Feast of the Triumph of the Life-Giving Cross

Preacher: Met. John Gregory

Lessons: Isaiah 45:21–25; Psalm 98; Philippians 2:5–11; John 12:31–36

There is a restlessness in the heart of every pilgrim. A longing for home, for truth, for something real. Scripture calls it a holy restlessness. It is what drove the first apostles out from the safety of Jerusalem and into a world that did not want them. They had seen the Risen Christ. They had felt the fire of the Spirit. They could not stay still. They had to move.

That restlessness is what brings us to this feast - the Triumph of the Life–Giving Cross. At first glance, that title almost sounds like a contradiction. How can an instrument of torture be called life–giving? How can a symbol of Rome’s cruelty be called triumph? Yet this is the paradox at the very center of our faith. What looked like defeat became victory. What looked like death became the fountain of life.

Isaiah gives us a glimpse of it long before Jesus came. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.” God’s saving love was never meant to be kept in one corner of the world. The Cross makes that promise visible. Its arms stretch wide enough to gather all nations, all traditions, all people into the embrace of God.

Saint Helena understood this when she traveled to Jerusalem in the fourth century. She longed to touch the story of Christ more deeply, and in her pilgrimage the Cross itself was lifted up as a sign for the Church. What she recovered became more than a relic. It became a reminder that Christ crucified is not hidden away but lifted high for the life of the world.

Saint Paul takes us deeper. In Philippians we hear that Christ, though equal with God, emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and humbled himself to the point of death - death on a cross. The Cross is not only about pain endured. It is about the character of God revealed. The God we worship is not a God who clings to power or privilege. The God we worship is the one who lays it down, who enters the depths of our suffering so that no one is left outside the reach of mercy.

Saint Francis of Assisi lived this truth in a startling way. He turned from wealth to embrace poverty. He kissed the wounds of lepers. He sang songs of joy even while bearing the marks of Christ’s own wounds in his flesh. Francis shows us that the Cross is not simply something to venerate. It is a pattern for living - a call to pour ourselves out in love, just as Christ poured himself out for us.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” The Cross unmasks the powers of darkness. Rome thought it had silenced a troublemaker. Religious leaders thought they had rid themselves of a threat. Evil thought it had won. But on that tree, what looked like shame was in fact the enthronement of the King of Glory. Death was undone from the inside out. Saint Athanasius put it this way: Christ entered death itself so that death might be destroyed.

And this is where our own Convergent Catholic witness matters. The Cross is where East and West meet. Eastern Catholics sing that through the Cross joy has come into all the world. Western Christians lift high the Cross on Good Friday, declaring, “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Savior of the world.” Martin Luther called the Cross the very heart of theology. We do not have to choose one voice over another. All of them converge here, at the foot of the Cross, bearing witness to the same mystery: that love is stronger than death.

But friends, this feast is not only about what happened long ago. Jesus warns us, “Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you.” To honor the Cross is not just to wear it around our necks or hang it on our walls. It is to walk in its light. It is to let its shape become the shape of our lives.

Saint Maria Skobtsova lived this in Paris during the terror of Nazi occupation. She opened her home to the homeless and to Jewish refugees. She carried the Cross by carrying the suffering of others, and she paid the ultimate price at Ravensbrück. Her life teaches us that the Cross is not abstract. It is the costly love that lays down one’s life for friends and for strangers.

Saint Oscar Romero carried the Cross in El Salvador. He stood at the altar and proclaimed the Gospel of justice in the face of violence and oppression. He, too, was struck down, yet in his martyrdom the light of Christ still shines. His witness reminds us that to lift high the Cross often means standing where the world least wants us to stand with the poor, the broken, the excluded.

So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means the Cross must shape how we forgive. It must shape how we speak the truth. It must shape how we treat those who have been told they do not belong. To be convergent is to see the Cross not as one tradition’s property, but as the meeting place of them all. To be apostolic is to carry it forward, as pilgrims who are still being sent into the world.

The Cross is not the end of the story, but it is the doorway into life. It is God’s declaration that mercy is greater than judgment, that love is stronger than death, that light will not be overcome by darkness. Today we do not honor an execution. We honor the tree of life, the throne of the Lamb, the place where all people are being drawn into the embrace of God.

So let us walk in its light. Let us take up the Cross, not as a burden that crushes, but as the way that sets us free. And let us proclaim with our lives that through the Cross, joy has indeed come into all the world.

Glory to Jesus Christ.