My Dear Friends,

As we continue to meditate upon the Mystery of the Cross and Christ’s victory over death, this week’s column is my homily from last Sunday’s celebration of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

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The violence in the last few weeks in our country has shown us that evil does indeed exist. And what does the Christian do when faced with this evil? We turn to the cross.

It is providential that we get to celebrate the feast of the Holy Cross together this year because our times beg us to look to the cross of Jesus Christ. Because we’ve all been a little uneasy this week, especially our school parents, in the wake of so much violence and so many school shootings, Sister Rosalie and I wrote to them this past Friday and told them: “There is indeed evil in the world, but as a Catholic faith community, we believe that good will triumph over evil. Our children see this every day when they look up and pray to the crucifix that hangs in each one of our classrooms.”

When we look up at the cross, we see the ultimate defeat of good over evil. St. John Chrysostom once said, “The cross is our trophy raised against the demons, our sword against sin, and the sword of Christ used to pierce the serpent.”

Unfortunately, instead of focusing on the glorious cross, we pay more attention to everything else: to social media, news channels, and the voices we hear in echo chambers that do not speak of the triumph of the cross. Yesterday morning, I was listening to the homily a priest in Michigan was giving and he said this: “So much of what has consumed us is the abject conviction that politicians will save us. We don’t use those words but we sure act like it, and that is straight from hell. [Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. (Psalm 146:3)]…We need to rebuke in the name of Jesus Christ any hate in our heart, any fear in our heart, and anything that reduces the dignity of any human in the slightest way…Let Jesus save you…so that we recognize that the answer is not fixing everything out there, but what is in here [in our hearts].” (Father Joseph Krupp)

And we start by embracing the cross and shutting out the loud voices of the world that more and more are leading us to extremes that will lead us straight to damnation. On Wednesday evening when I celebrated the 5:30pm Mass in here not too long after Charlie Kirk was killed, I implored the good people sitting before me to go home and resist the temptation to turn on the cable news and just pray. The facts of the day had been reported. We didn’t need it explained to us. We just needed to look to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and not be led down the road of hatred and rage and fear that consumed us this week. We cannot be led to extremes. We need to be led to the cross, and lead others with us to Calvary.

St. John of the Cross once said: “The road is narrow. He who wishes to travel it more easily must cast off all things and use the cross as his cane. In other words, he must be truly resolved to suffer willingly for the love of God in all things.” The road to Calvary is not easy. But that is where salvation lies. We won’t find it out there. We won’t find it on social media. We won’t find it on cable news. We won’t find it the deafening echo chambers of hate that we surround ourselves with. Listen to St. Rose of Lima: “Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.“

Jesus told Nicodemus in today’s gospel: “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:15) There on the cross we find the ultimate expression of love which we must transmit to others.

My brothers and sisters, it needs to begin in our hearts. We cannot go fix the world or the culture or even attempt to tell people what to think or what to believe unless we have the cross firmly on our shoulders. Not as a piece of jewelry as a hallow attempt to show off our “Chrisitan credentials.” The cross of Christ compels us to change our lives, to lay down our lives for each other and to treat every single person on this earth brother and sister because we are all children of a loving Father who gave us his only Son so that we might have eternal life.

I pray you walk out of here with peace in your hearts this day. And let me quote Mother Teresa for the third week in a row: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” It is Christ Jesus who united all of us and made us children of his Father through the blood he shed on that glorious cross.

As St. Paul of the Cross says: “May the Cross be ever on our lips.” Take up your cross my brother and my sister. Embrace it. Have it transform your heart. That is where peace begins: at Calvary, at the foot of the Cross.

God bless you all,