TEXT: Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2025
September 14, 2025 Father De Celles Homily
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2025
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
We all know the glorious story of the Cross like the back of our hands.
Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and God the Son,
became man, born of the virgin,
and preached the Gospel of Truth to the people of Israel
from Jerusalem to Galilee.
While many followed Him and loved Him, many also mocked and rejected Him.
In particular, the people with power,
the rulers and sort-of “social influencers” of the day,
finally arrested Him, scourged Him, spat on Him,
and finally nailed Him to a Cross to die.
But on the third day…on the third day…He rose again in glory.
Then, of course, He was really furious.
So, He took up a sword,
gathered His eleven apostles and appointed them generals,
led an army of thousands of Christians,
with an air force of angels and archangels,
and completely annihilated
first the temple guards and then the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem.
Then He presided over the public beheading of Caiphas and the Sanhedrin,
and Pontius Pilate and his tribunes.
Finally, He led the army to conquer all of the Roman Empire,
all the way to Spain and Northern Africa,
enslaving or executing all who refused to follow Him….
Wait.
No. No.
Wrong story.
That’s not what Jesus did.
Jesus Christ, God the Son, died for our sins, and rose to give us new life
—life in abundance in this world and in the glory of the next.
He died because He loved us—all of us–
even the ones who wouldn’t follow Him,
falsely accused Him, mocked Him, spat on Him, and killed Him.
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
And when He rose, He rose not with anger but again with love,
commanding His disciples not to conquer but to teach,
not to enslave but to convert followers,
not to kill but to baptize into His own life.
His apostles were not generals of a conquering army,
but humble poor missionaries,
who were not killed in bloody battle,
but executed for offering the peace of Christ to all who were willing to hear.
St. Peter was not a butcher; he was a fisherman, fishing for men.
St. Paul was not a warlord; he was a philosopher,
persuading men with reason and logic and truth.
St. John the Beloved was not a conqueror, but a theologian,
who told his followers:
“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth,” and
“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.”
This is what we celebrate today: the love of Jesus that is so awesome,
He died for our sins.
A love so great it gives eternal life.
A love proclaimed by His apostles and His Church for twenty centuries.
___
Today, the world seems full of anger and hatred.
And in spite of all the talk of “love,” many don’t seem to know what it means.
Some talk of love and hate:
Love means whatever they like,
and hate means whatever they disagree with.
But Jesus teaches us what real loves means.
He says:
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.
If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.
…Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
And finally, on the night before He died on the Holy Cross,
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
___
My friends, my little children, on this feast of the Exaltation of the Cross
we look around and we see so much hatred, so much anger, so much sin.
Reactions to all that can be very diverse.
Some embrace the hatred and let it engulf their hearts and minds
so that they feel compelled to express that anger.
At first in angry words shouted, then chanted, then screamed in hysterical rant.
And then in angry actions: first spitting and throwing things, then the rioting,
and eventually bloody assassination.
Some exult in the hatred. Some weep.
Some get angry and return hate. Some cower in fear and shock.
And some strike back, escalate, and embrace chaos and slaughter.
____
I began this homily with a purposefully ridiculously false account
of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.
But if you notice, that violent account had a strange resemblance
to two forces at work in our society today–
forces that reject Christ and His gospel of truth and true love,
and instead embrace violence and hatred.
The first force is the religion of Islam.
In the 7th century, the false prophet Muhammad proclaimed
a supposedly new divine revelation to the folks in his hometown of Mecca.
They rejected him and drove him out of town.
But a few years later, after he had given up on persuasion and picked up a sword,
Muhammad returned with an army of 10,000 followers
and conquered Mecca with the sword,
publicly executing his greatest enemies.
That began decades of Islam’s bloody invasions and conquests,
and of enslavement or forced conversions,
until Christianity was all but eradicated
in the Middle East, Northern Africa, southern Spain,
and of course, the Holy Land.
After that came a constant, though ebbing and flowing,
war against Christians and Jews for centuries.
That violence and hatred born in Muhammad continues today.
And, amazingly, more and more folks in western society are defending it.
____
The second force is Marxism,
including its initial phase of socialism and its culmination into Communism.
Historically Marxism, which we often call “the Left,”
foments hate between economic classes, the rich and the poor.
But the Marxist model has easily been adapted to pit
women against men,
racial minorities against whites (and Asians),
deviant people against normal people.
Like Islam, the left embraces violence as a necessary tool of change.
They also paint their opponents as evil,
systematically accusing them of the evil they themselves are doing.
They reduce even their followers to the subjugation of totalitarianism.
And they reject Jesus, Judaism, and God in general,
although, they will accommodate believers–
like Islam accommodates unbelievers–
if they can be useful tools for their Leftist ideological goals.
Hate and violence, enslavement and subjugation,
rejection of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Islam and the Left.
These are the forces, urged on by the father of evil, Satan,
at work to destroy and re-shape our society today.
And so, when a young devout Christian, an outspoken capitalist
and courageous defender of the freedoms of our democratic-republic,
rises up and helps hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of young people
discover the lies of the Left and Islam,
a young man like 31-year-old Charlie Kirk,
is it a surprise that he is mocked, ridiculed, and finally assassinated?
No, very sadly, no surprise at all.
So what does a Christian, a Catholic, do?
How do we react, not simply to Kirk’s murder,
but to all this mess of violence and hatred?
We turn to the Most Holy Cross of Jesus.
And we remember:
“Father, forgive them.”
“Love your enemies.”
And we remember that from the Cross comes the Resurrection.
From suffering comes glory.
And we remember that the message of real love and peace and truth
that is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ
is still the answer for the troubles and sufferings in this world,
and a pledge of glorious happiness in the next.
We do not pick up the sword, we do not subjugate,
and we do not stigmatize our enemies.
Yes, we can fight them, but not with bloody violence,
rather with words of reason and truth
and always with the forbearance and mercy of charity.
We fight like St. Paul fought the good fight.
And like Christ Himself, and along with Christ,
we fight and conquer sin and death itself.
We don’t fall for the lie that words of disagreement are violence.
Words are not violent.
No, violence is violence.
And yes, sometimes violence must be met with the violence of self-defense,
but we do not need to resort to that
when we’ve only begun to fight back like Charlie did
—with straightforward debate and courageous and charitable truth-telling.
____
Many were shocked by Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Many were more than shocked—devastated–
especially the young people he was supporting and appealing to.
And the older folks who see it as one more great leader taken out,
another crushing loss for the righteous,
and a victory for all that is wrong with the world.
But we cannot be discouraged. We cannot lose hope, or faith, or charity
because we see Jesus Christ lifted up on the Holy Cross,
and we remember the love poured out to save us.
And we rise again with Him and in the power of His grace and His love for us.
We are not alone…and we are not enslaved to hatred and sin.
We are Christians.
We embrace the Cross and place our faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ.