[00:00:05] Hello, my name is Sally Moriarty-Flask. Welcome to: From His Word to Our Hearts, my weekly Bible Study podcast. Together we will explore the readings to be proclaimed at the Catholic Mass on Sunday, September 14, 2025, the Solemnity of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
This week's episode is entitled: God So Loved the World, and each of our readings will shed some light on the mystery of the Cross through which Jesus saved us.
As we journey through the readings this week, consider the following:
This is a rare Sunday occurrence of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and we celebrate the Cross precisely because it was the instrument by which Jesus accomplished the Father's plan for our salvation. God created the world… out of love; he created us… out of love; he sent his Son to save us… out of love. We may not deserve such great love, but it is given, nonetheless. So, how can we ever hope to love God enough in return?
[00:01:15] So, let's begin:
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for the gift of your Son and for his sacrificial Death, because by his Holy Cross he has redeemed the world. Help us to love you in return with our whole hearts, our whole souls, our whole minds, and all our strength. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:01:44] Now that we've opened our hearts in prayer, let's learn a bit about the Solemnity of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross which has been observed for centuries by Catholic and Orthodox Christians to recall and honor the finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena in the 4th century.
[00:02:05] Now, if this feast celebrates the finding of the True Cross, that also means there was a time it was lost. So, how did that come about?
[00:02:14] To understand that we have to first recall the well documented persecutions of Christians that occurred under the direction of a series of Roman emperors throughout the 1st and 2nd centuries with the precise goal of eradicating the rapidly growing sect of Christianity and obliterating all of the sites associated with it.
[00:02:38] In fact, in the 2nd century, Emperor Hadrian ordered that Jesus’ tomb be filled in with earth and a pagan temple constructed over top of it. There is some debate about that temple… whether it was dedicated to Venus as some sources claim, or to Jupiter as is maintained by other sources. Either way, a Roman temple was erected on that site.
[00:03:08] Interestingly enough, filling in Jesus’ tomb with earth actually succeeded in preserving it rather than destroying it as Hadrian had intended.
[00:03:20] Now, I mentioned Saint Helena as the person responsible for finding the True Cross, but not everyone remembers that she was the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great.
[00:03:36] Most Christians do know who Constantine was, since he was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He also issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD which declared that the Christian religion be openly tolerated throughout the Roman Empire. That edict eventually paved the way for Constantine's mother to make her pilgrimage to Palestine in 326 AD with the express purpose of locating and preserving sites significant in the life of Christ.
[00:04:13] Despite Hadrian's attempt to destroy the site where Jesus died, local memories of it managed to survive.
[00:04:22] Legend has it that Helena learned the history of that location during her time in Jerusalem and ordered that the pagan temple be razed and the site underneath it excavated. It was during that excavation, again according to legend, that three crosses were found (one of which reportedly cured a woman who was near death - the woman touched all three crosses, but was cured by only one) and Helena declared that Cross to be the True Cross of Christ. On that very site, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was constructed in the 4th century and, although it has been damaged and rebuilt many times, it still stands in the old City of Jerusalem today. Control of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is shared by the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Catholic Church, according to the terms of an agreement dating back to the 18th century called the Status Quo (and that is Status Quo in capital letters, by the way, as it is not only the name of the agreement, but also its description). The Status Quo established the shared control of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and to this day preserves the integrity and peace of this holy site, albeit at times uneasily.
[00:05:56] A relic of the True Cross is still present in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher today, and recent studies have shown that the wood of that relic is from the region of Palestine and is over 2000 years old.
[00:06:11] Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is not only a relic of the True Cross, but also the site of Jesus’ Crucifixion AND the tomb in which his Body was laid AND from which his Body was Resurrected. Pilgrims have been visiting that site since its rediscovery in the 4th century.
I have a number of pictures from my time in Israel of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, of the tomb of Jesus, of the site where he was Crucified, and I will include all of those pictures on my Instagram this week.
[00:06:51] It is difficult for modern Christians to truly comprehend how early Christians viewed the Cross.
[00:07:02] They did not revere the Cross as we do. They saw it as a symbol of torture and hatred; it was a thing to be despised, an instrument of Roman oppression that - all too often - loomed outside city walls adorned with the decaying corpses of Christian faithful. After the Edict of Milan, however, the perception of the Cross began slowly to change.
[00:07:33] Today the Cross is a universally recognized symbol of the Christian faith. It has been made into a thing of great beauty by artists down through the ages… crosses decorate Churches and homes, they are carried in procession by faithful Christians around the world, and they appear on greeting cards, ornaments, clothing, hats, and are worn as jewelry to attest to a deeply personal belief in the man who was Crucified upon it.
[00:08:10] While other Feasts commemorate the event that took place on the Cross - most notably Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion and Good Friday - this particular Feast has been celebrated on September 14th, according to the Gregorian calendar, since the 7th century solely to celebrate the rediscovery of the Cross of Christ and to venerate it as a sign of mankind's salvation.
[00:08:43] This Solemnity takes us out of our regular cycle of Ordinary Time Gospels from Luke and instead presents a passage from John.
[00:08:55] In fact, all of our readings this week offer some insight into the Cross of Jesus and how the world was redeemed by it. Our Gospel this week is from John 3: 13-17.
[00:09:10] “[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] ‘No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.’”
This passage from John focuses on Jesus' conversation with a Pharisee named Nicodemus, which takes place sometime after Jesus cleansed the temple by driving out the money changers and merchants that were conducting business in his Father's house; we don't know how much time passed between the two events - the Gospel doesn't say - we just know that this conversation took place at afterwards.
[00:10:17] Nicodemus, we are told, goes to see Jesus under the cover of darkness. That could be to avoid being seen and recognized by other Pharisees and thus incur persecution or ridicule, but it could also mean that Nicodemus is seeking out the light of Jesus to counteract his own inner spiritual darkness.
[00:10:43] Either way, let's listen in on the conversation…
[00:10:47] “[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] ‘No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man.’”
[00:10:57] We know that Jesus refers to himself over and over again as the Son of man. And he says here quite openly that only he has descended from heaven and that no one other than he himself can ascend into heaven as things stand.
[00:11:16] Meaning that until Jesus himself opens the gates of heaven through his Passion and Death, no one but Jesus will be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,”
We'll actually hear that in our First Reading.
[00:11:36] “so must the Son of man be lifted up,”
Lifted up on the Cross… from the tomb… into heaven.
“that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
[00:11:50] Jesus reconciles mankind to the Father. He pays the price for our sins and opens the way for us so that we may live forever in the kingdom.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
[00:12:14] That eloquently describes the earthly mission of Jesus - his part in the Father's plan for the salvation of all mankind. And the words “eternal life” refer to both the quality of divine life in Jesus in the kingdom of heaven, as well as the fact that it will last for all of eternity… after time and space end - it will still be!
The citation for that verse, by the way, is John 3:16, so when you see people hold that sign up in crowded events, that Bible verse is what they are referencing.
“For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
[00:13:05] This also shows God's love for his creation and his creatures; that his plan, all along, was for his creatures to be united with him in the kingdom. But the opposite side of that coin is that we, God's creatures, can reject him… we can reject his Son Jesus.
[00:13:34] We can reject faith in favor of unbelief… we can reject Jesus’ teachings in favor of our own opinions and ideas… we can reject the light of Christ in favor of spiritual darkness.
[00:13:58] We can reject eternal life in God's presence in favor of eternal separation from God.
Sure, we can do that. But why would we?
[00:14:15] God created the world and us out of love; he sent his Son to redeem and save us out of love.
[00:14:29] We don't deserve a love as awesome as that, but he gives it to us anyway.
[00:14:37] So, how can we ever hope to love God enough in return?
All we can ever do is our best… but it must be our very best!
[00:14:45] That takes us to our First Reading which is from Numbers 21: 4b-9.
[00:14:58] “[T]he people became impatient on [their journey]. And they spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.’ Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses, and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it up as a sign; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it up as a sign; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
[00:16:17] Numbers is one of the first five books of the Bible, along with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Those books are referred to as the Pentateuch in the Christian Bible or the Torah in in the Jewish Bible. We need to understand that the journey mentioned in this passage is the Exodus and, by chapter 20 of Numbers, the Israelites have been wandering in the desert for 40 years! Before we reach this passage in Numbers, we are told that Miriam and Aaron (Moses' sister and brother) have both died there in the desert.
[00:17:07] And despite the fact that the Israelites have been in the desert, away from Egypt, long enough that nearly an entire generation of people could die of old age… it is clear that the Israelites haven't yet purged Egypt from their hearts!
[00:17:30] So, let's see what's happening…
[00:17:34] “[T]he people became impatient on [their journey].”
[00:17:38] Again, not just a journey, but to date a 40-year Exodus.
“And [they] spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?’”
[00:17:56] That was never the intent! God has taken the Israelites out of Egypt, but they are unwilling to take Egypt out of themselves.
“For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.”
[00:18:14] When we hear that complaint, we have to stop and question whether or not we actually heard it correctly. First, the Israelites say there's no food or water… then they say they hate the worthless food they have. That sounds contradictory, confusing, and ungrateful. And it is… but let me expound on that a bit.
The food and water they have in the desert is not the food and water they enjoyed in Egypt. That is their real complaint! And the food they call worthless… is manna, the bread from heaven provided each day for them by God, and quail. Again, things that God has been providing them is each day for decades!
[00:19:22] Rather than being grateful for God's bounty and his daily care for their welfare, the Israelites have come to despise both the providence of God which keeps them alive, and the grace of God which sustains them on their journey.
[00:19:42] So, what happens as a result of their complaints?
[00:19:48] “The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”
The Hebrew word there is hasraph֔yim, which can be translated as fiery or seraph.
[00:20:07] The NAB translates that as seraph serpents. And it refers to a type of venomous snake whose bite would have caused a burning or searing pain.
[00:20:19] Some commentators suggest that those serpents may have been either
saw-scale vipers or carpet vipers, both of which are common in desert areas, both of which are venomous, and bites from either species carry about a 20% mortality rate. It's unlikely that God was actually petty enough to send venomous snakes among the Israelites specifically as punishment, because he was miffed when they threw yet another tantrum about their situation.
[00:20:59] Heaven knows they threw plenty of tantrums to during the Exodus! And God has pretty broad shoulders… It's unlikely that he was miffed at yet another tantrum. It is far more likely that the area of the desert where they stopped at that particular time was simply infested with venomous snakes.
[00:21:23] Both carpet vipers and saw-scale vipers are common in the desert.
“And the people came to Moses, and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.’”
[00:21:43] In other words, the Israelites, now that they are suffering yet again after another tantrum, they are offering to Moses and to God one gigantic ooops! followed by a huge we're sorry, we didn't really mean it! And what does Moses do? Like any good leader, Moses prayed for his people.
“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it up as a sign; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it up as a sign; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
[00:22:33] We know that Moses did, in fact, fashion a serpent out of bronze (a reddish brown metal by the way) to represent the fiery serpents since the serpents were themselves reddish brown in color.
[00:22:49] We also know that the bronze serpent on the staff made it to the Promised Land.
[00:22:56] In fact, we read in 2 Kings 18 that King Hezekiah destroyed Moses’ bronze serpent in an effort to cleanse the southern kingdom of Judah of the devotion it had developed to false idols. For Christians, the bronze serpent, raised up where people could see it and be saved by it, becomes a symbol (as we heard in the Gospel) of the Cross of Jesus and the power by which he heals humanity of its sin.
[00:23:35] The Israelites apologized to God for offering complaints rather than gratitude for all the good things God did for them in the desert.
[00:23:47] What can we, as Christians, do to show God our love for him and our gratitude for everything he has done for us, especially for the sacrifice of his only beloved Son? All we can do is love him in return… to the best of our abilities!
[00:24:11] That brings us to our Responsorial Psalm, which is Psalm 78. And the refrain is:
“[Do] not forget the works of the Lord.”
[00:24:20] And here are the verses:
[00:24:23] “Give ear, O my people, to my teaching, incline your ears to the words of my mouth! I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old.”
“When he slew them, they sought for him; they repented and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their Redeemer.”
“But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not true to his covenant.”
“Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often, and did not stir up all his wrath.”
[00:25:14] This Psalm is a Psalm of Remembrance, and it takes the form of a Liturgical Hymn.
[00:25:21] Basically, it recounts the history of the Hebrew people with a recurring pattern. And that pattern is: the Lord performs some glorious deed, the people rebel against him, God becomes angry with his people, and in the end forgives them.
[00:25:40] Now, this is a very long Psalm, and the pattern occurs over and over again. The verses we hear this week take us through the pattern one time. For us as Christians, this pattern presents a lesson that we need to learn from so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, we do make those same mistakes…
[00:26:06] We don't listen, we don't follow his teachings, we are not faithful to the covenant established by Jesus, and yet God forgives us anyway.
[00:26:22] Jesus reconciles all humanity to the Father, even though we don't deserve it. The passage ends with the reminder that God's anger is not meant to spark fear, but rather to encourage repentance, because God is always merciful.
[00:26:51] That takes us to our Second Reading, which is from Philippians 2: 6-11.
[00:26:58] “[Brothers and sisters:] Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
[00:28:01] You may recall that Philippians doesn't address any particular issue or crisis, its true purpose is to express Paul's gratitude to and encouragement for a community he himself founded and continues to care for very deeply. It is one of Paul's Captivity Letters, likely written when he was a prisoner in Rome between 60 and 62 AD.
[00:28:31] Unlike some other letters, Paul is universally regarded as the author of Philippians, although some scholars do think the book we have in its current form may be a compilation of several letters. Overall, the tone is quite joyous and very intimate. Paul's affection for the Philippian community is on full display.
[00:28:59] This particular passage is one that we hear every year on Palm Sunday, and it may have been used as an early Christian hymn. So, let's listen to what Paul has to say…
“[Brothers and sisters:] Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,”
[00:29:19] The word though can also be translated as because - because he was in the form of God. And we can't let the word form confuse us… this isn't any sort of dualism… this isn't a body bad/spirit good sort of statement.
[00:29:38] The Greek word Paul uses there is morphē, which means shape or outward appearance.
[00:29:48] So what Paul is saying is that Jesus not only was God, but that he looked like God when he was in heaven. Nevertheless, Paul says Jesus…
“did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,”
Jesus understood the Father's plan for salvation, and he acted fully in accordance with that plan - never attempting to maintain, hold on to, or cling to his place in the kingdom of heaven.
“but emptied himself,”
[00:30:31] The Greek word there is kenoo, in English, kenosis, and it means that Jesus relinquished the rightful exercise of his divinity in order to become Incarnate; that he accepted certain limitations on his divinity in his humanity.
[00:31:00] Saint Gregory of Nyssa (a 4th century bishop and theologian) wrote: “Christ emptied himself by compressing the glory of his Godhead into our smallness” - not only does that marvelously encapsulate the Incarnation, it should also remind us of the Eucharist!
[00:31:27] Jesus - out of love, in total humility - compresses his Godhead into what we receive in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
“taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
[00:31:50] Again, the Greek word means outward appearance… so Paul is saying that Jesus appeared human in his Incarnate humanity.
[00:32:04] He looked human because he was fully human, but he was also at the very same time fully divine.
[00:32:16] “And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”
[00:32:29] Remember when I was giving the background of this feast, I said that early Christians saw death by crucifixion as degrading and shameful. And that certainly is tremendously apparent here in this sentence from Paul.
[00:32:49] It wasn't until long afterwards that the Cross came to be a beloved symbol of the Christian faith.
[00:32:59] “Therefore God has highly exalted him”
By raising him from the dead, clothing his humanity in divine glory, and enthroning him in heaven.
[00:33:21] I don't remember where this quote came from, so I apologize to whomever the quote originated from, but there's a very beautiful quote that I keep with me at all times, and it says that: the wounds of Jesus are a map of his compassion.
[00:33:42] Jesus still possesses those wounds in heaven, where he is exalted by the Father.
“and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,”
[00:34:07] In the worldview of ancient Israel, those were the three primary realms of existence. In heaven - in the bosom of Abraham, where the just go to await judgment; on earth - those who are still living; and under the earth - the realm of Hades, where the unjust, where the wicked go.
[00:34:31] And remember, Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, the beloved Son of God and his name is forever to be revered.
[00:34:44] “and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
[00:34:53] Paul is saying that it is the duty of every Christian to confess or bear witness to Jesus’ identity as Lord. The Greek word there is Kyrios, which can be translated as either Lord or Master.
[00:35:13] And further, Jesus’ obedience to the Father's will - to the Father's plan for the salvation of all mankind - is precisely what brings the Father glory… eternally!
[00:35:32] And all of that takes us back to John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but should have eternal life.”
[00:35:57] God created the world… out of love.
[00:36:03] He created mankind… out of love.
[00:36:09] All of creation, all of mankind can do nothing to add to God's glory. We exist solely out of God's love.
[00:36:24] After mankind turned its back on God, after mankind sinned over and over and over again, God sent His Son to save us… out of love.
[00:36:44] Not because we deserve it, but out of love. Not because we've earned it, but out of love.
[00:36:58] God has given us a love beyond measure.
[00:37:03] How can any of us ever hope to love him enough in return?
[00:37:11] By giving him our very best every day… by loving him the very best we can every day… by loving others, because God is present in each and every one of us, so we must love each other… every day!
[00:37:37] If you would like to reach out to me with questions or comments, send me an email at
[email protected]
Thank you for spending this time with me and until next we meet, may God shower his blessings upon you like a soft and gentle rain, and may he hold you, safe and secure, in the palm of his hand.
From His Word to Our Hearts is produced by SFS Audio Solutions.
The content of the show was assembled by me, Sally Moriarty-Flask.
Our music was composed by Jimmy Flask and is used with the permission of the composer. All rights reserved.
Information regarding references used in preparing the exegesis for this podcast is available upon request.
Thank you for listening and God bless.
