Sunday 14 September 2025
The Glorious Cross – Year C
Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Numbers 21:4b-9
Psaume : 77 (78),3-4a.c,34-35,36-37,38ab.39
2rd reading: Philippians 2,6:11-XNUMX
Gospel: John 3,13-17

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The Cross of Christ is not a religious theory. It is the concrete path that Jesus, the Word made flesh, took to fulfill the path of our humanity and open the door to Heaven for us. It is not a theory; it is what God has done and what we must contemplate. 

The readings of the day, by bringing together the bronze serpent in the desert - the story of which we heard in the book of Numbers - and then Christ on the cross raised from the earth, invite us first to meditate on this serpent. 

The serpent first: its burning bite will cause death among the people. And it is this serpent, an effigy of which is made of bronze, erected at the top of a mast, that we must look at in order to be saved. The comparison that Jesus makes of the Son of Man with the bronze serpent then suggests that the Son of Man begins by putting to death before saving. This is not entirely false since it is indeed a question of the old man dying in us. And Saint Paul in his letters will use two verbs: the verb “put to death” (Col 3:5) and the verb “kill” (Rom 8:13) to explain how we must make a certain number of attitudes and behaviors disappear from our lives. Indeed, Christ, by his holiness, highlights our unholiness. And Christ comes to call us to put to death the old man in us in order to put on the new man. It is precisely because Christ appears to be a danger that he ended up on a cross. If he had obviously appeared immediately as the Savior, he would not have died on the cross. When Saint Paul, in the Letter to the Romans (5:10), tells us that, being sinners, we were enemies of God… the term is strong; it means that often, for sinful man, God appears as an enemy. It is truly by contemplating Jesus on the cross that the depth of man's sin can be revealed to us, of course, since in a certain way Jesus on the cross tells us: Look, look where your sins lead. But at the same time, what Paul will call in the Letter to the Ephesians (3:18) the height, the length, the depth of the love of God that is given to us in Jesus is revealed to us even more profoundly.

Thérèse will write in one of her letters to her sister Céline: 

Jesus burns with love for us… Look at his adorable Face!… Look at those dull, downcast eyes!… Look at those wounds… Look at Jesus in his Face… There you will see how he loves us. (LT 087 to Céline – April 4, 1889)

This feast of the Glorious Cross is the contemplation of God's love for each of us. You will remember how at Christmas 1886, Thérèse in the house of Les Buissonnets will experience what she calls her “complete conversion”. Her adolescence lasts a few seconds on the staircase of Les Buissonnets: she goes up as a child, she comes down almost as an adult, and when she looks back on this event, she says:

In a word, I felt charity enter my heart. 

And at the same time she feels the desire to save sinners. As if she had experienced for herself a salvation, a liberation and she immediately understood that what Jesus did for her, he wanted to do for everyone. And in her account where she recalls this event, she continues with what happened 6 months later, in July 1887 in the church of Saint-Pierre, the cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Lisieux where she tells us this:

One Sunday, while looking at a photograph of Our Lord on the Cross — I will not explain to you why she uses the word photograph instead of image… — I was struck by the blood that fell from one of His Divine hands, I felt great pain thinking that this blood fell to the ground without anyone hastening to collect it, and I resolved to stand in spirit at the foot of [the] Cross to receive the Divine dew that flowed from it, understanding that I would then have to spread it on souls… The cry of Jesus on the Cross also resounded continually in my heart: “I thirst!” These words kindled in me an unknown and very lively ardor… I wanted to give my Beloved something to drink and I myself felt consumed by the thirst for souls… (Ms A 45v)

Yes, in this contemplation of Jesus on the cross, the thirst of Christ Jesus for the salvation of mankind is revealed to Thérèse, the thirst to bring all of humanity to the Father without forgetting anyone. Thérèse, for the rest of her life, will be devoured by this thirst and she will offer her whole life for it. She allows herself to be fascinated by what she calls this “madness of Jesus.” 

In manuscript B, this great prayer to Jesus where she expresses this vocation that she seeks which embraces everything - "in the heart of the Church my mother, I will be love, finally I will be everything" - in this same manuscript, towards the end, she contemplates the mystery of the Incarnation, the Passion and the Eucharist which are the three humiliations of the Son of God and she writes this: O Divine Word, you are the adored Eagle whom I love and who attracts me! It is you who, leaping towards the land of exile — the Incarnation — wished to suffer and die in order to draw souls to the bosom of the Eternal Home of the Blessed Trinity, — mystery of the Passion — it is you who, ascending towards the inaccessible Light which will henceforth be your abode, it is you who still remain in the valley of tears, hidden under the appearance of a white host… — Eucharistic Presence of the Lord — Eternal Eagle, you want to nourish me with your divine substance, me, poor little being, who would return to nothingness if your divine gaze did not give me life at every moment… O Jesus! Leave me in the excess of my gratitude, let me tell you that your love goes to madness… How do you want, in the face of this Madness, that my heart does not leap towards you? How could my confidence have limits?… (MsB 5v – September 8, 1896)

How can you expect my heart not to leap out towards you in the face of this madness? 

The fruit of contemplating the glorious Cross is to allow ourselves to be pierced by this madness of love of Christ, and thus to allow ourselves to be set ablaze with the fire of this love which makes us both respond to Christ with our own love—for love is only repaid with love, as Saint John of the Cross says, which Thérèse regularly repeats—and at the same time be set ablaze with the desire for the salvation of all men. The mission of the Church is not a marketing activity to convince: it has its source at the foot of the cross. What Thérèse experienced in Saint Peter's Cathedral while contemplating this image of Jesus on the cross is what the Lord wants to lead us to live, each according to our own grace. In contemplating this immense love with which Christ loved each man, may our desire burn to make known to each man the love with which he is loved. 

And the most convincing way to reveal to our fellow men Christ's love for them is to love them concretely with this same love. This is not primarily through a speech, but primarily through the way in which we live charity, that is, to love as Jesus loved us, since this is the new commandment and the Holy Spirit is given to us for this. 

A priori, we don't like the cross. We are afraid of suffering... But suffering runs through our lives; we cannot avoid it. Bodily suffering, psychological suffering, spiritual suffering. In the Liturgy of the Hours in French, in the Common of the Saints, there is a hymn whose few lines reveal an interesting aspect of this suffering. The hymn is addressed to the saints and says:

You know the weight well

Of our failures

And the suffering that refuses the cross;

To suffer, we will suffer. Will we agree to unite this suffering to the passion of Christ or will we agree that Christ unites himself to us in our suffering? Will we agree to offer him this suffering so that it may become a redemptive suffering for all humanity? Will we agree to enter into the mystery of the Cross, not only by contemplating it from the outside, but by living it from the inside because it is the path to Heaven? It is through the Cross that Christ entered into glory. It is through the Cross that he entered into eternity of life, that he brought our humanity into eternity of life. 

Let us ask for this grace to love the Cross. 

Let us ask for this grace to respond to love with love. 

Let us ask for this grace to do things in our turn to respond to Jesus. 

As Thérèse said to Céline in another letter:

Jesus' love for Céline can only be understood by Jesus!... That Céline does crazy things for Jesus... Love is only repaid with love and the wounds of love are only healed by love.

(LT 085 to Céline – March 12, 1889)

Amen.