Homily for Exaltation of the Holy Cross Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. Numbers 21:4-9; Gospel of St. John 6:13-17. Theme: The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist
Have you ever noticed the emblem on medical alert bracelets? It is a snake wrapped around a pole and it comes directly from the Old Testament story we heard in our First Reading. Jesus also makes reference to it in today’s Gospel. This bronze serpent lifted up on a pole was a foreshadowing or prophecy of Jesus being lifted up, both on the cross and then from the grave, for the spiritual healing of all humanity.
As I was pondering today’s Scriptures that speak about healing for those who are dying, I thought of my long career in radiology. I was thinking about the cancer patients who put themselves into the beams of radiation for a chance to receive healing. All they had to do was show up for treatment and stay under the invisible radiating beam. Its power and energy did the rest. But they had to do this faithfully and frequently no matter how they felt. If they wanted the best chances at healing and living a better life, they needed to make this treatment a priority.
And you know, it’s very much the same for us who are spiritually dying of what has rightly been called the cancer of sin. First, like oncology patients we have to realize that if left untreated it’s fatal. Second, as it ravages our soul, it plunges us into an unmanageable life here on planet Earth that just spirals into worsening spiritual health. But we have real hope for a complete healing if we put ourselves under the care of Christ the Divine Physician. He who was lifted up on the cross for us is the remedy and the cure. In him and by the power of his cross, we can and will be restored to spiritual strength and wholeness!
How do we do this? Well we can once again look to the cancer patients to show us the way. They consent to the prescribed treatment because they trust their physician. They undergo radiation therapy because they trust the skills of their health care team. And this personal trust enables them to faithfully follow instructions even if they do not fully understand the why or the how. They just keep trusting and hoping all will go well. We need to have this same kind of trusting attitude and the commitment to see our treatment through to the end, convinced that it’s a matter of eternal life or eternal death.
And what precisely is our prescribed treatment? It’s being in the Presence of Jesus our Savior who heals us from the inside out through the Holy Eucharist. And so we faithfully attend the Liturgy as vital to our treatment plan, allowing the supernatural rays of grace from Word and Sacrament to penetrate our hearts. As we are about to receive Jesus, we first gaze upon him who is held up before our eyes and then we profess our trust in him by saying, “Amen”. We consume his Sacred Body and Blood allowing his healing Presence to enter into us and radiate spiritual healing within us.
We keep showing up for this Eucharistic treatment plan because we realize that healing is a lifelong process. It’s an ongoing encounter with Jesus. and each time we receive Him with faith, we become a little more whole, a little more spiritually healthy. And so, even though it takes time to see the results we never lose hope but we keep trusting because we firmly believe that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
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