Pastor's Weekly Message

feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross,

13-14 Sep 2025

Dear Fellow Saints-in-the-Making,

Joyful greetings in Christ Jesus, Who Conquers Death on the Cross!

 Instead of celebrating the Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time this week, Holy Mother Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which is celebrated every year on September 14. As the Feast falls on a Sunday, it takes precedence over a Sunday of Ordinary Time, as the Cross is the Instrument of our Salvation, as we chant on Good Friday: Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the Salvation of the world.

 What then, you ask, is the difference between the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday and the Church’s celebration today? Good Friday memorializes Jesus Christ’s martyrdom by crucifixion, where we adore Our Lord for enduring excruciating suffering to save us from our sins. Good Friday is for us faithful Christians a day of penance and fasting and abstinence, when we enter into Christ’s own Suffering out of compassion for what He suffered for us as we hear the Passion Narrative from St. John’s Gospel.

For the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, we glorify the Lord and God for His Son Jesus, the One Who is our salvation. The Feast is more exultant, particularly as this year it falls on a Sunday. The focus is not on the Crucifixion as much as it is on the lifting up of the One Who is our Salvation. “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,” says Jesus to Nicodemus in today’s Gospel (John 3:14). Just as the serpent lifted up in the desert cured those who looked upon it, those who had been suffering from the venom of saraph serpents, so Our Savior Jesus Christ lifted up on the Cross cures those who look upon Him, those who are suffering from the poison of the sin of the ancient serpent.

My Dear Friends in Christ, let us praise Our Savior and Our Lord for His embracing the Cross as our means of Salvation. And let us be united with Christ as we willingly, and gratefully, bear our own crosses out of love for Him.

God love you! I do.

Fr. Lewis