Homily for the Week of March 22, 2009

Homily: Fourth Sunday of Lent, 2009
First Reading: 2 Chronicles 36:14–16, 19–23
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 137:1–2, 3, 4–5, 6
Second Reading: Ephesians 2:4–10
Gospel: John 3:14–21
A news release told the story of a hospital in a city in Kansas where officials had discovered that its fire-fighting equipment had never been connected to the city's water main. For 35 years the patients and medical staff had felt safe at the sight of those brightly polished brass valves and outlets placed throughout the hospital. Yet the security of all this expert fire-fighting technology was an illusion, All of it was connected to an underground pipe that extended only four feet from the hospital before it stopped.
Most Catholics feel the same security at the sight of a cross – never questioning its effectiveness. The cross is the most common symbol of our Christian religion. Most of you have a cross that you can see placed somewhere in your home. Many of you, both men and women, wear a cross on a chain around your neck. Some of you may even have a tattoo of a cross somewhere on your body. There is always a cross hanging at the end of Rosary beads. You probably often begin your prayers by making the sign of the cross.
Every Catholic church has at least one cross usually in front of you. If you were to get a picture from an air plane of most older Catholic Churches you would find that they are constructed in the shape of a cross. Every Catholic church has what are known as the 14 Stations of the Cross on the walls around the church. We begin every Mass and end every Mass by making the sign of the cross. We begin the Gospel reading by signing our foreheads, our lips and our hearts with the sign of the cross. Your wedding rings on your wedding day were blessed with the sign of the cross. These are just a few examples of how the cross is so much a part of our life.
The issue for us isn't whether images of the cross are connected to the source, but rather how we are connected to the cross. Are we linked to the cross only remotely, as a symbol that no longer speaks to us, or are we intimately united with it? During Lent, churches frequently put up large, rugged wooden crosses draped with purple cloths. The Roman cross, which was once a shockingly hideous image, can easily become impotent today, unable to move those who see it to greater zeal, heroism, or prayer. Perhaps our Lenten cross would be radically enlivened if, rather than using a long purple cloth, we draped it instead with a snake.
In today's gospel, Jesus is compared to such a snake intertwined on the cross. This shocking image comes from the time when the Israelites were complaining about their difficulties in the desert after their exodus from Egypt and were punished with a plague of venomous serpents.
They pleaded to Moses for help and God instructed him to make a serpent out of bronze and to place it on a pole. Any who were bitten and looked upon it were healed. The author of John’s gospel compares the healing salvation brought by Jesus being lifted up on the cross to the bronze serpent of Moses and his people in the desert.
The cross was not always a symbol of Christianity. In fact if you were living up to 400 years after Jesus died you would never see a cross or crucifix anywhere. Jesus' crucifixion was a stumbling block to Jews and gentiles. What kind of God let himself be killed in such an excruciating manner, in disgrace, causing such pain for his mother and friends? Only in the fourth-century when Christianity became legalized, and crucifixion as a form of capital punishment among the Romans was stopped did Christians begin to feel free to use the cross in their art.
Early Christians preferred to use the sign of the fish to describe their fellowship, and the lamb for their founder. For three centuries they professed their faith in the crucified and risen Lord but could not bring themselves to portray artistically Jesus' execution like a common criminal.
We no longer find Jesus' crucifixion such a stumbling block because we stress the other part of the story: his resurrection, triumph, vindication, exaltation, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Let us propose that in Jesus God saved us from despair. Jesus gives us hope when we are tempted to give up. Jesus was human in every way we are, except in doing wrong. Like a brother he immersed himself in human life. Jesus experienced the hopelessness a person might feel when they can’t find a job, or there is sickness in the family. He sympathized with those who were suffering. If there had been nursing homes or hospitals at the time of Jesus I am sure you would have found him in them very often. He understood the trauma of death.
Jesus taught us that there is nothing we ever experience which can be hopeless. The seemingly hopeless times are not exactly what they appear to be. These times of despair are really the times when Jesus comes to us in love. John tells us: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Jesus never condemned anyone but gave life to all who were willing to seek it and accept it.
The cross of Jesus is a boundless source of healing if you are connected to it. Have you ever had a personal experience of being liberated or healed from some paralyzing illness or addiction and then realized that your healing was connected with the cross in your room or home? Consider the practice of consciously uniting your suffering, whether it stems for the crippling pain of arthritis or a throbbing migraine headache, to the source of healing – the cross. One simple ritual would be to touch your fingers to your cross and pray that united your pains with those of Christ will be a redemptive Holy Communion.
If Jesus were here today he would repeat those words to each of us. He would say: Love each other in your actions, your speech, your decisions and your inner thoughts. The cross was his expression of that love for each of us.
The sign of that salvation is the cross. Today and this week, half way through Lent, let us first again renew our decisions to fast, to be loving, and to pray more. And, when you look upon the cross in your home say a prayer of thanksgiving that someone loves you that much.
Don’t only look at the cross but be sure you are connected to it.