Ukrainian Catholic ChurchAustralia, New Zealand and Oceania
Homily by Fr. Andriy Mykytyuk on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 12, 2026
God has done everything to give us joy, to give us love, goodness and mercy, to give us life in all its fullness—not only someday in the future, but here on earth, together with Him. And so we must learn to make this choice. We must see this loving God who comes to us and calls us to live with Him. And when we see Him, we must respond to His love with our own love.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Beloved, today, on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of the Lord, we hear a very short passage from the Gospel of John. Yet I believe it is so powerful that, if we reflect deeply on every word, it calls us to change our lives and to see the God who does all of this for us.
The Evangelist tells us that, in His conversation with Nicodemus, Christ says that just as the bronze serpent was once lifted up, so too the Son of Man will be lifted up. He says that He came down from heaven. He says that God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life. I think this is a source of great joy for us, because from the very first sentence of this Gospel we see that it is God who takes the initiative in our encounter with Him. God creates this world out of love. God creates us out of love. When humanity turned away from Him and fell into sin, He came to us out of love. He gave His Son, who came into this world, became one of us, died on the Cross and rose again so that we might have eternal life, because He loves us.
God has done everything to give us joy, to give us love, goodness and mercy, to give us life in all its fullness—not only someday in the future, but here on earth, together with Him. And so we must learn to make this choice. We must see this loving God who comes to us and calls us to live with Him. And when we see Him, we must respond to His love with our own love.
God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life. God does not want our death. God does not want us to suffer. God wants us to live in love, in Him. But do we know how to hear Christ in our lives? Do we know how to believe in Him? Do we know how to entrust our lives to Him? Because often, when we look at our actions, it seems that we have not fully learned how to do this. We make our plans, we build our lives, we want to achieve something. But where is Christ in all of this? Where is He? God, who gives us life, must come first. If we reduce Christ to a God whom we remember only at Easter or Christmas, or only on Sundays, then He is not truly the One in whom we have placed our faith.
If we do not want to speak with Him each day in prayer, then we are not entrusting our lives to Him. If we do not allow Him into every part of our lives, but keep something back for ourselves, saying, “Sunday and church are for You, but everything else is mine,” then we are not listening to His voice, we are not believing in Him, and we are not living with Him. Therefore, as we hear these simple words before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, let each of us ask: how clearly do I see the loving God who comes to me first, who reaches out His hand to raise me from the bondage of sin, from the bondage of death, and to give me the strength to continue on this journey of life with Him, in love and for love?
So let us learn to open our eyes and see this loving God. Let us learn to hear His voice and to live by His word in our everyday lives. Then we will be with Him here on earth and eternally in heaven.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
