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Reflections from our Pastors
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Exultation of the Cross
This past Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025 was the Feast of the Exultation of the Cross. The history of the feast is the story that St. Helena, the mother of Constentine the Great, found three wooden crosses under a destroyed pagan temple. One of the three was considered the True Cross. See a fuller story here (1). Whether any of this is true can be important or may not be important to our faith.
However, this feast of the Cross may be worth mediating upon when we consider that Jesus suffered a political execution because of the power his message and his person developed. The Roman Empire didn’t tolerate any deviation from their laws and prejudices. Keeping the Jews in line was objective #1. Uprisings were extinguished as soon as the Romans were aware of them and torture and death was the deterrent.
St. Edith Stein, also known as Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a German philosopher. She was born in Germany of a Jewish family in 1891. She was notable for her intellect and was accepted into a doctoral program in philosophy, one of only three women. All through her doctoral program and beyond she was influenced by her favorite philosophy professor and mentor, who was Catholic. She was impressed by his and his family’s faith and converted to Catholicism. She was drawn to the Carmelite life. “At first, after her conversion, she thought she would have to renounce all that was secular and live totally immersed in God, but then she realized that, even in the contemplative life, you cannot sever all connection with the world, that the deeper you are drawn into God, the more you must go out of ourself to the world in order to carry the divine life into it.” (2)
In 1942, her sisters were not able to shield her from the Nazis even though they moved their convent from Germany to Holland for that purpose. She understood the Cross. Her convent was invaded by Nazi soldiers. She was taken and executed in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. (3)
Today, when we witness the trauma and dehumanization that our non-white sisters and brothers are experiencing, we, like the nuns in Edith’s convent, turn to God in grief. Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, St. Edith Stein, offers this, “ When his disciples asked [Jesus, ‘Jesus] teach us to pray,’ he surely instructed them about everything that was necessary to be heard by [God]…He taught them only seven petitions of the Our Father in which all our spiritual and temporal needs are contained, and said nothing further about numerous other kinds of prayers and ceremonies. On the contrary, he urged them not to use many words in their prayers, since our Father in heaven surely knows what we need. (Mt 6:7-8). Only one thing he did stress with special emphasis: that we should persevere in prayer.” (4)
St. Edith Stein prayed this prayer that may guide us in finding ways to help our suffering community:
“O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You.
Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along
the next stretch of road before me.
I do not see very far ahead, but when
I have arrived where the horizon now closes down,
a new prospect will open before me
and I shall [be] met with peace.” (5)
Here is a modern understanding of the Cross from Unfolding Light,
Cross
“Whoever does not carry the cross
and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
—Luke 14.27
Romans nailed them to it, regularly.
It wasn't jewelry. It was doom.
It doesn't mean you belong.
It means you're willing to die.
Think not of what you must accomplish
but what you will surrender;
and by that cross
great things may be accomplished. (6)
May we be willing to carry the Cross with our sisters and brothers who are incarcerated, or hiding in fear,
Pastor Jane
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1. https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/exaltation-of-the-holy-cross/
2. The Science of the Cross. Edith Stein. Translated by Josephine Koeppel, OCD, pg xv
3. Ibid, pg xx
4. Ibid, pg 108.
5. https://carmelitesofboston.org/prayer/prayers-of-our-carmelite-saints/prayers-of-st-teresa-benedicta-of-the-cross-edith-stein/
6. Unfolding Light, September 4, 2025. www.unfoldinglight.org
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