A Reflection for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
We love you, O Christ, and we bless you,
because by your Cross you’ve got redeemed the world.
In the beginning of his “Spiritual Exercises,” St. Ignatius offers a brief text called the“First Principle and Foundation,” which lays out the ideas that underlie his spirituality. “Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord,” he begins, “and by this implies to save lots of their souls.”
Within the last paragraph of that text, Ignatius argues that with the intention to praise, reverence and serve God people must foster a spirit of indifference. “On our part,” he writes, “we wish not health relatively than sickness, riches relatively than poverty, honor relatively than dishonor, long relatively than short life, and so in all the remainder.” For Ignatius, anything can serve God’s purposes. And so our goal needs to be “desiring and selecting only what’s most conducive for us to the top for which we’re created.”
The Exaltation of the Cross, which we rejoice today, is a feast that’s meant to reassure us within the questions and doubts of our hard times.
I remember being really inspired by this concept of indifference after I first entered the Jesuits. But you already know when it doesn’t resonate a lot? Whenever you actually are sick and suffering, or impoverished, or humiliated. Just like the time as a novice on pilgrimage I made a decision to try to walk from Albuquerque to Santa Fe along the side of the highway, pondering it’d just be a likelihood for me to spend time with Jesus; it was great, until I ran out of food and water and got hot and drained and really, really bored. Then it was painful and limitless.
Suffering doesn’t must involve anything so dramatic either. Just a extremely bad sore throat or flu can narrow your experience of life to such a level that it’s hard to think straight, let alone pray. At those times, all we have now is the hope that there really is a few value to be present in this, some meaning that it might need for us or others later.
The Exaltation of the Cross, which we rejoice today, is a feast that’s meant to reassure us within the questions and doubts of our hard times. Is there any moment more devoid of meaning than the execution of an innocent person? Jesus himself cried out from the cross, stunned by his experience of God’s absence in that moment. And yet his death on that cross was not the top of the story, however the path to everlasting life. Sometimes faith really is a leap into the unknown. However the cross reminds us that irrespective of how things could seem, God is waiting to catch us.