Liturgy for Sunday, September 14, 2025

Texts taken from the Missal “On Your Word” September-October 2025

 Exaltation of the Holy Cross (feast) proper

First Reading

From the Book of Numbers (Nm 21:4b-9)

In those days, the people grew impatient on the journey. The people spoke against God and Moses: «Why have you brought us up from Egypt to make us die in this wilderness? For there is no bread or water here, and we are disgusted with this worthless food». Then the Lord sent venomous serpents among the people; they bit the people, and a great number of Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said: «We have sinned, because we spoke against the Lord and against you; plead with the Lord to take these serpents away from us». Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses: «Make a serpent and put it on a pole; anyone who has been bitten and looks at it will live». Moses then made a bronze serpent and put it on the pole; whenever a serpent bit someone, if that person looked at the bronze serpent, they lived.

The word of God.

Commentary on the first reading

The importance of the Feast of the Holy Cross - 14 September - takes precedence over Sunday, leading us to interrupt the ordinary journey that has us listening to the Gospel of Luke from Sunday to Sunday. The feast dates back to 335, when, on 13 September, the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem (the Holy Sepulchre), built on Calvary at the initiative of Saint Helena, was dedicated. Tradition in fact attributes the merit of finding the true cross a few years earlier to Constantine’s mother. To understand the meaning of this feast, the liturgy has chosen the text from the Book of Numbers: «The Lord sent among the people venomous serpents that bit them... and a great number of Israelites died... [Then] the Lord said to Moses: “Make a serpent and put it on a pole; anyone who has been bitten and looks at it will live”». That pole, as the Gospel will remind us, will become a symbolic sign of the cross of Jesus, from which we have received life. Today, therefore, it is not the cruelty of the cross that is exalted, but the love of God, who loved us to the point of giving his life for us on the cross. For us, as we will respond in the singing of the psalm: «Do not forget the works of the Lord!».

Second Reading

From the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Philippians (Phil 2:6-11)

Christ Jesus, though he was in the condition of God, did not regard being equal to God as a privilege, but emptied himself, taking on the condition of a servant, becoming like human beings. And being recognized in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. For this reason God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim: «Jesus Christ is Lord!», to the glory of God the Father.

Commentary on the second reading

In the first reading, we emphasized that today’s feast does not exalt the cruelty of the cross, but the love of Christ, who - as Paul recalls in his Letter to the Philippians - “though he was in the form of God... emptied himself, taking the form of a servant... becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him...” On Jesus’ cross, the merciful love of God is exalted, a love that goes so far as to give life so that all may be saved. It is a symbol of love and forgiveness, a symbol of selflessness and salvation. Not merely a decorative object to hang around one’s neck or on the wall of a house, but a symbol of our very identity. Christians, in fact, will be recognized as such to the extent that they live as Jesus lived with and for us: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Gospel

From the Gospel according to John (Jn 3:13-17)

At that time, Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has ever gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.”

Commentary on the Gospel

D Nicodemus was a teacher of Israel and belonged to the synagogue; at night, so as not to be noticed, he goes to Jesus: a journey that we could also see as a path leading Nicodemus from the night to the light of truth. “No one has ever gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness - here we find the reference to the first reading - so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” In John, being lifted up means “glorified,” and for Jesus this glorification would have to pass through the humiliation of death on the cross so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. It is therefore for eternity that the Lord sacrifices himself, to show us that he did not come “into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.” Today’s feast, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, becomes for us a sign and a call to understand how much we are worth in God’s eyes, and how far he was willing to go to show us his love.