The Exaltation of the Holy Cross (2026)
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
Devotion to the Holy Cross dates back to the earliest days of Christianity. The feast itself has been celebrated since the fourth century. Today the Church commemorates the recovery of the True Cross by the Emperor Heraclius following the victory over the Persians.
The texts of the Mass and of the Liturgy of the Hours proclaim the Holy Cross as the instrument of our salvation. For inasmuch as our first parents sinned beneath the shadow of a tree, God has deigned to accomplish our redemption on the wood of the Cross.
Through the Passion of Our Lord the Cross became a throne of glory, not a gallows of infamy. “How radiant is that precious cross which brought us salvation,” we’re told in the liturgy. “Through the cross we are victorious. With the cross we shall reign. By the cross all evil is destroyed,” we’re told in the Liturgy (Liturgy of the Hours: Lauds Prayer).
The feast we celebrate today has its origin in the first centuries of Christianity. According to ancient testimony this commemoration began the day the Cross of Our Lord was found (cf. Egeria, Journey).
It developed quickly in the Eastern Church and soon spread throughout all Christendom. In Rome, a solemn procession from the Basilica of St. Mary Major to that of St. John Lateran took place to venerate the Holy Cross before Mass (cf. Aimé Georges Martimort, The Church at Prayer).
At the beginning of the seventh century, the Persians ransacked Jerusalem. They destroyed many churches and took possession of the sacred relics. A few years later, the Emperor Heraclius recovered them.
According to pious tradition, the splendidly dressed monarch, in full regalia, personally wanted to carry the Holy Cross to its original place on Calvary. The weight became increasingly unbearable as he walked down the Via Dolorosa.
The Bishop of Jerusalem, Zechariah, explained to him that to carry the Cross he must imitate the poverty of Christ, who bore it free from all earthly attachment. Heraclius immediately divested himself of the imperial garments and put on humble pilgrim’s clothes. He was then able to carry the Holy Cross, unshod, to the summit of Golgotha (cf. Jean Croiset, Christians).
Most probably, as children we learned to make the sign of the Cross on our forehead, lips, and heart as an external sign of our profession of faith. The Church makes use of the Cross on its altars during worship for the Liturgy and has its place outside on sacred buildings too.
As a “tree of the most savory fruit” it is a powerful weapon for warding off all kinds of evil, and especially for instilling fear in the spiritual foes of our salvation: “Lord, through the sign of the Holy Cross, free us from our enemies,” we pray each day before blessing ourselves.
A Father of the Church teaches: “The Cross is a shield against the devil as well as a trophy of victory. It is the promise that will not be overcome by the Angel of Death. The Cross,” says St. John Damascene, “is God’s instrument to lift up those who have fallen and support those still on their feet fighting.
“It is a crutch for the crippled and a guide for the wayward. It is our constant goal as we advance, the very wellspring of our body and soul. It drives away all evils, annihilates sin, and draws down for us abundant goods. This is indeed the seed of the Resurrection and the tree of eternal life (John Damascene, De fide ortodoxa).
During Mass we pray: “God Our Father, in obedience to you, your only Son accepted death on the Cross for the salvation of mankind. We acknowledge the mystery of the cross on earth. May we receive the gift of redemption in heaven” (Roman Missal, Collect).
The cross is present in our lives in many different ways. It may be manifest through sickness, poverty, tiredness, pain, scorn,loneliness. In our prayer today, we can examine our habitual disposition in coming face-to-face with the cross. Though hard to bear at times, an encounter with it can become a source of purification, of life, and of joy, if it is embraced with love.
Embracing the cross should lead us never to complain when confronting difficulties and even to thank God for the failures, suffering, and setbacks that purify us. Such adversities should be additional occasions for drawing us closer to God.
The First Reading of the Mass describes Our Lord’s punishment of the people of Israel for murmuring against Moses and Yahweh when they encountered obstacles in the desert (Num. 21:4-9).
God sends snakes that wreak havoc on the Israelites. When they finally repent, “The Lord tells Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and put it on a stand. If anyone is bitten and looks at it, he shall live.’ So Moses fashioned a bronze serpent which he put on a stand. If anyone was bitten, the person looked at the bronze figure and lived” (Num. 21:8-9). The bronze snake is a symbol of Christ on the Cross, since all who gaze on it with faith achieve salvation.
When Our Lord speaks to Nicodemus, He says, “The Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).
From that moment on, the path of holiness passes through the Cross. Incomprehensible realities such as pain, poverty, failure, and voluntary mortification take on significance in its shadow.
The Cross is a sign of the special predilection of God, who sometimes blesses us with it when He wants to bestow great graces. We can ask that we might joyfully embrace the encounter, and so be supernaturally effective, because God’s love alone is capable of satisfying the human heart.
This is what sanctity is all about. Let us always bear the cross with love.
St. Josemaría in The Way says, “Are you suffering some great tribulation? Do you have setbacks? Say very slowly, as if savoring the words, this powerful and manly prayer: ‘May the most just and lovable will of God be done, be fulfilled, be praised, and eternally exalted above all things. Amen. Amen.’ I assure you that you will find peace” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 691).
In the hymn Crux Fidelis (Faithful Cross), it says: “Cross, most faithful, you are the noblest tree of all. No other tree can compare with your leaves, your flower, and your fruit.”
Love for the Cross produces abundant fruit in the soul. ‘Lord, help me to love the crosses that you send me. Help me to thank you for them, because I know it’s you reaching out to me in a special way.’
In the first place, the cross brings us to discover Our Lord immediately. He comes out to meet us and bears on His own shoulders the most burdensome part of any trial we experience. Our suffering, in union with Our Lord’s, is no longer an evil that oppresses us. It becomes a means of union with God.
“If you are suffering,” one writer says, “unite your sorrow to his sorrow, unite your Mass to his Mass.” Chiara Lubich says, “The world will probably not understand this advice, but do not be disturbed. It’s enough that Jesus, Mary, and the saints know what is going on. Live in union with them and let your blood flow for the benefit of all mankind…just as he did” (Chiara Lubich, Meditations).
The cross of every day is a great opportunity for purification, for detachment, and even for an increase in grace (Adolph Tanquerey, The Divinization of Suffering).
St. Paul frequently reminds Christians that tribulation is always brief and endurable (2 Cor. 4:17). The prize for suffering out of love for Christ is eternal and satisfying. And so, the apostle rejoices in his tribulations. He even glories in them (Rom. 5:3), considering himself blessed to be able to unite his own suffering to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:24).
In this way, he says, he helps to bring the Lord’s Passion to completion for the good of the Church and of souls (cf. Rom. 8:18, Gal. 2:19-20, 6:14).
The only real tragedy is to stray from Christ. All other sufferings pass. Every one of them can become a real source of peace and joy for us.
In The Way of the Cross we’re told, “Is it not true that as soon as you cease to be afraid of the Cross, of what people call the cross, when you set your will to accept the Will of God, then you find happiness, and all your worries, all your sufferings, physical or moral, pass away?
“Truly the Cross of Jesus is gentle and lovable. There, sorrows cease to count; there is only the joy of knowing that we are co-redeemers with him” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Second Station).
An old lady once was a widow; she had four children. They grew up. Her son found his vocation, and then her only daughter found her vocation. But at the age of 21, the daughter had a car accident and died.
I was in the mortuary of the local hospital when that lady came to see her dead daughter for the first time. Of course she had a lot of grief. But she told me to carry on with the prayers.
A few days later, we were talking again, and I asked her how she was, and she said, “Well, Father, I’ve been thanking God for the crosses that He sends me.” I was thinking, why? This lady had many crosses in her life: young widow brings up a whole family, God asks her for two of her children.
She said, “I’ve been thanking God for the crosses that he sent me, because I realized it could have been worse. My daughter might not have been faithful to her vocation. And that would have been more difficult.”
I was so edified. Here was this woman at the height of her Calvary, with a broken heart, but just lifting up her heart and soul and mind in thanksgiving to God, because she realized God had blessed her with a special grace. I’m sure that lady is now in heaven.
We can ask Our Lord for the grace to love the cross and, as a way of doing that, to thank Him for the crosses that He sends us.
Our constant recourse to and friendship with the Master can teach us to bear the difficulties that crop up each day with a firm and youthful spirit, so that we don’t complain and we don’t give in to sadness. As happens in the lives of the saints, adversity can become a stimulus for us. We can accept it cheerfully, as one more obstacle to be overcome, enabling us to be more identified with Christ.
Joy and optimism during rough moments is not a fruit of temperament or of age. It’s born of a deeper interior life and the frequent consideration of our divine filiation.
Our serene perspective on passing events can create a positive tone in our family, while we are at work, and in all our social relations. That equanimity will then be an occasion for others to draw closer to Our Lord.
The liturgy tells us: “We should glory in the cross of Christ” (cf. Roman Missal, Entrance Antiphon, Mass on Holy Thursday; Gal. 6:14). We can ask Our Lord for the grace to be able to work in that direction.
We’re told in Scripture: “Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, ‘Look, he is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul too), so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare’” (Luke 2:34-35).
Simeon speaks about the cross, talks to Our Lady about having a broken heart. Everything related to the cross is of relevance for us, gives meaning to our life, because we’re called to try and place the Cross of Christ at the summit of all human activities.
We’re told in St. John: “In all truth I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain. But if it dies, it yields a rich harvest” (John 12:24).
St. Paul says, “Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are. And being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).
Pope Benedict liked to say, “The cross [suffering itself] is the way to transformation, and without it, nothing is transformed” (cf. Benedict XVI, Address, July 25, 2005).
People who try to run away from the cross—they don’t find happiness and peace in their life. In The Forge we’re told, “These are the unmistakable signs of the true Cross of Christ: serenity, a deep feeling of peace, a love which is ready for any sacrifice, a great effectiveness which wells from Christ’s open wounded Side. And always—and very evidently—cheerfulness: a joy cheerfulness which comes from knowing that those who truly give themselves are beside the Cross, and therefore beside Our Lord” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 772).
Let us say to Our Lord in our prayer: ‘Lord, help me to be more demanding on myself and less demanding on others. Help me to go forward, to embrace the situations each day that call for greater patience or charity or kindness or order or effort.
‘Help me to bear with joy, for love of Christ, the discomforts, the scarcity of means, maybe all the consequences of the real poverty that I’m called to live, the extra demands. Help me to rise to those occasions, to show more generosity, to be more professional in the way I carry out my work, to be more responsible.
‘Help me occasionally to mortify my tongue, to bite my tongue, to keep those little words on the tip of my tongue. Help me to be very aware of the power of my tongue to hurt people.
‘Help me to accept with love, as wanted by God for my growth, all the sufferings, physical and moral, contradictions, misunderstandings, miscommunications, sicknesses, limitations.’
If we have a desire to co-redeem with Jesus, then we will freely take up those little crosses and say to Our Lord, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). In doing so we’ll find our peace and serenity.
‘Lord, give us a desire to co-redeem that leads us not just to accept things that come, but to seek them out with generosity, to overdo ourselves in duty and in sacrifice. And all this, in the little things of each day.’
There may be one little thing that comes along on a certain day that the Lord is expecting, or maybe it’s a large cross in the course of our life. There’ll always be a few of them.
But when that cross comes along, which perhaps is never going to go away, may I realize this is my lot for eternity. Then I know this is the cross that God wants me to carry. This is what He wants me to sanctify, and He gives me all the help to be able to carry it.
The Holy Spirit comes to the wounds of the Crucifixion. That’s why St. Josemaría said, “Enter into the wounds of Christ Crucified” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 288). We find strength there. We find love there.
We’re also told in Scripture of occasions of hatred for the cross. In St. Mark we’re told, “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross for us to see it and believe” (Mark 15:32). Even those who were crucified with Our Lord were taunting Him (cf. Luke 23:39).
Hatred for the cross is very clear in society. The world keeps telling the Catholic Church to “come down off that silly cross” of your belief in the sacredness of every marriage act and the dignity of the human person—that contraception is wrong and abortion is wrong and euthanasia is wrong. “Come down off all those silly crosses and then we will believe.”
But Christ didn’t come down from the Cross. Christ stayed on the Cross.
‘Lord, help us to defend those truths through thick and thin. Help us to embrace the cross in promoting the apostolate of the family in every way that we can.’
When Peter suggested to Jesus that He shouldn’t go to Jerusalem and allow Himself to be crucified, we find some of the strongest words that Our Lord ever said: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:33). He didn’t use that term for the Pharisees.
When we go to the cross, we can find there’s a wisdom in the cross. There’s a light there that shines from the cross. There’s a joy. There’s a rest.
There was a moment in a get-together in Argentina when somebody asked St. Josemaría a question. I don’t know what the question was, but the camera focuses in on his face as he answers. He just says three simple words: Cumple tu deber, which means, “Fulfill your duty.”
Sometimes our duty can be very easy to fulfill, our daily duties, but sometimes the fulfillment of our duty can cost us our life’s blood.
It’s perhaps in those encounters that Our Lord is waiting for us. ‘Lord, help me to offer you the martyrdom of little things, taking great care and seeing the sanctifying value of little things which are done for love. Help us to see that it’s the difficult things that make us improve.’
If we try to improve, and we try to carry the cross, and we fail, we fall down, we come back and we begin and begin again. ‘Help us to begin again with a new spirit of spiritual childhood, of abandonment, because we know that you’re giving us the grace to be able to go forward.’
It’s very good that we contemplate the Cross of Christ and ask for the strength of love to carry it. Our Lord could have saved us in all sorts of other ways, but that’s the way that He chose to save us.
“How inscrutable his judgments,” we’re told by St. Paul, “how unsearchable his ways” (Rom. 11:33). St. Augustine says, “The cross is a seat of learning” (cf. Augustine, Sermons 234.2; 315.8). On the cross we become Christ-like. We put off the old person.
Jesus exclaimed: “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children” (Matt. 11:25). We want to have those things revealed to us.
St. Josemaría says: “Love sacrifice; it is a fountain of interior life. Love the Cross, which is an altar of sacrifice. Love pain, until you drink, as Christ did, the very dregs of the chalice” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Twelfth Station).
And always, God can use our experience on the cross to bring souls to Him in later life—the little crosses that come along that perhaps we wonder what they’re all about, we can try and attach some great apostolic intention to them for those fruits that have to come in the lives and souls and hearts and minds of the people that God has placed around us.
Carrying the cross means to carry joy, hope, peace. St. Josemaría says, “[I like to repeat with my soul filled with joy, there is] not a single day without the cross” (J,. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 176).
And from our shortcomings or our difficulties or our failures, we learn. We learn to be less judgmental. We learn to understand others better. Hopefully, we see that God is at work in this particular moment.
There’s a phrase in the Old Testament that says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). Those words can give us a great peace at certain moments, beginning to listen to a new intimacy with God.
We pray these days, “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you. Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world” (Prayer, The Way of the Cross; cf. Francis of Assisi, Letter to the Friars).
“At times the Cross appears without our looking for it,” we’re told. “It is Christ who is seeking us out. And if by chance, before this unexpected Cross which, perhaps, is therefore more difficult to understand, your heart were to show repugnance…don’t give it consolations. And, filled with a noble compassion, when it asks for them, say to it slowly, as one speaking in confidence: ‘Heart: heart on the Cross! Heart on the Cross!’” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Fifth Station).
As always, we find Our Lady beside the cross.
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW