Monday, September 14, 2026
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross - Feast
John 3:13-17
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Numbers 21:4-9
They traveled from Mount Hor by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom The soul of the people was very discouraged because of the journey. The people spoke against God, and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul loathes this disgusting bread.” The Lord sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people. Many people of Israel died. The people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord, and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of brass, he lived.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 78:1-2,34-35,36-37,38
Hear my teaching, my people. Turn your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, When he killed them, then they inquired after him. They returned and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God, their redeemer. But they flattered him with their mouth, and lied to him with their tongue. For their heart was not right with him, neither were they faithful in his covenant. But he, being merciful, forgave iniquity, and didn’t destroy them. Yes, many times he turned his anger away, and didn’t stir up all his wrath.
Gospel
John 3:13-17
No one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
Lectio
There is something strange and tender in the way God chooses to heal His people. When the serpents came and the people were dying, He did not simply take the snakes away. He told Moses to lift up the very image of the thing that was killing them, and to ask the wounded to look at it. Not to look away from their affliction, but toward it — toward the shape of their own suffering, now raised up and transformed into a source of life. Healing came not by fleeing the wound but by lifting up the gaze.
This is why the Church places these readings together on the feast of the Holy Cross. The cross was an instrument of death, of shame, of everything the human heart recoils from. And God asks us to look at it and live. "As Moses lifted up the serpent, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." What we most want to avert our eyes from — our mortality, our failure, the ways love has cost us — becomes, when God enters it, the very place where we are saved. The bronze serpent did not deny the poison; it held it up in the light. The cross does not deny our suffering; it takes it into the heart of God.
Notice, too, that God's response to a people who had spoken against Him was not condemnation but a way to be healed. "God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved." The impulse to look up, to turn back toward the One we have grumbled against, is itself a mercy already at work in us.
What is the wound in your life right now that you keep averting your eyes from, and what would it mean to lift it up and look at it in God's light instead?
Where have you, like the people in the wilderness, spoken against God in your discouragement lately — and can you name the specific disappointment underneath those words?
Saint of the day
St. Maternus, Bishop († c. 325)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora