Rising to Glorify the Lord

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

September 14, 2021: The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Numbers 21: 4-9; Philippians 2: 6-11; John 3:13-17

The Word today is filled with terms related to raising and lowering - being raised by God, being raised by people, self-lowering...and everything points towards the element of making God the priority and making God's will the absolute criterion, in our daily life. God has a design and that design is the original and the absolute good that is in creation. When we tamper with it, there is a mighty big ruin that we cause. This is the rationale behind be it the ecological crisis we face today or the pandemic that we are suffering from.

We know it is important for the cocoon to break itself open and the creature inside to squeeze itself out - only then will there be a creature so beautiful, colourful and subtle to fly around. We know it is important for the seed to bury itself in the ground, get suffocated under mud and force itself out of the ground to yield its multifold fruit.

At times in spite of all the love that we have for God and despite all the goodness we possess, we find it so difficult to accept pain - pains of different kinds - psychological, physical, spiritual, relational or social. The moment we are able to subject ourselves to pain with serenity, the moment we are ready to go through a bit of the darkness of the unknown, the moment we are prepared to grope a bit in the shady regions of our life... and do all these with complete trust that the Lord is certainly around, I begin to rise! 

When I rise, people will certainly begin to look at me, giving glory to the Lord, the Lord of the Cross! This is after all the exaltation of the Cross we are called to celebrate today and not merely some cult towards the crucifix! Let our daily lives become a perennial exaltation of the Holy Cross, from where comes our salvation.