The Exaltation of the Cross; September 14, 2025

Nm 21:4b-9.  Ps 78.  Phil 2:6-11.  Jn 3:131-7

Deacon Jim McFadden

         In 1988 there was a beautifully crafted drama film  about twin brothers, Dominick and Eugene.  Dominick played by Tom Hulce just off his sterling performance in Amadeus, has an intellectual disability due to an accident in his youth.  His brother, Eugene (“Gino”) played by a young Ray Liotta cares for him.  He is a medical student and he received an offer to complete his education at Stanford University, but he fears that Dominick or “Nicky” will not be able to take care of himself, who works as a trash collector.  Besides his brother, an anchor to Nicky is his pet dog, who tragically his hit and killed  by a car in the park just as Gino is telling his brother that he is moving to California to complete his medical studies at an elite university. With his world falling apart, Nicky visits a Catholic church, where he prays before the crucified Christ. A priest walks by and Nicky with tears streaming from his eyes, tells the priest: “If that were my son, I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen to him.”  Nicky’s agonizing cry raises the question:  why did the Father permit Jesus to be crucified?

         One traditional view understands the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is that it was somehow demanded of his Father to make up for all the sins of humanity.  Since an ordinary human being could not atone for our transgressions against God’s will, only a divine person who is also human could make things right.  But to subject anyone, especially one’s son to such a brutal and torturous execution (cf. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ for a gruesome depiction of this Roman method of capital punishment), strikes us as being unduly harsh at best and, at worse, a form of patriarchal oppression and even child abuse.  Since the Father is the origin of divine Love if there was any other way to bring about the salvation of the world, surely he would have willed it, which is what Jesus was asking in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup  away from me; still, not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42).  What came back to Jesus was silence: there is no plan B; death on the Cross is the only way to bring about the salvation of the world, which is one reason why the Word became flesh. 

         Hans Urs von Balthasar regarded the crucifixion of Jesus as the logical and inevitable extension of the Incarnation: there is a direct line from babe born in the cave of Bethlehem to the adult Jesus nailed to the Cross at Calvary.  When the Son of God descended into earth by becoming human that descent did not stop at becoming one of us.  As St. Paul put it in his letter to the Philippians, for “being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on the cross” (Phil 2:7-8).  The point is that Jesus went all the way down to the point of seemingly godforsakenness, absorbing all of our pain, sickness, dysfunction, , even the total isolation from God—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34c) and he is going to conquer all of that by bringing it to himself so that our separation from God would not be permanent.  Or, as Bishop Robert Barron succinctly put, “he took them on in order to take them away”

(cf. What Christians Believe: Understanding the Nicene Creed, p. 67).

         By absorbing our sin, indeed, by becoming sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), Jesus, though completely sinless by his divine nature, takes all of that rebellion against God so that we could be reconciled to the Father. Jesus took on the penalty of sin (namely, death) and the guilt of humanity as a perfect sacrificial offering.  God the Father, through his beloved Son Jesus, in union with the Holy Spirit did all of this for our good,  for our salvation because he loves us unconditionally.  

That’s why the Father permitted his Son to be crucified.  There was no other way.  He poured himself completely into our human experience even death on the Cross.  That’s what Love does.  Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1.  Why do you think the Father permitted the crucifixion of his only beloved Son, Jesus?
2. Why was the Cross the only way to bring about our salvation?
3. When you gaze upon the crucified Christ, do you sense how much God loves you?