Weapons of torment do not have the final say

This Sunday’s celebration requires the color red for liturgical vestments and altar adornments. The use of this striking color is familiar for services like Palm Sunday that commemorate the passion of Christ. Red is also used for martyrs to symbolize the blood they spilled for the sake of the faith. This Sunday’s Exaltation of the Holy Cross, however, did not historically come about to focus on Christ’s passion but to reflect on the instrument used during that crucifixion. The cross was a psychological weapon, and the discovery of the true cross in the fourth century allowed the faithful on this feast day to reflect on the cross as an instrument of God’s power over death. 

This Sunday’s readings transmute experiences of torment into ones of restoration. For example, the first reading recalls the waning confidence that the Hebrew peoples felt on their journey through the wilderness as many were dying of thirst, hunger and then snakelike creatures called seraph serpents. God’s cure becomes what today is known as the symbol for healing in the world of medicine. “Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived” (Nm 21:9). 

The passage suggests that one look upon the ailment as a first step of recovery. This is how this Sunday’s Gospel passage applies the bronze serpent to Jesus’ passion. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,” says Jesus, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14-15). Following these verses, we receive perhaps one of the best-known expressions of the Christian faith: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16). The lifting up of Jesus on the cross was converted from an experience of torment to an instrument of salvation that leaves sin behind on the cross. It becomes a sign and symbol that offers healing for all who believe, so that according to the faithful, death becomes merely a change in life but not an end in itself.

This Sunday’s Gospel passage comes from a highly symbolic portion of John’s Gospel call the Dialogue with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and “ruler of the Jews.” He comes to Jesus during the night (Jn 3:2), a symbolic act in John’s Gospel, which offers repeated reflections on light and darkness: “Through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:4-5). In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, the night is symbolic of confusion but also of Nicodemus’ slow growth in understanding of the significance of the life and death of Jesus. 

The night will become day. Darkness gives way to light as one’s understanding of the faith grows. This Sunday’s feast day on the Exaltation of the Cross serves as a reminder that the worst possible experiences in life do not have the final say for people of faith that look to Jesus’ own lifting up on the cross.