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Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Fr. Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the One who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up@ascensionpress.com Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless the Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel According to John Glory to you, oh Lord. Chapter 3, verses 13 through 17 Jesus said to Nicodemus, no one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the dead serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that he who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Read you to have a seat. So I would say this, I would say, words are good. Words are really good. Big fan, big fan of words. We need them. And yet, I mean, go on and on about the greatness, the goodness, the usefulness of words. And yet at the same time, we know this, we know that there are times when words fail. Like, there's times when it's just simpler, it's just easier, it's just more clear what exactly we mean when we go beyond where. So like, dumb example, like go up to the restroom in a public, public space and it could just say, men's room, women's room. Got it. No problem. It's easy. Sometimes people like, hey, you're at a, you know, I don't know, a hunter's type bar. It's bucks and does like, that's great. I've. I think, I don't know if there's a comedian who talked about this, but like, you know, at an Italian restaurant and it's spaghetti and meatballs and like, okay, I don't know which one I am. I don't know which one anyone is. Like. So you know what's easy when words fail is you have a little stick figure of a guy with two legs and then a girl with two legs but also a dress on, and you're like, okay, the symbol, the symbol, the sign really helps. Sometimes it's just clearer and sometimes actually it's easier when you pulp to a stop, a four way stop, there's a light. The light could say go slow, stop. Or just green, yellow, red. Makes it really easy. That sign, that symbol makes it so clear. Or even just sometimes, you know, there are times where the symbol gets to the point more quickly. So I could send a long text if I said something stupid. Maybe I said something I was embarrassed by. Like saying, like, are you serious? That Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are not the same thing? Or is it possible to have two cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the same state? That's crazy. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know that. Or I could just send an emoji of like a face palm and that gets the point across. That sense of. Or gifts. I love gifts. Not gifts, gifts. Gifts are nice too. Christmas. But I like gifts where it's just like, here is a symbol, here's a sign, here's a picture that communicates when words fail. There. I mean, did you know that that power symbol, it's like the kind of circle with a little dash on the top that. That was invented back in the 1970s by technological people who said that, okay, it's a zero and a one. Because in computer speak, I guess zero would be off and one would be on. And so they just combine them. So you see a little, you know, kind of a semicircle with a little dash on the top. You're like, oh, that's the symbol for on and off. And you could have that in any country that speaks any language and everyone understands it. Why? Because sometimes words fail. And sometimes the sign or the symbol is more helpful. I mean, the fact that even you could walk around if you're married, you could walk around letting everyone know, hi, my name is Joe, I'm married. Hi, my name's Jane, I'm married. Or you could just wear a wedding ring. And that wedding ring is a symbol to everyone that, oh, this is someone who is not single. This is someone who is married. Because why? Because sometimes words fail. And what we need is something that speaks louder. We need a symbol. And I think about this because symbols mean something. So let's go back to the first reading. What is. I'm trying to say the first reading is from numbers, chapter 21. And the whole context is what the whole context is here is God, who set the people of Israel free from hundreds and hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt. Now they're Walking through the wilderness. And people begin grumbling, no, let's slow down on this. They start grumbling against God and against Moses, saying they're not happy with the food they have. Now, if we pause in this, we realize, okay, what has God done for them? He has fought for them against the Egyptians. He's freed them from slavery. Hundreds of years of slavery against the Egyptians. He is currently leading them, protecting them, and feeding them every single day. And still they're like, yeah, but God's not good enough. They're still there. Like, they have this sense of. They're grumbling, they're complaining, they want different food. And so what happens? That God sends. Sends. Sends these serpents that bite them. God sends serpents that bite them. That. Those serpents. I was praying about this, and I was just like, oh, that's kind of a callback. It's kind of a. Here's God. God's way of having a callback to Genesis, chapter three. Because think about Genesis three, right? You have Adam and Eve, Genesis two. Adam and Eve are in the garden. And God is good. What is he doing? He is taking care of them. He is guiding them. He's protecting them. He's feeding them every single day. Whatever they need, whatever they want, God says, you can have it. I love you. God is good. And then what happens? A serpent comes into the garden. And the serpent begins to question and saying, hey, yeah, but I know God has given you all these good things, but wouldn't it be really good to have different food? I know that God is caring for you. I know that he's providing for you. I know he's protecting you. I know he's feeding you. But wouldn't it be good if you had different food? I bet the reason why God isn't giving you different food is because he's holding out on you. Because he isn't all that good. And what happens? Adam and Eve are easy to fool. And it's the same thing. Before they ate this food, they were without shame. Instead, they were naked, without shame. They ate the food. Their eyes were open, and they realized they were naked. And so what happened? They covered their nakedness. Another way to say it is they covered their shame. What was the sign of their being protected was the sign of their being loved, A sign of their being longing to God. Their nakedness now had become a sign of their shame. And the same thing is true in Numbers 21. They're dying from this snakebite. And that snakebite is a sign of their Shame. It's a sign of their sin. It's a sign of their not trusting God. It's a sign that they're grumbling against God. And so what does God. So Moses goes before God and says, God, please spare their lives. And he says, okay, make a seraph, serpent and bronze, right? Make the. Make an image of the thing that's killing them. They think about this. That serpent is the sign of their shame. That serpent is a sign of what's killing them. The serpent is a sign of their brokenness. That serpent is a sign of their sin. And God says, make that serpent in bronze and put it on a pole and lift it up, and everyone who looks at it in faith will be healed. What does God do? He takes the sign. This is what Father Dave Bavanka from Franciscan University said. He said he takes the sign of their shame. And it becomes a symbol of their hope. Because that serpent is. Again, that serpent is a sign of everything that's wrong in their lives. The serpent is a sign of their rebellion against God. But in God's hands, the sign of their shame has become a symbol of their hope. And that's what we have today. Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I don't know if we have you just to recognize. Do you know that for the last 2,000 years, there's one image that has been central to Christianity? You know, I think it's fascinating. Other religions have symbols that are associated with them, but they're not essential. I don't know if, you know, like the Muslim crescent moon, like that was. That was just essentially a sign of the Ottoman Empire. And then Muslim, many, not all, adopted it as kind of their symbol. So we associate it with that. But it's just. It was a sign of the Ottoman Empire, which happened hundreds of years after Islam was started. The Star of David. That. That Star of David wasn't even discovered archeologically until the year 700. On one person's tomb in the 12th and 3rd centuries, you kind of saw it, but it has no inherent connection to Judaism. But the cross. The cross is the sign of Christianity for the last 2000 years, which boggles the mind. Why because the cross was the worst is absolutely inconceivable. The cross is the worst form of punishment that human beings ever thought to invent. And here's the Romans, as they're conquering the world, as they're trying to rule over their Roman Empire, they reserved this thing called crucifixion for the worst criminals. In fact, it was so horrible that if you were a Roman citizen, it was illegal for you to be crucified. No matter what you did, no matter how awful your crime was, you couldn't be crucified because it was considered that horrible. The Romans, who had devised many, many ways of killing someone, when they devised crucifixion, they couldn't top it. I remember when I first heard that the Romans used to crucify thousands and thousands of people. At first I thought, that kind of cheapens it. I thought, oh, I thought Jesus was the only one. When I was a kid, I thought he was the any of the two people next to him. But other than that, I thought, like, no, this is really unique to Christ. And like, it wasn't. There were thousands of slaves who were crucified, thousands of people who were made to be a symbol to everyone passing by of the power of Rome, that their humiliation on the cross was meant to be a billboard to the rest of the world that this is what happens if you stand up against Rome. We were hearing someone describe, and they said that they highlighted the fact that crucifixion was not simply designed to kill, but it was designed to humiliate. To humiliate and to terrify. The victim was stripped, of course, completely naked, was either nailed or tied to rough timber that wasn't sanded, wasn't planed, it was just rough wood splintered. The body would sag and ultimately the arms would be torn out of their sockets. And what would ultimately happen is a person would slowly suffocate to death, but not before birds would come and pick at the soft parts of their bodies. Dogs literally would come up. Because crucifixion didn't happen very, very far off the ground. Dogs would come and begin eating people's feet while they're still alive. As they're completely naked. Insects would fly around them. You'd be powerless to escape. And everyone walking by, again, you're meant to be a billboard. You were meant to be a symbol of the power of Rome and the powerlessness of anyone who stood against Rome. And here's Jesus. Jesus who died on the cross, whose death actually is so horrible that Christians didn't really adopt representing Jesus on the cross for the first couple of centuries. It was so horrible. In fact, the earliest graffiti we have, not from Christians, but of Christianity, is of someone mocking Christians. Someone had etched on stone the body of a man on a cross with a head of a donkey. And it was, you know, so and so worships his God. It was seen as so horrible and so humiliating. It was a sign of shame in the world. And what happened, that sign of our shame has become the symbol of our hope. Because when we look at the crucifix, what do we see, right? We see Jesus stripped, We see Jesus beaten. We see Jesus suffocating. We see Jesus humiliated. And in that, what do we see in that? We see ourselves. We see our own sin. We see our own brokenness. We see our own evil, our own humiliation. We see our own shame. Jesus on the cross is a sign of our shame. But what God has done is he's transformed that shame into the symbol of our hope. This is one of the things that's been taught since the very, very beginning of Christianity is that that sense of, we come before a good God, this is the. This is what we believe as Christians. We come before a good God, and it's like we're on trial and God is the judge. So we come before God, we're on trial, and we're guilty, right? We have the sign of our shame. We're guilty. And what is God's answer to our guilt? Because this is the thing before a good God, before a holy God. We recognize, I am not holy. I am not good. I am guilty. And what's God's answer? What's his response to our guilt? His response to our guilt is the cross. His response to our being guilty is what we heard in John's gospel today, that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that all who believe in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. How did he give him? We heard it in the second reading today. St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, where God emptied himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. What was the sign of our shame has become the symbol of our hope. Why? Because sometimes words fail. The vehicle by which God redeemed us and won us back is the cross. God does what God takes the worst thing and uses it. So now we look at the cross, and when words fail, the sign of our shame has become the symbol of our hope. This is interesting because over the course of time, things have changed, and we have people who are now cynical and skeptical once again. And just like Adam and Eve looked at God and all the good that God had done, just like the people of Israel looked at God and all the good that God had done, and they grumbled against him, they complained against him. See, that's. We're in the same spot. CS Lewis started this the first Part of the last century, middle of the last century, he said, where it used to be, where we're in the courtroom and we're on trial before a good and holy God. And God's response to our being guilty is his cross, his son, modern man. We look at God, we look at this world and we say, not good enough. We look at the suffering in this world, we look at the evil in this world, we look at the pain in this world, we look at the fact that God has put us in this world, and what do we do? We enter that courtroom and rather than us being on trial and us being accused of being guilty, we say, God, no, you're guilty. And we're. And isn't that crazy? That's for us. You probably hear that and say, yeah, I can see that. We look at this world where there's shootings, this world where there's, where there's war, this world where there's poverty, this world where there's disease. And you're actually angry at God. This is new for God to be on trial, yet it's not new. Why? Because Adam and Eve, I don't know that God is good people of Israel, God is actively feeding them and caring for them. I don't know that God is good. And we have this thing in our human heart that is we're angry with God. And if you're wondering if that's true, think about this. Here is God who's invulnerable, right? Here's God who's invincible. God who can't be harmed, can't be hurt, can't be killed. Until what happens? Until he becomes one of us. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And what happened the moment he became vincible? What happened the moment that God became vulnerable is we started to do our best to hurt him. He's. He's born as a baby in that, in Bethlehem. What happens? Herod tries to kill him. They have to flee to Egypt, back up to Nazareth. Jesus starts proclaiming, the starts doing good, he's vulnerable. And go back to Nazareth. What they try to do, they try to kill him. He goes to Jerusalem, they pick up stones to stone him. The moment God made himself vulnerable. See, here's the thing. Our broken heart, the sign of our shame is the fact that we are angry with God. And if we could hurt him, we would. And the moment he made himself hurtable, the moment he made himself vulnerable, the moment he made himself killable, what did we do? We killed him. Because I don't Know if I can trust you. Here is God on trial. You know what's fascinating is this. What's fascinating is that what's God's answer when we're guilty? What's God's answer? God's answer is the cross. When we say, God, you're guilty, what's his answer? It's the same answer. It's the cross. When we say, God, I don't know if I can trust you, God. I don't know if you care about me, God, here's all this evil in the world. What are you going to do about it? His response is, here's what I'm going to do about it. If I can let what overwhelms you overwhelm me, maybe then you'll be willing to. To trust me. And so the sign of our anger against God has become the sign of his love for us. That's triumph of the cross. But it's not just. It's not just for all. I think sometimes we hear this and we're like, yeah, for y', all, this is. This is God. It's God's love for y'. All, it's not. Last May, I was talking to Father Boniface Hicks. He's a priest in the United States. He's just amazing guy. And he told the story. But when he was a seminarian, he was working on a college campus. And he was Brother Boniface at that point. And at one point, one of the students came up to him, and he's one of those deep thinker kind of students. And he said, brother Boniface, I have a question. He said, why do you think Jesus died When he died? Like, why at that time in human history, why 33 A.D. you know, and Father Boniface says that back then when he was in seminary, he's like, I knew all the answers because I was a seminarian. I was studying all the answers. I had all the answers. And he said. He went into this lengthy description of here's why I think God died when he died. Why Jesus died when he died. I think he was crucified here because, like, this is the time Roman Empire was very powerful. And the intersection going through Jerusalem of kind of the north and south, east and west. It was a bridge between Asia and Europe. All these. In Africa, all these kind of things. He went on and on and on. I think this is why Jesus died. When he died, he gets done with his big explanation. And the young man, college student, looked at him and said, I think there's something more. So a lot of time Passes and the guy comes back up and says, brother Boniface, I have another question. Why do you think Jesus died? How he died? Like, why? Why on a cross? Why crucifixion? And once again, Brother Boniface said, I knew everything. So went to this lengthy explanation of, you know, not only is the crucifixion an incredible sign of this vertical reconciliation between us and God, also a horizontal reconciliation of us and each other. Also Jesus on the cross, like his arms open to. He wants to embrace us because God loves us so much. On and on and on. The young man looks and says, I don't know. I think there's something more. Couple months pass, and this young man comes back up and says, brother Boniface, you know what? Remember when I asked you those two questions? Why do you think Jesus died when he died? And why do you think Jesus died, how he died? You had these answers and it was, you know, you're smart, so, you know, I gave him some credit. He said, I. I was wondering, and I think it's something else. So Father Barnatha said, what do you think? He said, I think he died right then, and I think he died on the cross. Maybe he did that just to save the good thief. See, Fr. Boniface said, as a seminarian, he was thinking like, here's Jesus who's saving the world, which he did. This young man was like, no, I think it was for that one guy. See, we can. We can talk about the cross all day. We can talk about how. How the exaltation of the Holy cross that this is. We adore your cross, you know, this is why. How you save the world. Yes, absolutely. But maybe Jesus did it for just that one guy. And maybe Jesus died on the cross just for you. Maybe that's possible. You know, saints have said for the last 2000 years, they said that even if you were the only person in the universe, Jesus would have died on the cross for you. Maybe you've heard that before. Even if you were the only person in the universe, Jesus would have died on the cross for you. This is really personal. But how about this? How about. What if. What if you weren't the only person in the universe? What if you were the only person in the universe who needed it? Let's make it really personal. Not. You're the one person alive with 8 billion people on this planet. You're the only one who needed Jesus to die on the cross, and he did that for you. What would that do? Would you be willing to accept it? Not if you're the only person in the universe. But if you were the only person in the universe who needed it and words failed, would it be enough that Jesus died for you? Would you let him do it? Because this is the last thing. He's done it, and he's done it as personally as if you were the only person in the universe who needed it. And the sign of our shame has become the symbol of our hope, and the sign of our anger against God has become the symbol of his love. Because sometimes, in the midst of a broken world, words fail and we need something more. We need what Jesus has done for us, and not just for all of us, although he's done it for all of us. I need what Jesus has done for me. Because the sign of my shame has now become the symbol of my hope, and the sign of my anger has become the symbol of his love.