This essay first appeared in our weekly Scripture reflection newsletter on September 13, 2025.
Num 21:4b-9; Phil 2:6-22; Jn 3:13-17
You can find the readings for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross here.
After two years as a novice, Jesuits (like those in most religious orders) pronounce their “First Vows” of poverty, chastity and obedience. Then, after one’s formation (training) is completed, a Jesuit pronounces “Final Vows”—again, of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Over the years, I’ve heard Jesuits recount stories about friends and family members saying around the time of their vows, “Well, I understand poverty, I guess. It makes sense to live simply.” Then they might say, “And I understand chastity, more or less” (occasionally making a joke, if they are married, about unintentional chastity). But often this conversation concludes with, “But obedience? I could never say yes to that!”
My usual response is that there is some form of obedience in everyone’s life. If you are a child, then you are (or supposed to be) obedient to your parents, other adults in your family and your teachers. If you’re a student, you are obedient to your teachers or professors. Finally, when you’re in the working world, you’re obedient, in a manner of speaking, to your bosses (say, a department head in a college, a business manager in a corporation or a chief resident at a hospital).
At heart, we all want to be obedient to God.
Sometimes I tell people that being obedient to my managers in the corporate world (in an organization whose goals were not always the most altruistic) was more difficult than being obedient to my Jesuit superiors (whose motives were to strive “for the greater glory of God.”) At least in the Jesuits, I agree with the goals of obedience.
Now, that word, at least in English, can have some unfortunate connotations. “Obedient like a dog?” I’ve heard more than once. “Blind obedience?” some say, when I talk about Jesuit obedience.
At heart, we all want to be obedient to God. And the Second Reading discusses the way that Jesus was obedient to the Father, which was to “empty himself.” What’s often called the “Philippians hymn” (it may have been sung in early Christian gatherings and today can be heard in the hymn “At the Name of Jesus”) is a description of radical humility. Jesus “emptied himself” to be like us, taking on “human likeness.” For Jesus, obedience meant, among other things, humility.
Obedience involves some “emptying”
But it meant even more. When I first studied the Gospels in earnest, I was surprised to learn that the Gospel of John was traditionally divided into two parts: the “Book of Signs” and the “Book of Glory.” The surprise was not the traditional division. Nor was it the reason behind the name of the first part: the “signs” are the miracles contained in the first 11 chapters (ending with the Raising of Lazarus). The surprise was that the “glory” referred not, as I had expected, to the Resurrection, but rather to the crucifixion, or as we say in today’s feast, the “Exaltation of the Cross.”
Why is this “glory” for Jesus? Mainly because it is the ultimate demonstration of his obedience, his radical self-emptying, his kenosis, to use the Greek word. He was obedient to “death, even on a cross.”
Of course, we will never have to do exactly what Jesus did. We’re not the Son of God who must empty himself to take on human form. But we do have to be obedient to God’s desires for us to live a life of love, mercy and compassion.
That can involve some “emptying”—of our desires to put ourselves first, to live in comfort and, sometimes, even to do things that in a culture of “me first” seem to make little sense.
We’re not the Son of God who must empty himself to take on human form. But we do have to be obedient to God’s desires for us to live a life of love, mercy and compassion.
A tired mother and father empty themselves each time they rouse themselves from a warm bed to respond to an infant’s cry in the middle of the night (and empty a diaper!). A frazzled teacher empties herself each time she repeats herself to a class that doesn’t seem to “get it,” even though she has gone over the lesson several times. A stressed-out priest empties himself each time a person unloads a lifetime of anger at the church, recounting events that happened before the priest was born, listening patiently. If done in love, all these acts can be a kind of kenosis, in imitation of Christ.
In the end, we are called to emulate Jesus in his obedience and exalt God in our own lives, not by dying on a cross, but by dying to self and thus living a life of love, mercy and compassion.
