Christ the Cornerstone

From the horror of the cross comes our hope, our salvation

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:13-15)

Tomorrow, Sept. 14, is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. What was to the ancient world an instrument of unspeakable horror—not unlike the gas chamber or the guillotine—the wood of the cross has become for Christians a powerful sign of hope and salvation. Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, his passion and death, is symbolized in the holy cross. We rejoice in it because it was the pathway to our Lord’s resurrection.

The first reading from the Book of Numbers (21:4b-9) recalls the “lost” people of Israel wandering in the desert and complaining about God’s supposed lack of care for them. In spite of the fact that God has rescued them from slavery in Egypt and offered them a new home in the promised land of milk and honey, they grumble among themselves saying to Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water?” (Nm 21:5)

The Israelites are punished for their ingratitude and infidelity. Poisonous snakes threaten them with serious illness, even death, and they beg God to save them—once again. The Lord tells Moses to mount a bronze snake on a pole. He promises anyone bitten by a venomous snake who looks at it will be cured.

We Christians understand the analogy. Jesus has taken on himself the sins of the world. As St. Paul tells us in the second reading for this feast day:

“Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8).

Jesus becomes the Old Testament snake. As St. Paul says, Jesus, who was not a sinner, “became sin” (2 Cor 5:21). He became the antidote for the venomous evil that has infected all humanity since the sins of our first parents. And the lifting up (exaltation) of the holy cross is an unmistakable sign that sin and death have been overcome once and for all by the redemptive sacrifice of God’s only Son.

St. John’s Gospel testifies to the power of this antidote with one of the most-quoted passages in all of sacred Scripture:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn 3:16-17).

Our redemption, and the salvation of the whole world, come through the holy cross. There is no other road to heaven, no other way to true happiness and lasting joy. We must follow Jesus on the via dolorosa, the sorrowful way through death to everlasting life.

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, in his book Heaven, the Heart’s Deepest Longing, has written:

Suffering is an occasion for wisdom, and wisdom is an essential ingredient in happiness. If happiness is objective, if it is not in us but we are in it, then its objective laws and principles may require subjective suffering on our part. Most great men and women of the past have both experienced and taught the creative value of suffering, the objective happiness of subjective unhappiness.

Jesus has taught us that we must endure suffering and death in this life in order to follow him to the everlasting joy of heaven. The holy cross is the sacramental sign of this profound truth.

God the Father loves each one of us, and all the vastness of his creation, so much that he willingly sent his only Son, the Word incarnate, to suffer and die for us on a cross. As a result, the hideous instrument of torture and death has been exalted. It has become for us the very opposite of what it was meant to be—not a sign of despair and death, but an affirmation of hope and joy.

Let us thank God for the great gift of sacrificial love that we have received. And let us pray fervently the words we sing on Good Friday: “We praise you, O Lord, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” †