uy Niệm Tin Mừng Lễ Suy Tôn Thánh Giá Ngày 14/9

Suy Niệm Tin Mừng Lễ Suy Tôn Thánh Giá Ngày 14/9 John 3:13-17 
Tại sao những người tốt lành phải chịu đau khổ? Thiên Chúa đã không cho chúng ta được một câu trả lời nào thỏa đáng cả. Nhưng một điều mà ai trong chúng ta biết là Thiên Chúa là Đấng đã yêu chúng ta vô bờ, vô bến vì chính Ngài đã chấp nhận mặc lấy thân phận con người như chúng ta, và để chia sẻ cuộc sống đau khổ trần thế với chúng ta, Ngài sẵn sàng chịu chết, chết một cách nhục nhã cho chúng ta trên cây thập giá. Thiên Chúa chắc chắc là không bao giờ vui thích chiến tranh, không bao giờ muốn có sự cướp bóc và bóc lột giã man, không thích khi thấy lũ lụt và bão táp, ung thư và bệnh tật.
Chúng ta sẽ không bao giờ có thể hiểu được những bí ẩn, là tại sao những người ăn ngay, ờ lành như chúng ta, như những người thân yêu cũa chúng ta lại phải gánh chịu những đau khổ hay phải chết, tại sao lại có bao nhiêu người đang đau khổ trong bệnh viện, người nghèo đói trong các công viên. Nhưng những gì chúng ta có thể làm được bây giờ là dâng lên cho Thiên Chúa những sự đau khổ của chúng ta như là những của lễ hy sinh cao cả và đừng bao giờ để những đau khổ đó trở nên lãng phí trong tuyệt vọng..
            Bằng cách nào đó chúng ta hãy cố gắng biến đổi những đau khổ của chúng ta có thành những hy sinh. Đó một sự khác biệt. Hy sinh là đau khổ có mục đích. Thế giới con người của chúng ta đã học được một bài học đau khổ đã từ lâu: Sự hiệp nhất hoàn hảo với một ai đó hoặc một cái gì đó thân yêu; con người với con người, nam hay nữ, già, hay trẻ, kiến ​​thức, hay nghệ thuật, có thể đạt được trong điều kiện tự hiến cũng chỉ vì tình yêu.
            Trong mầu nhiệm của Đạo thánh Chúa Kitô, tình yêu tự hiến đã được nêu gương trong sáng bởi chính Chúa Giêsu qua đoạn Tin Mừng thánh Luca: "Ai muốn theo ta, phải từ bỏ chính mình, vác thập giá mình hằng ngày mà theo."(Lk 9:23). Một cái NẾU rất to: Nếu chúng ta muốn theo Chúa Giêsu Kitô, nếu chúng ta muốn trở thành môn đệ của Ngài, nếu chúng ta yêu Ngài thật sự và dám chịu nhận những đau khổ vì Ngài như Ngài đã bị đau khổ, bị khạc nhổ vào mặt, bị khinh bỉ, bị đánh đòn và  bị đóng đinh cho chúng ta.
 
REFLECTION
Why do good people suffer? God does not give any satisfactory answer. But this much we know. A God who loved me enough to take up a human body to share my life, to die shamefully and willingly for me on a cross - this God does not take pleasure in earthquakes, and war, in floods and volcanic eruption, in cancer and massacres. We cannot unravel the mystery; why our near and dear ones, why good people die. Why all the suffering people in our hospitals. What we can do is to keep our suffering from becoming sheer waste.
            How? By transforming suffering into sacrifice. There is a difference. Sacrifice is suffering with a purpose. Our world has long since learned a painful lesson: Perfect oneness with someone or something beloved - man, woman, or child, music or medicine, knowledge or art - can be achieved only in terms of self-giving, only in terms of love.  In the Christian mystery the self-giving love was summed up by Jesus in today's Gospel: "If you want to come after me, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow in my steps."(lk 9:23) A big if: If you want to come after him, if you want to be his disciple, if you love him enough to suffer for him as willingly as he was crucified for you.
 
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.  John 3:16–17
If Jesus would never have given His life on a cross for the salvation of the world, then a cross would never have been seen in “exultation.” A cross, in and of itself, is an instrument of death, a horrific and violent death. It’s also an instrument of humiliation and torture. Yet, today, the Cross is seen as a holy and blessed object. We hang crosses in our homes, wear them around our neck, keep them in our pocket on the end of the rosary, and spend time in prayer before them. The Cross is now an exalted image by which we turn to God in prayer and surrender. But that is only the case because it was on a cross that we were saved and brought to eternal life.
If you step back and consider the amazing truth that one of the worst instruments of torture and death is now seen as one of the holiest of images on earth, it should be awe inspiring. Comprehending this fact should lead us to the realization that God can do anything and everything. God can use the worst and transform it into the best. He can use death to bring forth life.
Though our celebration today, the “Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,” is first and foremost a feast by which we give glory to the Father for what He did in the Person of His divine Son, it is also a feast by which we must humbly understand that God can “exalt” every cross we endure in life and bring forth much grace through them.
What is your heaviest cross? What is the source of your greatest suffering? Most likely, as you call this to mind, it is painful to you. Most often, our crosses and sufferings are things we seek to rid ourselves of. We easily point to crosses in life and blame them for a lack of happiness. We can easily think that if only this or that were to change or be removed, then our life would be better. So what is that cross in your life?
The truth is that whatever your heaviest cross is, there is extraordinary potential for that cross to become an actual source of grace in your life and in the world. But this is only possible if you embrace that cross in faith and hope so that our Lord can unite it to His and so that your crosses can also share in the exaltation of Christ’s Cross. Though this is a profoundly deep mystery of faith, it is also a profoundly deep truth of our faith.
Reflect, today, upon your own crosses. As you do, try not to see them as a burden. Instead, realize the potential within those crosses. Prayerfully look at your crosses as invitations to share in Christ’s Cross. Say “Yes” to your crosses. Choose them freely. Unite them to Christ’s Cross. As you do, have hope that God’s glory will come forth in your life and in the world through your free embrace of them. Know that these “burdens” will be transformed and become a source of exaltation in your life by the transforming power of God.
My exalted Lord, I turn to You in my need and with the utmost faith in Your divine power to save. Please give me the grace I need to fully embrace every cross in my life with hope and faith in You. Please transform my crosses so that You will be exalted through them and so that they will become an instrument of Your glory and grace. Jesus, I trust in You.
 
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Opening Prayer: Lord God, I am humbled by the immensity and depth of your love. You did not spare your own Son but sent him into the world to die for us and release us from the ancient curse of death. You love me with an eternal love. Help me return that same love.
Encountering the Word of God
1. Sin and Salvation: Today’s feast recalls both the discovery of the True Cross of Jesus by Saint Helena in A.D. 326 and the recovery of the relic of the Cross from the Persians in A.D. 628. These events are the occasion for today’s contemplation of the mystery of the Cross, the instrument of our redemption and salvation. The First Reading introduces us to the dynamic of sin and salvation. The people of Israel sinned by grumbling and complaining in the desert against God and Moses. For this, they were punished with fiery serpents, who bit some of the people. This punishment awakened the people to their sin and they confessed to Moses: “We have sinned in complaining against the Lord and you”. In response, Moses interceded for the people and prayed for them. The Lord had compassion on the people and provided them with a saving sign. If they were bitten by a serpent, they were to look to the bronze serpent mounted on a pole. If they did this, they would live. “The image is striking: they were forced to look upon an exalted representation of the consequences of their own sin and, by doing so, were saved from the full penalty themselves” (Prothro, The Bible and Reconciliation, 196).
2. The Symbol of the Bronze Serpent: The symbol of the bronze serpent looks to the past, but is also a foreshadowing of something greater in the future. The bronze serpent makes us think of the ancient serpent in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve listened to the lies of the serpent and, by eating the forbidden fruit, they were bitten, so to speak, by the ancient serpent. They brought the curse of death upon themselves and their children. When they were confronted by God about their sin, they mercifully received the promise of a Savior. God said that the serpent would continue to bite at their heel, but one day, one of their descendants would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). The bronze serpent also looks to the future. Jesus, in the Gospel, unlocks the mystery hidden for the ages: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Just as the symbol of death (the bronze serpent) became an instrument of life and healing, the instrument of Jesus’ death (the Cross) became an instrument of life and salvation. The bronze serpent contained no magical power; it was only a symbol. By looking at the bronze serpent, the people of God manifested their faith and trust in God and in his promise. In like manner, we look with faith upon the Crucified Christ. This delivers us from the full penalty of sin. “Yet in contemplating the cross, we too are gazing on an image of our sins’ consequences” (Prothro, The Bible and Reconciliation, 196-197).
3. Christ Crucified: With Saint Paul, we proclaim Christ crucified: Christ died and rose for me. The Cross cannot be a stumbling block for us; rather, it reveals the power of God to us. It reveals his love. “Centuries after Paul we see that in history it was the Cross that triumphed and not the wisdom that opposed it. The Crucified One is wisdom, for he truly shows who God is, that is, a force of love which went even as far as the Cross to save men and women. God uses ways and means that seem to us, at first sight, to be merely weakness. The Crucified One reveals on the one hand man's frailty and on the other, the true power of God, that is the free gift of love: this totally gratuitous love is true wisdom” (Benedict XVI, October 29, 2008). The wisdom of the Cross guides our actions since it teaches us the way of humility; the power of the Cross gives us strength since it introduces us into the weakness of renunciation; the blood of the Cross washes us clean since it is the instrument of our redemption. Today we embrace our daily cross and follow in the footsteps of the Crucified One.
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, you were lifted up on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and to reconcile us with the Father. You were innocent, yet condemned. You were sinless, yet bore our sins. Grant me a share in your suffering so that I may also share in your exaltation.
 
REFLECTION
In the liturgy of Good Friday there is a public adoration of the Holy Cross where the Cross is uncovered, "Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world," and venerated by the faithful.
      This Feast echoes the same celebration, "We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered." Adoration of the Holy Cross is adoration of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our salvation. The Cross symbolizes for us the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. Because of what it represents, the Cross is the most powerful and universal symbol of Christian faith and love. The sign of the Cross invokes the Triune God and is used at all blessings:
      The first reading tells us about the bronze serpent Moses made at the instruction of Yahweh: "Whenever a man was bitten [by a fiery serpent], he looked toward the bronze serpent and he lived." Jesus on the cross is our salvation. Jesus refers to the bronze serpent in his conversation with Nicodemus, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." In the reading from Paul's letter to the Philippians, Paul tells us how God has glorified Jesus for his obedience, "He humbled himself by being obedient to death, death on the cross." St. Ignatius of Loyola recommends that, as we contemplate Jesus on the Cross, we ask: "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for him? What ought I do for him?"