Triumph of the Cross

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Today we celebrate the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Since it is a major feast day in honor of the Lord Jesus, it can take precedence over the regular Sunday cycle. This feast began when the alleged “true cross” on which Jesus died was found by St. Helena in the fourth century. Afterward, her son, the emperor Constantine, had built on that site the basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This feast is designed to honor that event.
In the Catholic tradition, the triumph of the Cross is really the Good Friday celebration of the Lord’s Passion and Death. During that liturgy we process forward and venerate the holy cross. It is good, nonetheless, to have another day to focus our attention on the central symbol of the Christian faith.

Today’s first reading reminds us of the bronze serpent that God ordered Moses to make. Anyone who looked upon that image would be saved from death and the ill effects of the serpent bites that were tormenting the Israelites in the desert. As we shall see, the image of the bronze serpent is a type or foreshadowing of the lifting up of Jesus on the cross, so that anyone who looks upon Jesus will be saved from the death of sin. The responsorial psalm reminds us of that saving work of God, and it looks ahead to the saving work to be done by God in future times.

The second reading is the famous hymn to Christ in the letter to the Philippians. This passage is a classic example of exaltation Christology, meaning that the obedience of the human Jesus to accepting death on the cross for our salvation leads God the Father to raise him up so that all peoples might acknowledge Jesus as Lord – the traditional title for God in the Jewish tradition. It is precisely in that act of submission to the cross that leads to such a glorious exaltation.

The Gospel then has Jesus make reference to the event which we read in the first reading. Here, Jesus applies that image to himself and makes the key distinction: the bronze serpent saved the Israelites from physical death, but Jesus being lifted on the cross will save us from the spiritual death of sin. The Venerable Bede has penned the best description possible on this replacement:

“The wounds caused by the fiery serpent are the poisonous enticements of the vices, which afflict the soul and bring about its spiritual death. The people were murmuring against the Lord. They were stricken by the serpents’ bites. This provides an excellent instance of how one may recognize from the results of external scourge what a great calamity a person might suffer inwardly by murmuring. In the raising up of the bronze serpent (when those who beheld it, they were cured) is prefigured our Redeemer’s suffering on the cross, for only by faith in him is the kingdom of death and sin overcome. The sins which drag down soul and body to destruction at the same time are appropriately represented by the serpents, not only because they were fiery and poisonous and artful at bringing about death, but also because our first parents were led into sin by a serpent, and from being immortal they became mortal by sinning. The Lord is aptly made known by the bronze serpent, since he came in the likeness of sinful flesh. Just as the bronze serpent had the likeness of a fiery serpent but had absolutely none of the strength of a harmful poison in its members – rather by being lifted up it cured those who had been stricken by the live serpents – so the Redeemer of the human race did not merely clothe himself in sinful flesh but entered bodily into the likeness of sinful flesh, in order that by suffering death on the cross in this likeness he might free those who believed in him from all sin and even from death itself.”

“O Crux Ave Spes Unica!” – O Hail the Cross, our only hope!