Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you, with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John 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 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.
When I was in school in California, I got to become close to a family in the parish where I'd worked at that were big sports nuts. And they had season tickets to everything out there.
And they went out of their way when one of the Detroit teams was in town to offer me their tickets if I wanted them.
And the first thing they offered me was tickets to the Red Wing San Jose Sharks.
They said, would you like our tickets?
Well, that's the dumbest question I've ever heard in my entire life. Of course I would.
And I went to the game with a friend of mine, and he quickly realized as you looked around, they just moved to their new arena in San Jose. You looked around, it was more red than you see in here right now.
Everywhere you looked, this was what, 1991, I think it was.
The Red Wings were just starting to come into their own, and they were a favorite around the country.
Well, that next fall I went to the Lions were in town playing the 49ers, and a very similar thing happened.
Everything you saw was red, except for one lion's jersey. That was me up in the upper deck, and I took more than my share of grief for doing that.
But fast forward 30 years or so and there's been a little bit of a shift.
And even around here, people that you would have never seen wearing any lion's paraphernalia suddenly are decked out in it because the team has gotten better.
Well, in kind of a similar way, but different.
We as Christians oftentimes tend to wear a. A cross or a crucifix around our necks.
It is in the same way we're identifying with the team, be it the red wings or the lions.
Somehow, in wearing the colors, we kind of feel a part of something in reality we're not a part of. But when we wear the cross around our necks, we're recognizing that we're part of a team, part of a way of life.
But unfortunately, I think sometimes it simply becomes jewelry.
It becomes something pretty to wear.
When in reality, the cross around our necks speaks volumes about who we are.
The first thing it tells us, the critical part it tells us is what was just proclaimed in the gospel. That God so loved the world that he gave his only Son not to condemn the world, but that so we might live.
And that cross becomes our reminder of that precious gift and that promise.
The second part of it, the part that we don't always like to think about, is that that cross is also our cross.
And that when we embrace it, we embrace everything that goes with it. Not just the salvation promised, but also, at times, the struggle and the pain and the suffering.
And we all know that there are times in our human existence where real suffering happens for us as Christians.
Sometimes it is in standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.
Sometimes it is being countercultural, being merciful when the world doesn't particularly want mercy, being compassionate and generous, being loving, being all those things that Christ is for us. And sometimes that's not popular because it makes us go against what the rest of the world is looking for.
But the last reality of that cross hanging around our necks is that it is also a reminder to us that when we pick up our portion of that cross, we can rest assured that none of us do it by ourselves, that Christ is the one that no matter what the rest of the world does, he will be the one that stays with us to help us carry it, to help us lift the load.
And we should never, ever hang a cross around our necks or even in our churches, that we don't recognize and pay attention to those realities, that it is the cross that brings salvation.
It is the cross that we sometimes bear, and it's the cross that we walk directly hand in hand with Christ.
