V/ We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you!
R/ Because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
In history, few names shine as brightly as Abraham Lincoln, the man who held the United States of America together through civil war and led the nation toward the abolition of slavery. But what many forget is that before the triumphs, Lincoln’s life was marked by defeat after defeat. He failed in business. He lost multiple elections: state legislature, Congress, and the Senate. He suffered the death of the woman he loved, battled deep depression, and was ridiculed by rivals. By every measure of success, he was a man who knew loss, failure, weakness, and humiliation.
And yet, it was those very failures, those crosses that prepared him to become the leader the United States of America needed. His compassion was born from suffering. His resilience was forged in rejection, and his greatness came not despite his defeats, but through them.
Abraham Lincoln’s life reminds us of a truth we celebrate today: there is good in the bad, and there is bad in the good; but the choice is ours whether we will let God bring life out of death, strength out of weakness, and victory out of the Cross.
Scripture shows us this truth from the beginning. God created everything good. After creating humans, God gave them the special gift of free will so that they might not be like robots, and because of this gift, humans became capable of misusing the good creation.
God created the woman as the exclamation point of all his creatures. He only rested after he created the woman, and the man felt complete and heaved a sigh of relief only when the woman was created: “Hmmm, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” Eve, who was created to be a source of joy, was tricked by the serpent and became an occasion for Adam’s fall. But notice: the story does not end with failure. God, in his mercy, chose another woman, Mary, to reverse Eve’s mistake. Where Eve said, “No” to God, Mary said, “Yes.” Where Eve reached for her own desire, Mary opened her hands and heart to God’s will. Mary said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.”
This same pattern continues in salvation history. Time and again, God shows us that what looks like defeat can become victory, what looks like shame can become the source of fame and glory, and what looks like the end can become only a bend that leads to the beginning of something greater than we ever wished for ourselves.
In all Sacred Scripture, nowhere is this pattern of the good coming out of the bad truer than in the Cross of Christ. The Cross was meant to be Rome’s ultimate symbol of humiliation on earth. It was where criminals were executed, where hope was extinguished. But God took that very symbol of defeat and transformed it into the greatest sign of victory. The fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden was used to cause the fall of humanity, and when the time came for God to redeem humanity, he went back to the tree (the Cross) to bring us salvation. The good must be brought back from the bad by our ever-good God. The Cross that used to be a symbol of crime and shame has now become an object of worship; the sign of condemnation has become the mark of our redemption and blessing.
This is why we celebrate today: because on the wood of the Cross, God proved to the world that no darkness is so deep that he cannot bring light from it, no suffering so final that he cannot bring new life from it. That is what we celebrate today, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. As today’s Preface beautifully proclaims: “For [God] placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the cross, so that, where death arose, life might again spring forth and the evil one, who conquered on a tree might likewise on a tree be conquered, through Christ our Lord.”
And this is not just ancient history; it is your story, too; it is my story, too. Every one of us carries crosses: failures, sins, disappointments, losses. Sometimes we want to give up, to say, “This is the end.” But the Cross says otherwise. The Cross says, “This is the beginning of resurrection.”
Think of Lincoln: his defeats became the soil of his leadership. Think of Christ: His crucifixion became the doorway to eternal life. And think of yourself: the very Cross you carry today may be the place where God will show His greatest glory.
So, dearly beloved in Christ, let us not run from the Cross; let us not curse it. Let us embrace it; let us lift it high, as the Church does today, and see in it the proof that God’s love is stronger than failure, greater than sin, and more powerful than death. Bring your burdens, your wounds, your struggles to the Cross, and believe that the God who turned a Roman execution into the hope of the world can turn your darkest hour into the dawn of new life. May this feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of Christ free us from all evil and grant us salvation. Amen.
Homily for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross 2025
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