Cross: The Place of Victory and Love

“We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Cross you have redeemed the world.”

The Catholic Church celebrates the exaltation of the cross. It is a feast that celebrates a symbol that hung our salvation. While it can mean death and suffering, Christ made it a symbol of how death was conquered through his passion. St. Maximilian Kolbe reminds us that the cross, “is a school of love.” We can never forget to love of cross shown to us in how he hung on the cross to save humanity. Without it, we would be slaves to sin and that of the world.

St. Paul wrote about the cross in two ways. First, he talked about how Christ humbled himself and was obedient to God’s will even to the point of death. As written in the Letter to the Philippians, “Though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as 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. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” Christ fulfilled what was promised to the human race when he offered himself as a sacrifice for us to be free.

Second, St. Paul talked about how Catholics can look to the cross that once hung Christ. He wrote, "Boasts in nothing except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to him, and he to the world" (Galatians 6:14). St. Paul wants us to carry in our hearts the cross that hung our savior as he redeemed us and the world.

Every day we have crosses to bear in our lives. Sometimes we forget what it means to bear it. Fulton Sheen reminds us, "Our Lord never promised that we would be without a cross; He only promised that we would never be overcome by it." Yes, we have a cross to carry, and often we have to carry others along the way. When we carry our own crosses to Calvary, we will conquer death and be born into everlasting life.

As the verse of Lift High The Cross reminds us (hopefully it was sung at Mass), “Come, Christians, follow where our Captain trod, Our King victorious, Christ the Son of God.”

Let us too follow Christ our king to victory.