“Why do bad things happen to good people?”

It’s a question that haunts every generation, every culture. In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner even made it the title of his wildly best-selling book. But he didn’t invent the question—it’s as old and universal as suffering itself. When tragedy strikes, there’s this raw, instinctive need to ask: Why? We crave reasons, explanations. We want things to make sense, to have some control over what feels utterly senseless. That’s just being human.

Thank you for taking the time to read this homily for the feast of the EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS (September 14, 2025). Your support means a great deal to me, and I’m deeply grateful for the many who share these messages with their friends, families and social media followers. If you’ve found meaning in these words, I’d be grateful if you’d share them with others who might benefit.

And for those who prefer listening, you can find the audio version on SoundCloud HERE or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes HERE. Your comments, messages, and the way you’ve embraced these homilies continue to inspire me.  Sincerely in Christ -Father Ji

These days, it can feel like we barely have time to catch our breath between heartbreaks. Not long ago, we were stunned by the deadly attack on a Catholic parish in Minnesota at the beginning of the academic year, during Mass. This week, we watched the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus—violence and evil, right there in front of thousands. Some, caught up in the politics, tried to explain it away or even justify it. But for most—no matter where they stood politically—it was simply horrifying. How could you not be shaken? A young husband and father, gone. I tried to explain to a group of college students—many who saw Kirk as a voice for their generation—how cruelly ironic it was that this happened on the eve of September 11. Many only know that date from history, but for those of us who lived through it, even twenty-four years later, the ache is still real.

When disaster strikes—natural or manmade—our first impulse is to look for someone to blame. Maybe it’s the weather forecasters, or the builders who didn’t prepare for what we now wish they’d foreseen. We want to know what could have been done differently—by officials, by doctors, by ourselves.

When a loved one falls ill, we search for causes. Why did this happen? Could it have been avoided? The question never really leaves us.

I know I’ve asked it myself. The first time it really hit home was in high school, just days after getting my driver’s license. I was driving friends to the movies—(and if you want to know how old and nerdy I was, it was to see a new film called “Home Alone”). I was excited to be independent, and probably too distracted. It was raining and dark, on an unfamiliar road, and I made a mistake—not even realizing I entered an intersection, my focus fixed further down the road. The accident was bad—my friend in the back seat was thrown from the car, almost killed. She was in a coma for weeks. The police investigated, confirmed I hadn’t been drinking or using drugs. Experts checked the road, the lighting, and even my eyesight. In the end, it came down to my inexperience and a split-second of distraction.

In the aftermath, I was crushed by guilt. People around me—friends, family, people from our town and high school—were filled with emotions and questions. Why did this happen? Some turned their questions toward God: How could this happen to someone who was serious about his faith, active in his parish—a kid who actually liked going to Mass? For some, it became a reason to doubt God altogether.

I asked why, too. Not as an accusation, but out of desperation to make sense of it all. My mistake had changed so many lives, especially my friend’s. Someone gave me Rabbi Kushner’s book, hoping it might help. I read it, but honestly, it didn’t give me the answers I wanted. Maybe I was too young, too raw. Maybe I was still hoping for a quick fix to a question humanity has never solved.

And that’s the hard truth: we don’t get easy answers. We can study storms, research diseases, point fingers, analyze every detail. But there’s always a gap, a mystery we can’t solve. We want answers because we want control, but so much of life is outside our control.

That’s why today—the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross—matters so much.

The Church interrupts the usual flow of Sunday readings for this feast, and it’s not just a historical curiosity or a break in routine. It’s a reminder that, in the middle of our pain and confusion, God is doing something deeper.

This feast takes us back to the fourth century, to St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. She made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, determined to find the true Cross that Jesus had been crucified on. For the earliest Christians, there was trauma attached to the cross. The horrors they witnessed on that instrument of Jesus’ brutal execution were still being inflicted on them and their families years after His Resurrection and Ascension. For centuries, Christians wouldn’t have depicted the cross in art. Their symbols were the Good Shepherd or a simple fish—images of hope and memory, not of torture.

But by the fourth century, with Constantine legalizing Christianity and eventually becoming Catholic himself, the trauma of the Passion and death of Jesus was seen in a new light—as essential to the Resurrection. There grew a desire for relics and tangible connections to the historical reality of our faith. Unlike all the fake, false pagan religions – Christianity is not rooted in myth, but in real times, places, and people.

On one of those pilgrimages, St. Helena found what she believed was the Cross of Christ. The Church began to venerate it, and this feast—Exaltation of the Holy Cross—grew out of that. The Cross was exalted, not as a trophy, but as a sign that the very thing meant to destroy hope had become the sign of hope itself. The cross, once a tool of death, was now the bridge to life.

But even then, suffering didn’t end. The great persecutions against Christians stopped, at least for a time (in fact in the last century there has been more Christians martyred than in the entire history of Christianity before – a true fact, we don’t spend enough time acknowledging, but, we will)  but for the people of that time and day, tragedy, sickness, and grief continued. The question—why?—remains, as it always has.

That’s why we exalt the Cross.

Not because we have all the answers. Not because we can explain why bad things happen, or because we’re supposed to glorify suffering for its own sake. But because in the Cross, God gives us something better than an answer: He gives us Himself. He doesn’t erase suffering, but He enters it. He takes the worst the world can do—shame, pain, abandonment—and transforms it from the inside.

Look at the readings today. The first reading from the book of Numbers drops us into one of Israel’s lowest moments. They’re wandering in the desert, tired, angry, and—like us—asking why things are so hard. Suddenly, they’re bitten by venomous serpents. Desperate, they cry out to God for relief. And here’s the surprising part: God doesn’t just snap his fingers and make the snakes disappear. Instead, he tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it up on a pole. Anyone who looks at this image—this symbol of their pain and fear—will be healed.

It’s an odd solution, isn’t it? God doesn’t erase the suffering. He asks them to face it, to look straight at what’s hurting them, and trust that He can bring healing through it. It’s as if God is saying: “You can’t always escape suffering, but you’re not alone in it. If you bring your pain to me, if you trust me even when you don’t understand, I can bring life out of it.”

Then, in the second reading, St. Paul gives us one of the most beautiful and profound reflections on Jesus in all of Scripture. He says that Jesus “emptied himself”—he let go of every privilege of divinity, became fully human, became a servant, and then went even lower: obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Paul is telling us that God’s answer to suffering isn’t power or distance—it’s solidarity. Jesus didn’t watch our pain from afar; he stepped into it, accepted it, and transformed it by his love.

In the Gospel, Jesus himself draws the connection. He tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus is saying: that strange moment in the desert was pointing to me. On the Cross, he will become the very image of suffering—taking on our pain, our sin, our death—and in being lifted up, he becomes the source of healing and hope for all.

All these readings come together to tell us something crucial. God doesn’t always give us the answers we want to the “why” of suffering. But he gives us a way through it. He asks us to face it honestly, to lift our eyes to the Cross, and to trust that in Christ, suffering isn’t wasted or meaningless. In him, what looks like defeat becomes victory. The Cross isn’t the end of the story, but the place where real life begins. It doesn’t explain away suffering, but it redeems it. It’s where our pain meets God’s love.

And if the Cross ever seemed distant or abstract, God keeps bringing it close to us through real lives, even in our own time.

Just last week, the Church canonized two young men: Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis. Both died young—far too young, by any earthly measure. Pier Giorgio was just 24, dying of tuberculosis after caring for homeless people suffering from the same disease. Carlo, only 15, was taken by leukemia. Two kids—full of life, with mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends, plans, and hope for the future. Their families weren’t even the most steadfast in faith. When they died, their loved ones felt the same grief, anger, and confusion we all feel. They asked the same questions: Why him? Why now?

And yet, their holiness wasn’t erased by their suffering or death—it was magnified. Pier Giorgio, known as “the Man of the Beatitudes,” spent his short life pouring himself out for the poor. Carlo, a typical teenager on the surface—into computers, soccer, video games—used his gifts to draw people closer to the Eucharist, closer to Christ. Even after their earthly deaths, their eternal lives became evident as they continue to change hearts, inspire faith, and draw others to God.

Their stories don’t give us a neat answer to the “why” of suffering. But they do show us what happens when a life is united to the Cross—when, instead of turning inward in pain, someone turns outward in love. Their lives became living crucifixes: places where the world could see not the absence of God, but his presence right in the middle of suffering.

The Cross doesn’t answer every “why.” But it does show us this: suffering is not the end. Death does not get the last word. Through the Cross, God draws near to us in our pain, and through lives like Pier Giorgio’s and Carlo’s, he keeps showing us what redemption looks like in real people.

So today, as we exalt the Cross, let’s bring our questions and our pain right to its foot. We may never get all the answers we want, but we do get something better: a God who stays, who suffers, who loves us to the very end—and whose love is stronger than death.

May the Cross of Christ be our comfort, our strength, and our surest sign that, even when we don’t understand, we are never abandoned. And may the witness of these new saints remind us that every life, no matter how short or marked by suffering, can become a beacon of hope when united to the Cross. As we lift high the Cross today, may we find in it the courage to love as they loved, trusting that God will bring light from every darkness, and for those who follow Him, life from every death.