HOMILY FOR THE FEAST OF THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. The greatest argument against the existence of God is the human experience of senseless suffering. We meet it all the time. If there is a God, how come there is so much suffering in the world? If God is good, why does he allow such terrible things to happen? -things like the starving in Gaza, the suffering and death of children, someone dying with a terminal and horrible disease. These are examples of real suffering and no words can provide a smug or packaged answer to a mystery that none of us can fully understand.

Each year, the Church celebrates the feast of the Triumph of the Cross on 14^th September which this year falls on a Sunday. However, every Sunday is a celebration of the Triumph of the Cross because it is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God made human being, who did not spare himself from the experience of suffering but entered into its darkness and came out the other side. That’s why the Triumph of the Cross is the Good News that as we who believe in Jesus, share in his suffering and passion, so too will we share in his victory, peace and joy on the other side of suffering and pain. As Lord and Master, he has gone before us through it all. He is with us as we go through valleys of darkness and he will, in time, lead us to a place of light and peace.

I write these words after a memorable week on pilgrimage in Rome and Assisi with a group of 45 parishioners and people from all over Ireland. On Wednesday we went to St Peter’s Square for the General Audience with Pope Leo. During his talk, the Holy Father reflected on Jesus’ final moments on the cross as he leaves life with a cry: ‘Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last’ (Mk 15:37). Pope Leo said that:

‘That cry contains everything: pain, abandonment, faith, offering. It is not only the voice of a body giving way, but the final sign of a life being surrendered’.

Here is the moment when Jesus entered into that experience that many know too well – the silence, the absence, the abyss. For Leo, Jesus cry from the cross ‘is not a crisis of faith, but the final stage of a love that is given up to the very end. Jesus’ cry is not desperation, but sincerity, truth taken to the limit, trust that endures even when all is silent…It is there, in that broken man, that the greatest love manifests itself. It is there that we can recognize a God who does not remain distant, but who traverses our pain to the very end’.

He then went on to remind us how crying out like Jesus did is a form of prayer. For when we cry, we give all we have left – all our love and all our hope.

‘Jesus did not cry out against the Father, but to him. Even in silence, he was convinced that the Father was there. And, in this way, he showed us that our hope can cry out, even when all seems lost…Jesus teaches us not to be afraid to cry out…A cry is never pointless, if it is born of love. And it is never ignored, if it is delivered to God. It is a way to not give in to cynicism, to continue to believe that another world is possible…if we cry with the trust and freedom the suffering voice of our humanity, united with the voice of Christ, can become a source of hope for us and for those around us’.

Friends, today's feast day is a celebration of that hope. May this hope reach everyone in most need of it.