Daily Gospel Reflection – Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2023
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Gospel: Jn 3:13-17
Jesus said to Nicodemus:
"No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And 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."
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus and tells him, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
Why does the Son come? Is it because God is angry? Because God wants to lord it over us? Because God needs something? No, he comes purely out of love, out of God’s desire that we flourish: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
It is not in order to work out his anger issues that the Father sends the Son, but that the justice of the world might be restored. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s salvific intent, displayed throughout the Old Testament. He wanted to bring the divine life even into the darkest places. He wanted to hunt us down.
The Father, in short, sent the Son all the way into time, history, and the human condition. But then the Father sent him further, into our sin and dysfunction, and finally all the way down into hatred, violence, rejection, and death itself.
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