This coming Sunday the celebration of the Exaltation of the Cross replaces the normally scheduled 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The first reading for the celebration is from the Book of Numbers 21:4-9:

With their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!” In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.” Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Nb 21:4-9)

The Book of Numbers is the title of the book in English, but the Hebrew title is, more commonly, bemiḏbar, “in the wilderness [of]”). “In the wilderness” describes the contents of the book much better than “numbers,” which is derived from the censuses described in later chapters. Our passage occurs after God has assigned them to wander in the desert for a generation because of their rebellion against the leadership of God. They seem to have to fight their way through the wilderness. 

This coming Sunday the celebration of the Exaltation of the Cross replaces the normally scheduled 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time. 

The gospel reading for this feast is John 3:13-17 which is an integral part of a much larger narrative. John 3:1-21 comprises a single, cohesive scene within the Johannine narrative and ideally should be studied as a single pericope – but this Sunday we glance at only a small portion that forms a capstone-like statement of the role of Jesus in our salvation.  And that small passage needs to be understood in the context of the first reading from Numbers 21 when Moses raises the Bronze Serpent in the wilderness which is covered in tomorrow’s post.

In John 3:14, Jesus explicitly refers to Numbers 21: “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert…” This connection is deliberate. In Numbers, the Israelites, plagued by deadly serpents as a consequence of their sin, are given a means of healing: if they look at the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole, they live. In John, Jesus identifies himself as the fulfillment of that sign: he, too, will be “lifted up” (a phrase that means both crucifixion and exaltation), and those who look to him in faith will have eternal life.

September 14^th is the date established for a feast that recognizes the Cross as the instrument upon which our salvation was won by Jesus Christ. This feast is called in Greek Ὕψωσις τοῦ Τιμίου καὶ Ζωοποιοῦ Σταυροῦ (“Raising Aloft of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross”) and in Latin Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis. In English, the 3^rd Edition of the Roman Missal restored the traditional name, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, replacing the 1972 nomenclature of the Triumph of the Cross. 

When the feast day falls on a Sunday (e.g. this year, 2025) it replaces the Sunday celebration of Ordinary Time.

According to tradition, the True Cross was discovered in 326 by Saint Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, during a pilgrimage she made to Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was then built at the site of the discovery, by order of Helena and Constantine. The church was dedicated nine years later, with a portion of the cross placed inside it. Other traditions explain that in 614, that portion of the cross was carried away from the church by the Persians, and remained missing until it was recaptured by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 628. Initially taken to Constantinople, the cross was returned to the church the following year.

The date of the feast marks the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 335. This was a two-day festival: although the actual consecration of the church was on September 13, the cross itself was brought outside the church on September 14 so that the clergy and faithful could pray before the True Cross, and all could come forward to venerate it.

Image credit: Moses and the Brazen Serpent | Esteban March (1610-1668) | Banco Santander Collection, Madrid |  PD-US