The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

by Fr. Jess Ty  |  09/14/2025  |  Weekly Reflection

All that Jesus did in his life is left to us to follow. He humbled himself; he came to do God’s will; he loved us until the end… he never gives up on us sinners. True love always involves sacrifice. True love is self-sacrificing love. True love is not afraid to lose oneself, for it is only in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

According to Patricia Sharbaugh, in her article, in The Priest Magazine, entitled “The Fullness of Love”, “God’s saving love is revealed on the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is not merely a means of salvation but is the primary way for Christians to know God.”

She continues, “The Cross of Jesus Christ tells us the story of God’s love, a story told in the hymn St. Paul quotes in his Letter to the Philippians, in the Second Reading and written in shorter form in his Letter to the Romans: ‘For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might die. But God proves his love for us that while we were still sinners Christ died for us’ (5:6-8).

The cross reveals a God who loves us so much He enters into what opposes Him to redeem it. The God revealed on the Cross is a God of self-emptying, sacrificial love. The love of God revealed on the cross is not a special form of love; it is the fullness of love.

All love is self-emptying, all love is sacrificial, but most of our experiences of loving and being loved only hint at the fullness possible in love. God’s love on the cross reveals love’s fullness. Love respects the freedom of the other, and when the other is free, control is sacrificed. Love is vulnerable. The freedom necessary for love is revealed on the cross of Jesus Christ. God does not override human freedom in order to save…Again, St. Paul tells us that God’s love does not insist on its own way, but instead “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endure all things.”

May the Blessed Virgin Mary help us all to imitate our Lord and participate in showing his fullness of Love in the Cross.