14 September 2026 The Exaltation of the Holy Cross Gospel: John 3:13-17
Today is Monday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time. Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The recently published Roman Missal tells us: the Feast commemorates the recovery of the relic of the True Cross by the Emperor Heraclius in 629, after it had been captured by the Persians; it also marks the original dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where relics of the Cross were kept, in 335. The Feast celebrates the Cross, the instrument of our salvation, and is in many ways an extension of Good Friday. The Cross is a great and powerful sign of God’s love for us — a love stronger than death — and also a daily reality in our lives: the only true path to holiness.
Today, the passage taken from the Gospel of John presents to us the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus. I would like to take this opportunity to offer some reflections.
Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” (Cf. John 3:13-15)
We often fall into a certain misunderstanding. For it seems to us that the “heaven” Jesus speaks of is the heaven we can see with our own eyes. When we look up at the sky, we can see the sun, the moon, and the stars; we can even see the satellites we have launched into outer space in our exploration of the deep heavens.
The heaven Jesus speaks of, however, is the dwelling place of God. The psalmist says: From the rising of the sun to its setting, may the name of the Lord be praised. The Lord is high above all nations; His glory is above the heavens. (Cf. Ps 113(112):4) The author of Proverbs tells us: “The wisdom of God says: The Lord created me, the beginning of His ways, before all else that He made, from eternity. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills existed, I was brought forth… [He was] beside Him as His craftsman, day after day, delighting Him, rejoicing always before Him, playing over the whole surface of His earth, taking delight in mankind.” (Prov 8:22-31)
We can see in today’s Gospel passage that Jesus refers to the serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness. The reason Moses lifted up the serpent was that the Israelites had complained against God because of food and drink, and so God sent serpents among the people, which bit and killed many Israelites. At the request of the Israelites, God commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it upon a pole, so that all who looked upon it might be healed. (Cf. Num 21:6-9) Jesus uses this as a prefigurement, signifying that He too would be lifted up on the pole of the New Covenant — that is, lifted up on the Cross — and by His holy death destroy that tree which had brought sin upon our first parents and upon us mortals, and by His holy death bring life and salvation to the world.
Today, through Christ’s Baptism, we have been cleansed of our sinful defilement by the water that flowed from His sacred side upon the holy Cross; and through the anointing of joy — the Holy Spirit, whom He and the Father breathe forth together — we have become children of God. Thus, the Cross, which was once regarded by the world as shameful, has become the path to salvation; and the sin that came through the first Adam has been atoned for by the sacrifice of the second Adam upon the Cross. Therefore, the Church sings in the Liturgy of the Hours:This holy tree stands ever sublime, loftier than the cedars of Lebanon; it bears no harmful fruit, but bestows grace upon the world.
On this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, let us lift up our prayer to God together:
O God, who willed that your Only Begotten Son should undergo the Cross to save the human race, grant, we pray, that we, who have known his mystery on earth, may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
September 13, 2026 Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Gospel: Mt 18:21-35
Today is the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew presents to us a dialogue between Jesus and Peter. In this dialogue, Jesus teaches us, through a parable, the Christian way of forgiveness. I would like to take this opportunity to offer some reflections.
In life, we often quarrel with others over trivial matters, and we even frequently feel that others have offended us. Sometimes, we too are like Peter, wanting to ask Jesus: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him?” (cf. Mt 18:21). For, in our eyes, our tolerance toward others has its limits. Yet Jesus tells us: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (cf. Mt 18:22). That is to say: unconditional forgiveness, unconditional pardon.
As I write this reflection, I often think of the parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel at Mass. In this parable, the king who settles accounts with his servant is not the harsh king we might imagine; he is an exceedingly merciful king, who forgives the debt of the servant who owed him ten thousand talents. One talent is about 16 to 30 kilograms of gold, worth the wages of a worker for twenty years. Ten thousand talents amount to the wages of a worker for two hundred thousand years. In today’s terms, that is roughly six billion dollars, nearly forty-four billion yuan. This is a sum one could never repay in a lifetime. Yet, after his own debt had been forgiven, this servant did not spare the fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii. One denarius is a day’s wage. A hundred denarii is three months’ wages for a worker. In today’s terms, that is roughly ten thousand dollars, about seventy thousand yuan. In the end, the king was furious and handed that wicked servant over to the torturers until he should repay all his debt.
In this parable we see our own reflection. Sometimes we too are like that wicked servant, living within an order of our own making. We always want to demand justice, for in our eyes, it is only right that debts be repaid. Yet this is not the view that truly belongs to the people of God, as Jesus teaches it. For everything we possess in the present moment has been created by God, who entrusted all that he created to our care (cf. Gn 1:28-30). The Father, rich in mercy, in the appointed time sent his Son into the world to proclaim to us the Gospel of the Kingdom, and even offered his death on the Cross to atone for the sins we had committed, so that, by receiving his Baptism, we might be cleansed in the water that flowed from his sacred side, no longer living under the dominion of sin but in the grace of God. After receiving his Baptism, we also received the anointing of the Holy Spirit. By this anointing of the Holy Spirit, we became children of God. This shows how generous God has been toward us. Since God has treated us so bountifully, we too must treat all people bountifully; for only in this way can we truly reflect the image that God gave us when he created us. For we know: we are made by God in his own image, in his likeness, and God is merciful.
Look upon us, O God, Creator and ruler of all things, and, that we may feel the working of your mercy, grant that we may serve you with all our heart. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever
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