On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14, 2025, Sister Megan McElroy, OP, preached, asking the question: How could the cross, an instrument of execution, become an instrument of exaltation?
Like St. Kevin, like the Israelites, like our brother Don Goergan, OP, so are we called to look at the monsters, the seraph serpents, the desolations of our life. As Christians we do that by gazing at Jesus lifted up on the cross. A first glance at the crucifix, and we see the horror, the desolation, of Jesus’ suffering, and we wonder how it could have gotten to such a point. It was fear and hatred, an unwillingness to recognize the gift of God in their/our midst; it was intolerance and injustice; it was sin; it was our own reality. How could an instrument of execution become an instrument of exaltation?
Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross — Preacher, Megan McElroy, OP
September 14, 2025
A year ago at this time I was in Ireland on a Celtic Spirituality Pilgrimage. One of the places we visited was Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains. If you ever get a chance to go to Ireland, be sure Glendalough is on your itinerary. Known as the glen of the two lakes, it has an upper lake and a lower lake. St. Kevin, who lived from 498-618 CE (yes, 120 years) founded a cell in which to live near the upper lake. He was looking for solitude, but others came after him, and soon a monastery was established.
There is a legend about the lower lake, often referred to as either the Lake of the Monster or the Serpent and the Lake of Healing. How can two such different images be used for one lake? The legend says that a monster lived in the lake and would scream at people as they tried to pass the lower lake to get to the upper lake. They pleaded with Kevin for help. He came down, stared down the monster, and befriended it. In doing so, he faced his own fears, monsters, vulnerabilities and befriended them. To this day, the lower lake is said to have healing powers. Tradition holds that at the lake anyone in need of healing of any kind can leave their “monster” – that which ails them in any way – and healing will come to them.
Today’s first reading has always been a mystery. We’re familiar with the story. The Israelites wandering in the desert getting impatient with the sojourn, and they begin complaining to Moses and God and God gets tired of it and sends serpents. Some of the community are bitten by the serpents, poisoned, and die.
The people, recognizing the monster in their midst (their sin) beg for help. God directs Moses to create a seraph, mount it on a pole, and then instruct those who had been bitten to look at it and they would be healed. Like the lake at Glendalough, how could an image of a poisonous snake also provide healing? It wasn’t the image, of course, that provided the healing, but God who healed, but the people needed to first face their own monsters – of sin, impatience, frustration, lack of trust in what God was doing with them and through them. In facing their monsters, they would be healed.
Fr. Don Goergen once shared a story of his experience of beginning the Dominican Ashram, first in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and then in Adrian, Michigan. He thought, after a busy life of leadership, writing, teaching, and preaching, he’d get to live a life of consolation in light of his contemplative experience at this ashram. What he found instead, at least initially, was a lot of the desolation of life. He had a chance to talk about it with Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and one of the first proponents of centering prayer and contemplation. Keating said to him, “What else would you expect? When you stick a hose with clean water in a garbage can, what comes up first? All the trash. The clean water won’t be clean until the trash is gone. So in the contemplative life. We need to look at the monsters – the trash – that comes up in life in order to know healing and consolation.”
All of these experiences tell us something about the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
Like St. Kevin, like the Israelites, like our brother Don, so are we called to look at the monsters, the seraph serpents, the desolations of our life. As Christians we do that by gazing at Jesus lifted up on the cross. A first glance at the crucifix, and we see the horror, the desolation, of Jesus’ suffering, and we wonder how it could have gotten to such a point.
Like St. Kevin, like the Israelites, like our brother Don, so are we called to look at the monsters, the seraph serpents, the desolations of our life. As Christians we do that by gazing at Jesus lifted up on the cross. A first glance at the crucifix, and we see the horror, the desolation, of Jesus’ suffering, and we wonder how it could have gotten to such a point. It was fear and hatred, an unwillingness to recognize the gift of God in their/our midst; it was intolerance and injustice; it was sin; it was our own reality. How could an instrument of execution become an instrument of exaltation?
Coming face to face with our reality, we come to know the consolation, the gift, the beauty, of the cross for it is through Jesus’ expansive love – his willingness to suffer – that we come to know the exaltation, the glory of the cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
Throughout history and in some ways even today, the cross has sadly been used in ways to dehumanize, to humiliate, to blame, to have power over and dominate others; it’s been used as costume jewelry, a fashion statement, maybe even a good luck charm. Such is to degrade the cross. But to exalt the cross is to live out of the gift of the cross, out of the mercy, forgiveness, and love that flows from the cross.
To exalt the cross is to live as Jesus did – embracing the cross in our own life, recognizing the amazing gift of love he has offered us, and sharing that mercy with others who have been bitten by and experience the effects of the poisonous snakes of intolerance, injustice, racism, cruelty. To exalt the cross is to witness to the life of the Crucified One and by attending to those who are wounded, who are broken, who have monsters in their lives that need to be stared down and maybe even befriended. To exalt the cross is to proclaim with our lives the gift of the Risen One, whom our God has greatly exalted, Jesus Christ our Lord and our Savior.
