September 14, 2025
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
John 3:13-17
We heard in last Sunday's Gospel that those who want to follow the Lord are like the builder who, before building a tower, sits down to calculate carefully whether he has the means to complete the work (Lk 14:28-30). Or like the king who, wanting to go to war, first sits down to see if he has enough men to fight, otherwise he quits. (Lk 14:31-32).
From here we begin our reflection on today’s Gospel (Jn 3:13–17), the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
While speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus uses an image taken from the Book of Numbers (Num 21:4b-9), where we see that the people in the desert are in difficulty. They have begun their way toward freedom, but at a certain point, they can no longer bear the journey and begin to think that everything they are experiencing is useless; that the Lord has deceived them, that he does not will their life, but their death.
We are like that too. We are on a journey, and the journey is difficult, and we are tempted to think that if the journey is difficult, it is because God is not with us, because God does not care for us. This doubt is precisely the poison that the serpents instil in us, and it is a poison that leads to death.
Then the Lord sends a sign so that His weary people can learn once again to trust, to believe in God's love.
What is striking is that the Lord does not eliminate the serpents, who continue to bite the people. He does not remove them, but He offers an antidote stronger than the poison, an antidote capable of neutralizing it.
Evil remains, but it does not necessarily bring death.
And what is this antidote? What must the people do?
Paradoxically, they are not asked to fight against the serpents, nor to try to eliminate them: they will never succeed, because we cannot defeat evil on our own.
Instead, they are to lift up their eyes look at the raised serpent. Nothing else. And whoever does so remain alive.
The very symbol of death, the serpent, becomes a symbol of life.
Jesus reinterprets this sign in light of what will be his destiny as the Crucified One: “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” (Jn 3:14–15).
His life and death are like the raised serpent, visible to all, and whoever looks at him sees something that can heal him in the depths of his heart. He sees the Father's love for every man: “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” (Jn 3:16).
Evil has not been removed: it is there, and it is an evil that generates death, an evil that wants to stop the people's journey towards freedom, towards eternal life. Evil that is, ultimately, a lack of trust, a lack of love. But today's celebration tells us that the cross can free us from this evil; the cross is the antidote that can save us. Only the cross can do this.
Because those who raise their eyes and look at the Lord hanging on the cross can no longer think that God does not love us.
On the contrary, God has a love for us that knows no end, that goes beyond anything we can imagine. It is a love that does not judge our mistakes but is present precisely into the places where each one of us is lost.
There is but one condition: that this love be looked upon, recognized. And today’s feast invites us to this very act, to recognize how precious this sign is in our lives, to lift our eyes once more.
We have been saved by a love that has transformed evil into good, and this is also our vocation, this is eternal life.
If you want to follow the Lord, then you must not calculate your potential, but you must only raise your gaze and behold the infinite measure of love revealed in the Cross of the Lord.
+Pierbattista
*Translated by the Media Office of the Latin Patriarchate
