Fr. Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on the Gospel for this Sunday, September 14, 2025, entitled “Obedient unto death, and a death on the Cross.”

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Today we celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the feast of the Cross, which is fruitful and glorious. In it lies salvation. It is proof of God’s immense love for you: no one loves you as He does!

The experience of the people walking in the desert is also your experience:  the people of Israel rebel against God.  Instead of praising,  they murmur; instead of blessing, they protest; instead of giving thanks, they demand…

That is the deepest and most poisonous root of sin: doubting God’s love, distrusting the story God is making with you, rejecting his word because deep down you don’t believe it is a word of love, life, and salvation.

Created in the image and likeness of God, when man closes himself to God’s love, he experiences the profound death of his being.  This death manifests itself in dissatisfaction, resentment, sadness, emptiness, disenchantment, and meaninglessness.

And he experiences that one cannot emerge from death through his own strength alone.  He needs to look to the tree of the Cross, where the world’s salvation is nailed.  Jesus Christ crucified and risen is the Savior, the only one who can heal your wounds and cure your ills.

How?  The second reading gives us the key.

Adam, being a creature, wants to usurp God’s place; he wants to “be like God.” He wants to be the master of good and evil, the master of his own life. The result: death.

Jesus Christ, being God, becomes man, lowers himself, humbles himself; he obeys the Father’s will, even though he doesn’t want to, he enters the Cross:  My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will  (cf. Mt 26:36-46). And so Jesus prayed three times. And in the end, he did the Father’s will. The result: redemption, resurrection, glorification. One ascends to heaven by descending.

The Lord invites you today to embrace your cross  and encounter the Risen Jesus Christ within it.  To do this, you need the Holy Spirit:  See the emptiness of man if You are missing within.

Come, Holy Spirit!