DAILY- HOMILY

The Cross of Jesus has many different meanings. It signifies the inhumanity of men and the humanity of God. It symbolizes the meaning and value of suffering. It manifests divine forgiveness. It reveals the power of sacrificial love and the victory of life over death.

Today's gospel focuses on the cross as symbol of God's forgiving love for this evil world. "God so loved the world," John says, "that he gave his only Son . . . " in order that sinful men and women might find life. It's startling, isn't it, that God should love this world which is marked indelibly, often brutally, by sin, that God should love this world in which too often evil dominates and prevails over good?

God and Jesus, however, accepted this world it was, sinful. God gave his son to this world, and, Jesus says, "The son has to be lifted up", as the bronze serpent was lifted up in the desert. We know from the first reading that those Jews who were made deathly sick in the desert at the bite of a seraph serpent, needed only to look on the bronze serpent to be saved from death. So also anyone in this evil world who looks on Jesus, lifted up on the cross, and believes in him, will have eternal life. God indeed loved the sinful world.

This means, clearly, that evil though the world is, we too are to love it. It does not mean, of course, that we are to embrace the world's values or exalt its idols, but simply - that we ourselves are to make present in the world, Christ's compassionate, life-giving, universal love.