The Cross as Vocation

Homily for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Year A
You see it everywhere – on walls and hillsides, at the tops of buildings, in houses, in bedrooms, even as graffiti; you can see it hanging on chains around people’s necks, or on rings, or as earrings. And, of course, you see it in churches. The cross is as universal a symbol as you can get, and its meaning can be as diverse as the number of places it hangs. For some, the cross is a symbol of our salvation. For others, it is a reminder of a cruel form of capital punishment. Some people see the cross and immediately think of love or new life, while others only see suffering and death. Of course, the cross is all these things – that is exactly what makes it such a powerful symbol, its ability to mean many different things all at once.

This weekend, here in our parish and in parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, we are beginning a Parish Vocation Cross Initiative as part of the celebrations of the 175th Anniversary of the founding of our diocese. Each weekend over the next year, an individual or family in our parish will receive a cross to take with them for the week as a reminder to pray for vocations – vocations to the priesthood and religious life, but also an awareness of the vocations to married life and single life. The cross will become the focus of prayer each day during the week that someone has our Parish Vocations Cross. Then, the next weekend, they will pass that cross along to someone else to spend a week in prayer for vocations.

Vocations and the cross – an unlikely combination, perhaps, but a perfect combination. St. Paul makes the connection for us. In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul talks about the death of Jesus on the cross as an emptying – Jesus loves us so much that he completely emptied himself by accepting death on a cross. He accepted this suffering and humiliation not for himself, but for us – everything Jesus was about while on this earth, from his birth to his ascension, was to empty himself so that we could be filled with life. His death on the cross and his victory in resurrection changed nothing for him – but it changed everything for us. The cross is the perfect example of what it means to love another person more than yourself. And that is really what a vocation is all about, too.

A vocation to married life means that you love your spouse and children more than yourself – you want them to be happy, you want them to have a fulfilled life. The same thing is true for the priesthood or religious life – my goal as a priest is bring God’s love to the people I am called to serve. I want you to be able to find God, I want you have a fulfilled life. Of course, we don’t always do that perfectly – no matter what vocation we follow – but we try. Living your life following a vocation means that you try to make everything you do focus not on yourself but on someone else. A vocation, lived well, is selfless – it is focused outward – it is just like Jesus on the cross, dying not for his own sake, but for us. Vocations and the cross – an unlikely combination, perhaps, but perfect examples of selfless love.