Chapter Talk

EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS

This feast is approaching and the following is an extract of a Chapter Talk on its depth and meaning.

Introduction

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross presents to us through its rich liturgy the meaning and purpose of Christ’s Passion and Death.  It shows us the transfiguration of suffering through glorious victory, with the Cross as the symbol of this triumph of life over death and sin.  It presents the wood or tree of the Cross under its aspect of tree of life; as Vexilla Regis, the standard of the king raised aloft in victory.  This raised cross, foreshadowed by the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole by Moses in the desert (Num 21), exercises on us the power of healing and attraction.  It is the drawing power of the Cross, that is, of Christ’s sacrificial love for us, which is our theme today.

 

 

 

an is drawn by his desire for the Truth.  Augustine again, quoting Ps 36: “Delight in the Lord and He will give you your heart’s desire.”  When a person is drawn in Christ, he is “delighted by truth, happiness, justice, all of which is Christ ….  Give me one who longs, who burns, who sighs for the source of his being and his eternal home; and he will know what I mean ….  If we are to be drawn, let us be drawn by Him to whom His love says: Draw me, we will run after thee (Cant 1:4) ….  What does the soul more long after than truth?  But here men hunger, there they will be filled.  Wherefore he adds, and I will lift him up at the last day.”

 

 

 

 

 

It has been called as much an ecclesiological as a personal election and falls upon someone or other, just as, for example, every tenth person is shot in a war.  The person called goes not only for himself, but for all; or, one might say, drawn by Christ, his business is to draw others to Christ, that all may be one.  Nonetheless, the response of the will moved by grace is a constitutive part of a vocation.  The will, explains Augustine, must be exercised to make an act pleasing to God.  A vocation is a meeting of two wills, informed by one love.  Although Augustine is speaking of faith, it applies equally to vocation to say: “We are drawn by our will.”