Thought for the week - 14 September 2025

As you know, I am not concerned with keeping things ‘on the proper day’. Not because of any kind of flippancy about the events we commemorate, but because the days are, so often, guesses anyway and sometimes, given the time differences, simply wrong. Now and again, some self-proclaimed guru will give a date for the end of the world so often it’s Eastern Standard Time, rather than Greenwich Meantime or even Australian time. They must watch the day dawning from the other side of the globe and think ‘heck, only four hours until I’m found out’. The Proper Time of course, and the Proper Day is the time and the day when we accept the Christ is Lord and change our lives in time with His and mark His steps all our days – but these reminders of what goes before us helps us, I hope, on our way.

Today we unashamedly recall historical events. Encouraged by his mother, St. Helen, the Emperor Constantine had the sites of Our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection excavated, and churches built over them. These were dedicated in September 335, on the 14th, although we know not at what hour. The tides of history saw the Persian emperor sacking Jerusalem and removing the relics and then the Byzantine Emperor defeating the Persians and bringing the relics back and forth and to today when Jerusalem and the site of the Holy Cross as contested and battle weary as so many other parts of the world. It does matter where Christ was killed and it does matter where He Ascended to the Father, but only inasmuch as it sets the compass of our life to the ineffable mystery of faith which we celebrate here, today and always.

Human beings live in time, space and society. Dates are important. The anniversary of a loved-one’s death weighs on us. Places are important. Few people do without a home; many have favourite places for meeting friends. The well-being of our communities is important. A nation’s sporting success affects the mood of many. The reroofing of a church takes on more importance than mere tiles and slates alone. Cooking for people we love is more than just giving them food. Put all this together, and the destruction, loss, restoration or recovery of some national symbol can be crucial, and the way we venerate the Holy Cross and use it in our lives is of great importance in showing how our faith is practiced.

So the Word, who enlightens everyone, became flesh; Mary, her sister, Mary of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, and John, beheld his glory. By grace we can have friendship with God, supernatural light, an intimacy with God destined to grow into heaven’s clear vision; this is a higher sharing in the divine Wisdom.

Like our natural light, it could have come to us in a secret, interior way. But no: this divine light comes to us in a more human way. God’s Wisdom was born of a particular Woman, grew up among particular relatives, taught particular disciples, and was nailed to a particular piece of wood. Those who witnessed His hour of glory, found His tomb empty on 5 April in the year 33 (or maybe 9 April in the year 30). From that single time and place, the Spirit flows to people of all times and places. None are excluded from grace; but its characteristic route is the sacraments. Through particular people’s gestures, Jesus of Nazareth reaches down to us through the centuries.

We live out friendship with God in particular acts of care. We live out friendship with God both in communities and as a community, a Church. We work for visible unity. We try to ensure that the Church’s leaders live lives of moral goodness and we hope that we support them in that. We endeavour to influence public policy for the common good. We pray for the good estate of the Church; for grace builds on nature, and if the Church flourishes friendship with God is facilitated and those who bear the name ‘Christian’, who have the flag of the cross in their hearts or their hands bear it in the way that the Christ who was nailed to it bore it – as a sacrifice and self-offering for the sins of a broken world who had come to forget His Fathers covenant. The Holy Cross is a symbol of the universal love of God for every human being, who has been, who is and is yet to come, long before and long after our own tides and seasons and languages and customs and buildings have ebbed and flowed. What will be left behind of us, what will remain of us, is grace and love, for that is what remains of Him, bringing us life and hope, from a hill in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, not from a lamppost in Rotherham or a roundabout in Bispham.

These are dark times for our world. In dark times, we are not cut off from grace, for grace comes through Jesus’ deliberate self-abasement. When the Emperor Heraclius carried the Wood of the Cross back in triumph after he defeated the Moors who invaded his land, he found he could not enter the Holy Places till he had taken off his crown, and robe, and shoes and humble himself before the King of Kings, who reigned on a throne of wood and of blood. In that sign of love, we conquer.