Readings for the Feast Day of the Holy Cross
This reflection was shared at Sacred Saunter Outdoor Eucharist on Saturday September 13, 2025 at Sequoia Park during the Season of Creation
Today we celebrate the Eve of the Feast of the Holy Cross, which is the Tree of Life that saves us. Throughout church history, theologians have attempted to explain the saving power of this Tree of Life, specifically Christ’s death for us on the Holy Cross. While we Christians do indeed believe in the salvific power of Christ’s death on the Cross, there is no agreed upon theory as to how exactly the Cross saves us. Attempts to explain the Cross are called “theories of atonement.”
In our reading from Galatians, Paul writes, “I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body” (Gal 6:17). The original Greek word for “marks” is stigmata; and it is our patron saint of Creation, St. Francis of Assisi, who literally bore on his body the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, which Christ received when lifted up from the earth on the Holy Cross. St. Francis, who spent a great deal of time praying among the trees, understood the power of the Tree of Life, the Holy Cross, in a deeply intimate and personally embodied way.
For St. Francis and for his later follower Blessed John Duns Scotus, the Holy Cross is not so much about Christ paying a ransom to the devil or paying a debt to the Father, but rather the Holy Cross is an expression of the Divine Lover’s desire to become at one with the beloved, even if that means dying. God became human so that humans could become at one with God, thus underscoring the “at-one-ment” of atonement. And even when we respond to God’s love for us in Christ by betraying and crucifying Him, God still responds to our sin and violence by extending love and compassion and asking us, “Do you love me?”
For the Franciscans who especially enjoyed praying among the trees, the Holy Cross is the Tree of Life which is the revelation of God’s undying love for us as well as God’s question for each of us: “Do you love me?” Every tree in the world echoes the revelation of the Holy Cross, the Tree of Life. And every tree echoes God’s question to us, “Do you love me?” Today, we are invited to receive that love and to live our lives as a response to that question, that question which is echoing for us in each and every tree.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 