Life From Death: Homily for the Exaltation of the Cross 2025

Exaltation of the Cross                                                                                  September 14, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville

Can you bring life out of death? Or you? No, of course not. There is but one power, one authority, one man in all of existence that can do such a thing. That man is Jesus Christ. That man is also God, who is not merely in existence, but transcends it as the very source of existence just as the sun transcends daylight by being its origin. Only God, only God, only God can bring life out of death. And if we ever forget either part of that truth… if we forget that the death we offer leads to more death or if we forget that God does indeed have the power to bring life out of death, then we are doomed… doomed to eternal loss.

And that is why we Christians go so far as to not only remember the cross, to not only accept the cross, but to exalt the cross. That is today’s feast: the Exaltation of the Cross is a feast so important that it overrides the usual Sunday. Yet, isn’t exalting the cross a bit much? The cross was an ancient instrument of execution. Even worse, it was a specifically cruel method, cleverly devised to not only to kill someone, but to make their death long and painful. Jesus died unusually quickly because of his beating, but some deaths took as long as a week or more.

Why, then? Why exalt such a wicked tool? Are we masochistic? Sadistic? Warped by a brainwashing religion that has robbed us of the ability to think rationally? No. Christianity gave birth to the most rational age of human history, producing not only the scientific method, but also hospitals, global networks of charity, and even the concept of inalienable human rights. Such a faith cannot be motivated by irrationality or cruelty, no matter what arrogant internet skeptics may say. So, why? Why would such a religion of light and love dare to exalt such a weapon of death and cruelty as the cross? To spite it.

For all the forces behind the invention and use of the cross, they were powerless to stop God from using it to accomplish the greatest good ever done. If you spent a lifetime trying to make the perfect weapon to annihilate your enemy’s capital city… how would you react if that enemy used that exact same device to save that exact same city? What would it do to you to see that device, that weapon emblazoned on the enemy’s flag as a mockery of your vain attempt to destroy them?

That is a decent analogy for what we’ve done with the cross. The cross was used by the most powerful human empire on the planet to scare and control its enemies. Then the eternal God himself stepped into time in that empire, allowed himself to die on that awful tool of pain, and transformed it into the symbol of being unconquerable. Within a few hundred years, the cross went from being a symbol of destruction to literally becoming the symbol of the empire that replaced Pagan Rome so completely that we now travel there to honor that very Cross.

But it was never about Rome! It was about the devil and his demons, working through the concupiscence and sinfulness of fallen human beings to keep us away from God and focused on destruction. So, why does the religion of truth and love exalt the cross? To spite the devil and the world that thought they could use it to conquer everything.

“Do not forget the works of the Lord.” Do not forget the work of Jesus Christ who became obedient unto death on a cross and then rose again to bring life out of death and set us free from fear of death. Do not forget that work especially now, my people, my fellow citizens of the United States, my beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord. The devil and the world have not given up yet. As death continues to rage against us, as the broken natural world and wicked men inflict death upon human beings, do not forget the cross! Though death is always near, these past few weeks have perhaps brought it especially to the forefront of our attention. A murder in public, an attack on children in church, an assassination. There are even those who cheer that last one as progress towards a better life. They are wrong… wrong because none but Jesus Christ can bring life from death.

That they are wrong does not guarantee that we are right, however. We cannot use wickedness and cruelty to conquer wickedness and cruelty. “They are beyond reason, so we have to use force.” That’s partly true – we are not pacifists. But can you bring life from death? “They took a life, so they should lose a life.” There’s a certain symmetry there, sure, but can you bring life from death?

There have been times and places when the death penalty was rightly used. Death is a part of this broken world and sometimes defense of life requires us to reflect death back upon those who would inflict it on us. But here and now? The death penalty may be theoretically justifiable, but we Christians, we who know Jesus Christ, we who spite death by wearing its symbol on our chests… we should consider it inadmissible, an option we refuse to use if we can avoid it because we know that we cannot bring life from death.

Look, I get it. Charlie Kirk’s death is appalling because of why and how he was killed. You can disagree with him on everything and recognize how dangerous his death is for a country built on human rights and free speech. Such an attack should be met with outrage, the attacker should face justice. Yet, is it really justice to inflict more death? When we have other options, how will another death do anything other than reinforce the idea that killing our enemies is the way forward? How can another death bring life? If you haven’t yet, watch the Utah governor’s speech calling for a turn away from violence, quoting Charlie’s own words that forgiveness rather than vengeance is how we win. Forgiving your murderer should sound familiar. St. Stephen did it as he was executed by stoning. Countless martyrs in our history forgave their killers as they died. Why? Because it’s what Christ did on the Cross, the very cross a splinter of which is on display in our chapel right now!

Forgiveness does not mean we do not uphold justice. It does not mean we pretend evil isn’t evil. It does not mean we trust our enemies or allow them to hurt us further. But there is a difference between reluctantly taking a life in defense or as a last resort and taking a life in the calm, clear light of day. Can you honestly say you forgive your enemy if you gleefully take his life while he is restrained and no longer a threat? Did Christ or the Apostles ever call for the execution of Caiaphas or Pilate? St. Stephen for the execution of Paul?

Look, this homily is not actually about Charlie Kirk. I don’t expect we will have any real impact on the outcome of the trial. But his murder is the current event that allows me to shed some light on an eternal mystery – the mystery of Jesus Christ and his Cross. This homily is not about politics, though the Gospel does affect politics. This homily is about the Cross as God’s own answer to the problem of death. Even if we cannot change the outcome, we can allow grace to change our hearts.

Yes, God can and does take human life. Our first reading shows God punishing the Israelites with serpents that kill some of them. But God is God! And you are not. I am not. And even God was not content to leave matters at the level of “you do bad things so I kill you.” So, he commanded Moses to make a statue of a snake impaled on a pole to save them, to create something that foreshadowed God’s real solution to sin, evil, and even death: the Cross. Jesus is intentionally comparing his crucifixion to that statue of an impaled snake.

In the course of 1500 years, God went from inflicting the death penalty on others to allowing himself to be executed. He providentially created a connection between those two times. The snake on a pole reminds us of God saving people from the punishment of death. Christ on the Cross unveils his ultimate plan to go from inflicting death to receiving it. Why? Because, unlike any other power, authority, or person in existence, God can bring life out of death. And he did just that.

What, then, does he expect of us in return? To trust him to keep doing it. That means resisting the temptation to try to fix everything. That means resisting the temptation to seek vengeance, to resist the lie that the violent wickedness of others justifies our own wickedness, to resist the lie that we can somehow bring life out of death.

But doesn’t that mean we’ll sometimes lose? Yes! Yes it does. We exalt the cross not only to spite death and the devil, but to remind ourselves that it is by losing that we win, by dying that we are given life. Catholicism is not a political platform, a philosophical argument, or a pragmatic program. It is a radical relationship with Jesus Christ and an act of faith in a savior who can do what we cannot. We cannot bring life out of death, so we must refuse to try. God can bring life out of death, so we must not despair when death strikes.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Why? So that we could justify ourselves in going to any length to defeat death on our own terms? No, “so that everyone who believes in him might not perish… For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved.” Saved, how? By achieving perfect justice through human institutions? No, “that the world might be saved through him” who died on the cross and then rose from the dead. Lift high that Cross knowing that even should we die, we, like him in whom we believe, shall have eternal life.