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Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

When I was fourteen years old my parish priest, Fr Michael, celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ordination. To mark the occasion Sr Jackie trained a small group of us to sing John Stainer’s 19th century arrangement of John 3:16 in four-part harmony. We sang it at his Jubilee Mass, and whenever I hear the Gospel reading for this Sunday, I can still recall my part, even though I’m no longer the boy soprano I once was. (On a side note - being a fourteen-year-old boy put up to sing a soprano part in front of the whole school in a small country town is an opportunity to learn social resilience I can tell you!) 

This moment in John’s Gospel is a profound declaration of faith from John's early Christian community in the incarnation as an act of radical self-sacrifice for the salvation of humankind. That God loved the world so much that through the Son the world might be saved. 

Might be saved? God loved the world so much and still it’s only might? 

On one hand that last phrase could be read as a quaint piece of grammar that slipped in during the translation of the Gospel down the years. On the other, John tells us that it is those who believe that will be saved. 

It’s an oversimplification I know, but I imagine the hand of God being held out to us - offered, but not grabbing at us against our will. And in my simple understanding, God’s hand draws us up only when we make the active choice to reach out and take it. To cooperate freely with God’s gracious love. 

And I think this is the key - that our cooperation with God’s love is active. That it prompts me to do something in response to God’s love, not to earn it but to embody it in my daily life through acts of service and loving kindness. 

This Sunday the Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross as the instrument of our salvation. As we do I pray that, although God’s love for me is unconditional, it will never be unappreciated or unrequited. And I will look to the example of people like Fr Michael, Sr Jackie and many others to inspire me to live a life of exaltation. 



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