Warm fraternal greetings on this solemn feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross. The occasion of our most major liturgical solemnity provides a suitable time to look forward to the jubilee we will be celebrating on the 14th of September in 2010.

During each of the three years leading up to the jubilee year, I intend to send a message to all members to help us prepare spiritually for the upcoming jubilee event. For this first year, I want us to concentrate on the centrality of the cross for us and on our own intimate relationship with the mystery to be found in the Holy Cross.

Obviously, the cross of Jesus stands out as central for us as members of the Order of the Holy Cross. Paul found the good news in its entirety in the proclamation of the mystery and word of the cross: foolishness to the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews, but for all who are on their way to salvation, the cross is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The cross has always borne and will continue to carry within it a note of offense and disgrace. In addition it so clearly and easily signifies stupidity and foolishness. At first glance, seen with the eyes of Greek reason and even Judaic belief, one can conclude that there is something awfully mistaken here in the bold Christian proclamation of the cross.

Even within our own gentile heart of hearts, we know God must be wrong to have chosen the cross for his beloved Jesus. In our own assured ancestral covenants with the Almighty, surely the cross must be only an accidental, historical blunder and temporary slip up in the grand divine providence.

Paul’s analysis with reference to ‘for which strata of society’ and ‘for what particular cultural viewpoint in our own minds’ the cross is failure and foolishness is an important keynote for us in the Crosier Order. Without faith, the cross can be misread, can be falsely interpreted, can mislead. Not by accident, then, the Order of the Holy Cross is, for us, first of all an order of faith. The brethren of the Holy Cross are bonded to one another in the order of faith, the order of hope and love. And the Cross God chose for his beloved Son, in its mystery and awful fascination, links us and grounds us, draws us and stretches us into a lifetime journey in being saved. To us who are being saved, it is the power of God, the wisdom of God.

The cross of God, so universal in its saving scope, so foundational for the catholic church of God’s people, then, is no unique specialty for the Crosier Order, in the sense that it is exclusively ours to honor and cherish. The cross, on which Jesus loved until death, is appropriated by the brethren of the Order of the Holy Cross not to be a private possession, but to become a positive impulse for our full life witness and universally shared grace.

The oldest narrative of the foundations of the Order of the Holy Cross quotes a simple line that has always impressed me by the stark passion housed in the words: crucem sanctam ascendit ad loquendum verbum vite. “Jesus mounted the holy cross to speak the word of life.” The cross is compared metaphorically, in this foundational statement of Crosier life, to a speaker’s raised podium. And Jesus, the prophet of life, ascends the cross as the loudest, most final word of God against death and annihilation: crucified love is the ultimate word ‘life.’ His crucifixion is itself proclamation, speaking out, voicing in the real accents of his own flesh and life-blood the word ‘life.’ This stunning Crosier phrase is so thoroughly Pauline in that it does not construe the crucifixion in melodramatic accents of a medieval passion play or in some physical sort of pain and suffering, but rather as word-proclamation, as boldly and obstinately divine: life spoken prophetically against any triumph of death and human sin.

The earliest 13th Century Crosiers who crafted the Order’s foundational meaning and significance claimed a deep biblical insight into the cross that remains ever charismatic, fresh, new and light.

Brethren of the Holy Cross, starting afresh for us for another new century in a new millennium, will necessarily need a new pouring forth of the fresh gift of the Spirit into our hearts to help us believe and to help us boldly profess: Jesus the crucified is Lord of life, our life, the life of the entire world.

These years approaching the 800th Jubilee could easily and mechanically pass by as pages of a calendar torn off and discarded. Or, they can serve growth in the life of faith. Our contemporary Constitutions, not unlike the 13th Century proclamation, boldly carve out a special kerygmatic sense of the cross for us Crosiers now. “We wish to see our fidelity to the Cross most especially in our dedication to fashioning a truly evangelical community through our acceptance of our life and work, and in our apostolic presence where human and religious needs call out to us.”

This particular constitutional claim on the mystery of the cross perceives the intimate connection between evangelical fidelity and evangelical communion. The cross of life and the cross of communion are not primarily illuminated from the angle of dread suffering and dire pain, but rather as embodied expansive love and generous vocational commitment. This Crosier claim names a distinctive heritage, realized by our Augustinian tradition, instead of leaving broadly open-ended vague, moralized and generalized good will. The deep-set Crosier intuition for the crux of praxis immediately goes to community formation. Our fidelity to the cross that God revealed entails the compassionate witness of our lives, responding in and through community to contemporary needs, at once human and religious.

For this claim we make about our identity and our praxis to become embodied and fresh again, I invite Crosiers in all provinces, and especially our youngest members and the candidates attracted to us, to focus your prayer and meditation this year on the central importance of the cross. Find again for yourselves and for our shared spirit the richness of the biblical spirit and the depth of religious tradition to which we are called. The Order of the Holy Cross needs that fresh new start. The world and church need Crosier religious communities permeated with the mystery and the spirit of the cross of God’s love-driven Jesus. Ad loquendum verbum vitae.

Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2007