When the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross falls on a Sunday, as a feast of the Lord it replaces the celebration of the Sunday in Ordinary Time. So the Mass of the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time is not celebrated this year.
Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)
Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, India, Scotland)
Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)
Gospel John 3:13-17 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)
At that time: Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
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For
me the face of the persecuted Christians in today's world is that of Fr Ragheed Ganni. An article by Ed West published in the
Catholic Herald, now published monthly in England, on 20 December 2013 and that has a very
personal dimension, gives as good an account of Father Ragheed as any I've
read. (The link to the article that I used before no longer functions.)
Ed West writes: Fr Ragheed was one
of 1,000 Iraqi Christians murdered during the pogrom that began after the
Coalition invasion of 2003. The persecution culminated in October 31 2010, with
the massacre of 52 worshippers at a Catholic church in Baghdad. In the words of
one Chaldean bishop, this is a 'Calvary' that has largely been ignored in the
western media, outside of the Christian press . . .
It
has been a shocking and horrific ordeal for one of the world’s oldest Christian
communities, which has been all but driven out of its homeland. A pre-war
population of a million is now somewhere in the region of 150,000, many of them
elderly, and more than 60 churches have been bombed. That figure
has got smaller in recent months and the ancient city of Mosul, in many ways
the heart of the Christian faith in Iraq and Syria, has been emptied of its
Christians by ISIS.
The
article describes First Holy Communion day in Father Ragheed's parish in
2006: The atmosphere in Ragheed’s home town had become terrifying. On 4
August 2006, when 80 children of his parish of the Holy Spirit received
their first Holy Communion, battles broke out in the street outside, and the
children cowered from the sounds of guns and rockets.
The
good shepherd helped them through. He told AsiaNews:
'Although people are used to it and remained reasonably calm, they started to
wonder whether they were going to make it back to their homes or not. I was
aware of the immense joy of the 80 children receiving their first Communion so
I turned the subject into a joke and said to them: "Do not panic, these
are fireworks. The city is celebrating with us." And at the same time I
gave them instructions to leave the church quietly and quickly.'
The
author further notes: Friends later recalled that he had become
increasingly weary and broken by the demands of the priesthood amid such
terror. After an attack on his parish, on Palm Sunday 2007, he wrote: 'We
empathise with Christ, who entered Jerusalem in full knowledge that the
consequence of His love for mankind was the cross. Thus while bullets smashed
our church windows, we offered up our suffering as a sign of love for Christ.'
This
young Iraqi priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church, an engineer by profession,
was murdered on Trinity Sunday, 3 June 2007, along with three
subdeacons, Basman Yousef Daud, Gassan Isam Bidawed and Wahid Hanna Isho
after he had celebrated Mass in Mosul, the city of his birth.
At
a Eucharistic Congress in Bari, Italy, in 2005 Father Ragheed said, There
are days when I feel frail and full of fear. But when, holding the
Eucharist, I say ‘Behold the Lamb of God Behold, who takes away the sin of the
world’, I feel His strength in me. When I hold the Host in my hands, it is
really He who is holding me and all of us, challenging the terrorists and
keeping us united in His boundless love. He also said, Without
Sunday, without the Eucharist, the Christians in Iraq cannot survive.
To
put some time perspective on the Christian faith in Iraq and Syria: in 2021 the
Church in the Philippines will celebrate 500 years of the Catholic Christian faith in
that country, a great occasion for thanking God for that precious gift. The
Christian faith has been lived in Iraq and Syria for four times as long as
that, since the time of the Apostles. Mass was celebrated for 2,000 years in
Mosul until a couple of months ago when Christians were driven from their
ancestral homeland by ISIS.
Father Raqheed's words, But when, holding the Eucharist, I say ‘Behold the Lamb of God Behold, who takes away the sin of the world’, I feel His strength in me, reflect the words of Jesus to Nicodemus in today's Gospel: And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
A
Muslim friend of Fr Ragheed, Adnam Mokrani, professor of Islamic Studies
at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, said that on his ordination
day, 13 October 2001, recalled that the new priest said, Today, I have
died to self. St Paul in today's Second Reading tells us, Christ
Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality
with God has something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking
the form of a slave and that he became obedient to the point
of death—even death on a cross.
As
we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and as we pray for persecuted
Christians, particularly in Iraq and Syria, parts of Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other places, may we thank God for the gift of our
Christian faith and ask him for the courage to live it as Father Ragheed and
countless others have done, becoming obedient to the point of death.
Traditional Latin Mass
What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful (Benedict XVI).
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-14-2025 if necessary).
Readings. Epistle: Philippians 5:2-11. Gospel: John 12:31-36.
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself (Gospel).
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