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165.1
First Point
The
feast which the Church celebrates today was originally established when
Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, discovered the Holy
Cross, and when it was presented with great honor and received with much
glory throughout the world by all Christians. However, this feast became
much more important when the Emperior Heraclius brought this Holy Cross
back in triumph, carrying it on his shoulders and placing it in Jerusalem
on the same spot of Calvary where Jesus Christ was attached to it.
We should unite ourselves with the joy which the Church displays on
this day by the great solemnity with which she honors this sacred wood. At
the same time we should enter into the sentiments of Saint Paul when he
says that we must glory in the cross of Jesus Christ.[i]
It is indeed in this cross that we should place all our glory, says the
same Apostle; casting our eyes on Jesus Christ, our divine Master, who
placed his glory and all his happiness in suffering and dying on this
cross, despising the shame and ignominy[ii]
which accompanied the cross, for this Holy Cross (which has since become
so venerable to Christians) was, as the same Apostle says, a cause for
scandal to the Jews and a folly to the Gentiles.[iii]
The apostles, according to the expression of the same Saint Paul, made
it an honor for them to preach Jesus Christ crucified throughout the
world,[iv]
because they professed to know nothing but the same Jesus crucified,[v]
quite far from voiding the
cross of Jesus Christ,[vi]
which is for us the virtue and the power of God.[vii]
Let us, therefore, spend this day and the rest of our lives in great
respect and profound adoration before this sacred mystery, which as the
same Saint Paul adds, was hidden before Jesus Christ for our glory,
while the princes of this world did not have the advantage of knowing it,[viii]
although the Cross is the instrument of our salvation and has procured for
us the life of grace and our resurrection.
165.2
Second Point
It
is not fitting that the honor which we must pay to the cross of Our Lord
be limited to showing it respect and adoring it. Rather we must love it
with all the affection of our hearts and desire to die attached to it as
Jesus Christ our divine Master desired. For, as the author of the
Imitation says, those who embrace the cross of Jesus Christ with a good
heart need not fear the dreadful sentence of damnation. Because we have
been freed from sin by means of it, we must not doubt (and we should have
this confidence) that, if we love the cross in union with Jesus Christ who
loved it tenderly and bore it with extreme joy, all the miseries of this
life will become pleasant and agreeable to us. In this way we will be
truly happy, having found our paradise in this world, because we will have
entered into the sharing of the suffering spirit of Jesus Christ, Who
has reconciled us by his death on this holy cross, as Saint Paul says,
and made us holy, pure, and beyond reproach before God.[ix]
Let us then consider attentively how much we owe to this sacred
wood for having contributed this way to our sanctification. By a zeal of
ardent love let us raise it up to Jesus Christ to unite it to him, for he
still loves it now as he loves our salvation and is glad to have borne it
for our sanctification. Therefore, when you have some trouble, unite
yourself to Jesus suffering; love his cross because you are one of his
members;[x]
this union and this love will soothe your pains and will make them much
more tolerable.
165.3
Third Point
All
the external and internal honors we can pay to the Savior's cross will be
of little use to us unless we honor it in another way, by bearing
constantly[xi]
as a good and faithful servant the cross,[xii]
which the same Jesus, our Master, wishes to give us, remembering that he
was quite willing to be crucified for love of us. As Minucius Felix so
well says, although Jesus Christ requires that we adore his Holy Cross,
yet that is not what he asks the most; it is that we drink cheerfully
of his sacred chalice if we desire to be his friend and to have a place
with him in his kingdom.[xiii]
Let us then, like Saint Paul, place all our glory in bearing in
our bodies the sacred wounds of the suffering Jesus,[xiv]
so as to make ourselves conformable to Jesus crucified and to honor his
Holy Cross in the manner that will be most pleasing to him and will be
most efficacious and advantageous for us. In fact we judge well that the
entire life of Jesus was nothing but a cross and a constant martyrdom, and
we will never appear better as his servant, his friend, and his imitator,
than by imprinting on ourselves the sign of his Holy Cross and by
suffering pain like his.
How could we dare look for another way to please God, to honor him,
and to offer him a sacrifice agreeable to him, save by the way of the
blessed cross, since Jesus our Savior himself did not spend a single hour
of his life without suffering in order to honor his Father, and since no
saint has ever lived in this world without suffering and without the
cross!
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The
feast of the Triumph of the Cross, as it is called today, focuses less on
the occasions of its origin (the Finding by Saint Helena around 320 and
the Exaltation, or rescue, of the Cross from the Persians by the Emperor
Heraclius in 629), and more on the mystery of the Cross in the work of
salvation. As in his meditation for May 3, De La Salle stresses the
importance of carrying the cross of suffering daily out of love for
Christ.
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