Homily given by Rev. Paul Borowski, CSsR
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping
trip. After a good meal and a bottle of
wine they bunked down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes
awoke and nudged his friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you
see.” Watson replied, “I see millions
upon millions of stars.”
“So what does that tell you?” asked Sherlock. Watson pondered for a minute.
“Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and
potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.
Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.
Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and
insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day
tomorrow. What does it tell you?”
Holmes was silent for a minute and then spoke.
“It tells me someone has stolen our tent!”
A heart surgeon took his
car to his local garage for a regular service, where he usually exchanged a
little friendly banter with the owner, a very skilled but not especially
wealthy mechanic.
“So tell me,” says the
mechanic, “I’ve been wondering about what we both do for a living, and how much
more you get paid than me…” “Yes?” says
the surgeon.
“Well look at this,”
says the mechanic, as he worked on a big complicated BMW engine, “I check how
it’s running, open it up, fix the valves, and put it all back together so it
works good as new. We basically do the same job don’t we? And yet you are paid
ten times what I am – how do you explain that?”
The surgeon thought for a moment, and smiling gently, replied quietly to
the mechanic, “Try it with the engine
running.”
Perception. One can see the same thing, witness the same
event and we can have two outlooks on the matter. The Feast we celebrate today can be looked at
in the same way. To us Christians in the
year 2014 we see the cross as a sign of our redemption, of our salvation. It has become a part of our life and perhaps
it may have become a part of our life in the sense that it is so ordinary. We enter into this Church and as we bless
ourselves with Holy Water we make the sign of the cross – yet how often do we
reflect on what that sign means. I am
sure that in your homes you have many a cross or crucifix on the walls of your
living room, dining room or bedroom.
Perhaps like me you have a cross hanging on the rear view mirror of your
car. Many of us wear crosses around our
neck, but once again do we realize what the cross means?
If
you were to ask the people of Christ’s time about the cross they would give you
a different answer to what it meant to them as opposed to us. To the people of ancient Israel and the Roman
Empire it was an instrument of torture, it was a means to put to death the
worse possible criminals of their day.
As St. Paul writes: “Cursed is he
who hangs up the tree.” For the people
of Jesus’ day the cross was a terrible thing.
If Christ lived and died during our present time perhaps instead of a
cross he would have been put to death in an electric chair or on a gurney with
a lethal injection. Our celebration
today is to remember what the cross truly is:
a sign of how much our God loves us that he would allow His only Son to
suffer such a terrible death.
Perhaps
we have lost sight of the true meaning of the Cross. One of the saints of the Church was once
quoted as saying that the Christ was not crucified on a gold cross between two
brass candle stands in a cathedral but he was crucified on a wooden cross
between two common criminals on a dusty hill.
St. Alphonsus Liguori, the founder of the Redemptorists, said that when
we gaze upon the cross we should see two things. The first is what our sins have done in
crucifying the Lord. Again, there is no
easy way to say this so we must admit that our selfishness, our carelessness
towards others and our God lead Jesus to sacrifice his life on the cross so
that we might live. His death on the
cross and his resurrection frees us from sin and death and gives us new
life. But Alphonsus did not stop there,
he goes on to say that when we gaze on the cross we should also see the immense
love that our God has for us. In fact
this love is a crazy love, a love that would go so far. So, when you go home today and you look at
the crosses in your house perhaps we can say a prayer of thanks to our God for
loving us as much as he does. Perhaps
the crosses that we have will no longer just be ornaments that decorate our
house or our necks but will be daily reminders of a God who is crazily in love
with us.
In
today’s Gospel from St. John we heard proclaimed one of the most famous
passages of all Scriptures. “For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son.” (John
3:16) The passage is John 3:16 and it has been made famous not by any great
preacher but if you are a person of my generation you might recall seeing this
written on a place card at many a sporting event in the late ‘70s and during
the ‘80s.
At
various sporting events a man by the name of Rainbow Man would position himself
to get on TV and hold a sign with John 3:16 written on it. Everyone knew the Rainbow Man, everyone knew
John 3:16 and everyone knew what it meant.
The Rainbow Man, whose real name is Rollen Stewart made it his mission
to spread this Good News. There he was
at Olympics and World Series, decked out in a Rainbow Afro Wig driving TV
producers crazy since he kept getting in the camera’s view. He would take a Portable TV with him to these
sporting events so he knew where the camera would be looking. He once was banned from the Olympics since
they thought he was a spy and the John 3:16 was some type of code.
John
3:16 “For God so loved the world” is probably well know because of the work of
the Rainbow Man, Rollen Stewart.
However, in 1992 he was arrested and charged with kidnapping when he
broke into a hotel room outside of Los Angeles and held a few people
hostage. During the siege he had a
pistol that he used to fire at incoming planes into the Los Angeles
airport. All along the windows of the
hotel he placed John 3:16 placards. He
was finally apprehended and is presently serving three consecutive life
sentences. His next parole review will be in 2017.
He
was also found guilty of setting off several stink bombs at various locations
in years prior to 1992.
What
happened to Rollen Stewart? His story is
one that shows that the message of the cross, the message of John 3:16 must not
just be for external show but must take root and abide deep within each one of
us. The love that God shows us in the
Exaltation of the Cross is a love that we must show to one another. If we simply allow the Cross to remain a
decorative item we run the risk of allowing it to have no meaning in our lives
at all.
So
today we celebrate a glorious feast -- a day to remember that by his death on
the cross and his resurrection on the third day we have been loved by God and
been made his chosen people. Take a look
at the crosses and crucifixes you have in your house or on your person. Don’t let it just sit there as an ornament
but as a real reminder of what our faith is all about. We believe in a God who loves us insanely and
calls us to love one another with the same passion. May we never forget to glory in the cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN!
