigured and His Church presently so disfigured? Because he chose this path for purposes only he can accomplish and his Bride is united with him to pass from shame to glory! Think of this: In the suffering of Christ our Head, which we recall on this feast, the Lord used the government, the processes of Roman execution, to be crushed in order to fulfill his plan to accomplish not only death but ultimately the victory of resurrection. Consider the ugliness of our time and the disfigurement of our beloved Church at the hands of priests and bishops. What in many ways is forcing the hand and aiding a purification according to God’s plan? It is, to a degree, again the government being used to force the filth into the light and to drive it to the foot of the Cross to receive its judgment like so many vile demons. The government method the Lord is using today is, we might say, attorneys general who by the subpoena of records and forced investigation bring us great pain, yes, but oh, with the purification to come, we will see the Bride of Christ, the Church, appear more properly according to her nature as united in greater holiness to her Head. Because of the power of God to make the horror of the Cross more than just horror, it behoves us to glory in it and we can have confidence that as he was lifted up for our salvation, so he will make his power and victory evident again in his Church, his Bride. He will bring about a purification that causes our rejoicing and aids our ability to glory in what the world sees only as shame.
Oh sure, in our piety, we want to deny the Lord’s suffering in the words of Peter: “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Mt. 16:22). We feel the pain just imagining our good Lord so rejected, abused, beaten, dying, and bound to the Cross. Yet bound to that ugliness, like sacramental matter to form, is the plan of God to use His lowering and sacrifice of self so that He be raised high in victory. If we embrace the shame and the pain of purification right now in our age of the Church, there will be grace in our lowering of self and grace in being lifted high with our Head. We have to want this process as the Lord does: “Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself” (Jn. 12:31-32).
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.