The Son of Man must be lifted up. Homily for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Over the last two thousand years the Christian world has become accustomed to the idea that God loves us, that God is love, that God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son. We take this belief for granted; it’s part of our religious ethos. But that was not true of the world behind the text of today’s gospel. The world behind the text, pagans living in the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus, would have found the the idea of a God who loved them utterly strange. The idea of celebrating a cross would have been totally inconceivable.