{"id":8421,"date":"2025-09-13T11:23:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T10:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=8421"},"modified":"2025-09-13T11:24:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T10:24:51","slug":"commentary-on-exaltationof-the-holy-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-exaltationof-the-holy-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on Exaltation of the Holy Cross 14.09.2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fr. Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Jesus said, \u201cNo one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicodemus cannot have been a very great teacher \u2013 and Jesus hinted it \u2013 because Jews at that time spoke of converts to Judaism as people who were \u201cborn again.\u201d He didn\u2019t seem quite to understand this expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Varieties of Religious Experience<\/em> by William James, first published in 1902, is considered by many to be a classic. There he illustrated the contrast between the \u201conce-born\u201d and the \u201ctwice-born\u201d (or \u201cborn again\u201d) Christian. The soul of the once-born (or \u201chealthy-minded,\u201d as he calls them) \u201cis of a sky-blue tint\u2026 their affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions\u2026. [They] can think no ill of man or God\u2026. They have a certain complacency and perhaps romantic sense of excitement.\u201d In contrast to these, the \u201ctwice-born\u201d (or \u201cmorbid-minded,\u201d as he called them) are more likely to feel that \u201cfrom the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up.\u201d All natural happiness is infected; there is a deep sense of sin and failure. To people of this stamp, the attitude of the once-born seems \u201cunspeakably blind and shallow,\u201d while to the once-born the attitude of these \u201cseems unmanly and diseased.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if we don\u2019t care for either? We would prefer to be neither starry-eyed nor morbid-minded. Are there any other possibilities? Of course there are! There are countless possibilities in between these extremes. These expressions \u2018once-born\u2019 and \u2018twice-born\u2019 are labels: they don\u2019t describe anyone in fact. \u201cIf all the good people were green and all the bad people were red, what colour would you be?\u201d someone asked the little girl. \u201cStripey,\u201d she replied. Nobody is just once-born and nobody is just twice-born. Anyway, how could you be twice-born unless you were first once-born? But people still fight about these labels, mostly under new names: \u2018creation-centred spirituality\u2019 versus \u2018sin\/redemption spirituality\u2019, original blessing versus original sin\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labels encourage us to think that there are only two possibilities: \u2018good\u2019 and \u2018bad\u2019, for example. But we are both once- and twice-born. We need to remember that it was the same Jesus who said, \u201cBehold the lilies of the field\u2026\u201d and who sacrificed his life. The cross of Christ is everyone\u2019s portion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie: \u00a0Jesus said, \u201cNo one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8423,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421\/revisions\/8423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}