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This year, Sept. 14 – the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross – fell on a Sunday. Therefore, on the day of the week dedicated to recalling the Lord’s Resurrection, we likewise exalted the instrument of torture which preceded it on Good Friday.

As Bishop Barron and Chris Stefanick have reminded their listeners on multiple occasions, to the people of Jesus’ time, a cross was not seen as anything to be “exalted.” By contrast, it was an instrument of extreme torture and humiliation: an object to be feared and rejected.

Yet, today we hang crosses in our churches, classrooms, and homes. We even wear them around our necks. We carve them out of wood, plate them in gold and silver, and use them to inspire our prayer lives. These concepts would not only have been foreign, but appalling to those of Jesus’ time.

Even if the physical crosses of today are esthetically pleasing, the true beauty of the Holy Cross is its story. God Incarnate carried and shed blood on the Holy Cross. He accepted punishment for our sins – not his own – so that we could be freed from the chains of death. For Christians, any cross—from the prayerful Sign of the Cross to a tangible symbol—symbolizes the beauty of redemption and hope. Our sin died on Jesus’ Cross, and his death ultimately resulted in Resurrection and the promise of eternal life.

Last spring, when Holy Cross Regional Secondary was having its new school wing blessed, Faye McCreedy of the Archdiocesan Office brought a first-class relic of the True Cross to the ceremony. Later that afternoon, knowing that our elementary school was in the midst of a dress rehearsal for our annual drama production, Faye asked if she could bring the relic to the rehearsal for the kids to see it. We jumped on the opportunity, and what ensued was one of the most moving moments of my life.

We set up an impromptu prayer table in front of the stage, and Faye explained the significance of this relic. With lighting dimmed and sacred music quietly playing over the sound system, students, volunteers, and staff quietly came forward to venerate a tiny piece of the Holy Cross of our Saviour.

In mere moments, our school gym—previously filled with the noisy anticipation of a school play, complete with costumes, music, dancing, and lighting effects—transformed into a room of devotion and reverence. The excited children became silent as they respectfully processed forward, one by one.

Our show in the following days was, in the opinions of many, the “best ever” and I do think that this is because our cast and crew shared something more powerful and far more important than simply a school play.

Sometimes the hardest thing to give up for Lent isn’t chocolate or coffee – it’s something good. Something that has become too important.

Earlier this year, I gave up running for Lent.

I know, I know. Running is healthy. For years, it was one of the best tools I had to manage anxiety. It gave me joy, balance, and even a sense of triumph as I crossed finish lines and set personal bests. How could that possibly be something to “give up”?

Over time, though, I noticed how much running had taken hold of me. When I had to miss a week, I felt withdrawal. Training for one marathon turned into four in three years. A few weekly runs grew into seven days straight, sometimes over 100 kilometers a week. At my peak, I was running more hours than a part-time job.

I tried to make it spiritual. I prayed the Rosary on runs, and even started an Instagram account called Running with Jesus. But the truth was, running often came first — before prayer, before my wife, before my kids.

In early 2025, I was preparing for the London Marathon. I wanted it to be my fastest ever. Training was going well until I pushed too far and aggravated an injury in my knee. I ran 36 days without a day off, and my body was starting to break down.

The day before Ash Wednesday, I went to a physiotherapist. His advice? Stop running.

I was devastated. My reaction revealed just how much I had come to depend on running. And suddenly, Lent had begun – without running.

At first, I fought it. Wasn’t this good for me? Didn’t it make me healthier? Why would God take away something I loved?

But in the silence, God was patient. He showed me that my attachment to running had slipped out of balance. Friends and mentors spoke gently to me, helping me name what was happening: I wasn’t just injured physically. I was also spiritually out of step.

I began asking questions I had avoided:

Why am I working so hard? Why do I need to perform? Why can’t I slow down?

The truth was painful: I believed I only had value if I achieved. My self-worth was tied to performance, to proving that I could do more, faster, better.

Injuries teach us something about limits. Online articles attributed common causes of my injury to “training error” — too much, too fast. Spiritually, it was the same: trying to prove my worth at all costs.

But Jesus met me there. As I slowed down, He began to heal more than my knee.

Psalm 115 says, “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.” Bobby Angel applies this wisdom to the weight room. It may seem like a stretch, but remembering God when we’re working out is vital to our spiritual and physical health. 

Getting in shape can be euphoric and boost your self-esteem, but we need to remember temperance even here, because we don’t want to become like Narcissus who became enamored by his own image. Bobby mentions that it’s possible to be a “glutton of the gym”, and remaining humble in the eyes of the Lord will lead to many more important victories than will the body of a Spartan. 

Make prayer an integral part of your life. 

Check out Ascension’s study, Oremus: A Guide to Catholic Prayer (https://bit.ly/2Mcdea1). 

Vanity is not what many people think it is. It can come in many forms, and is not necessarily an infatuation with yourself. Vanity is an inordinate preoccupation with what other people think about you—which is different. 

It’s important, to an extent, to care what others think about you. It can even be charitable. But when this care becomes unbalanced, it leads to neglecting more important things. 

Wanting to be noticed can be vain, but not wanting to be noticed can also be vain. When you shrink back and don’t want anyone to look at you, it can be a form of vanity or false humility; because not wanting to be seen can be an indication that you care an inordinate amount about what people think of you. 

Vanity can also cause an unwillingness to share the Faith. Many times we think sharing the gospel will make people think less of us. How many times has the thought of what other people think prevented you from sharing the Faith? 

Balance is pertinent in every aspect of vanity, and the best way to achieve that balance is to care about what God thinks of you above all. 

These sayings about humility really sum it up well, since humility is the antidote to vanity: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less” (Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life). 

“If you meet a really humble man … He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all” (C.S. Lewis).

In the spirit of the Jubilee Year of Hope, 25 young adults from across the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s West Deanery walked over 14 kilometres to visit five parishes, joining a larger trend of urban pilgrimages. 

The pilgrimage route took the group from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church on Crown Street to  St. Augustine’s, Holy Name of Jesus, and Sts. Peter and Paul Parish, ending with Mass at St. Anthony of Padua and a picnic at a nearby park.

The urban pilgrimage was organized by the Vancouver West Deanery Young Adults group, and although none of the stops were official Jubilee Year of Hope Pilgrimage sites, organizers said the pilgrimage was undertaken in the “spirit of the Jubilee.”

“Thank you to all who joined us for our Urban Pilgrimage!” said a post on the yavcatholic Instagram page. “It was so lovely to meet new faces, share stories and journey together through some of the parishes of the Vancouver west deanery. Thank you for being pilgrims of hope in this jubilee year.”

In March, the Vancouver vocations office organized a Jubilee urban pilgrimage to Holy Rosary Cathedral. Another is planned tentatively for Oct. 5, the Sunday preceding the Feast of the Holy Rosary two days later.

Similar “urban pilgrimages” have been appearing elsewhere. In Montreal, youth mapped out a Jubilee route through 10 downtown churches, while in Rome, Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz created an art-based pilgrimage linking sites across the city with his bronze works and QR-code reflections.

Below are photos from the West Deanery event.

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Spiritual growth was on the agenda. Ants were not. Yet an insect invasion is part of what 14 Vancouver pilgrims encountered at the Jubilee of Youth in Rome this summer.

It was the final day of the event, and the pilgrims had to camp overnight on the University of Rome Tor Vergata field in anticipation of the closing Mass with Pope Leo XIV. 

Space was sparse, and the group accidentally ended up neighbouring a colony of ants. Chaos ensued. The ants weren’t happy and crawled over pilgrims’ sleeping mats and into their sleeping bags. Despite the struggle, there was no choice but to stay put and suffer the tiny terrors.

The ant attack became part of the struggles and sufferings that are usually part of a pilgrim’s journey. Even as they were swarmed, one pilgrim described the total experience as one of transformation and enlightenment.

Ava Gravela was one of 14 young adults from seven parishes around the Archdiocese of Vancouver who joined more than half a million pilgrims in Rome for the 2025 Jubilee of Youth.

“When I first began the pilgrimage, my mindset was focused on how can I be holier?—only for God to reveal instead how much I need Him in order to be holy,” the St. Andrew’s, Vancouver, parishioner told The B.C. Catholic.

According to one of the trip coordinators, Louisa Gietz, the highlights included staying with 22,000 other pilgrims in a repurposed exhibition centre, meeting fellow Canadians, attending the opening Mass in St. Peter’s Square, and, of course, eating gelato in Rome.

Still, for many of the pilgrims, including Gravela, seeing Pope Leo XIV drive by in the papal vehicle was the most significant moment of the trip. Travelling can be frustrating, but for Gravela and her fellow Vancouver pilgrims, the buggy struggles of the pilgrimage “washed away” and were “replaced by joy” when they saw the Pope.

“Seeing the Pope was the highlight of the entire journey,” she said. “I imagine this joy must be a small fragment of what Mary Magdalene felt when she saw our Lord in the garden after the Resurrection. Her words, ‘I have seen the Lord!’ now echo in my heart as, ‘I have seen the Pope!’ Suddenly, all the little ‘sufferings’—from unreliable transit to sleeping on an anthill—felt worth it.”

Pope Leo also inspired Caroline Francis, a parishioner at Immaculate Conception Parish in Delta, but for a slightly different reason. Working in a secular environment, she said she struggles to keep faith central.

Students at the new Saint John Paul II Academy in Surrey will soon eat their lunches beside a bronze Christ, the latest work from the Canadian sculptor whose most famous piece, Homeless Jesus, has been installed in cities around the globe, including at the Vatican.

The Surrey high school is preparing to install The Last Supper Table, a massive granite work with 12 empty seats and Christ at the centre. Designed by Timothy Schmalz, the interactive sculpture invites students to sit with Jesus daily — making them, in his words, “the apostles of today.”

Donated by Star of the Sea parishioners Joseph and Holly King, whose donations to the school include its chapel, The Last Supper Table will be placed in the heart of the school’s new campus courtyard. With garage-style doors opening from the dining hall, students will see it every day and be able to gather around it, turning the artwork into a living part of school life.

“When you look at it late at night, Jesus is sitting there alone, beckoning,” Schmalz said in an interview with the Saint John Paul II podcast Catholic Education Matters hosted by academy founder and chair Troy Van Vliet. “But when people sit down — whether children at lunch, or a family gathered together — they complete the sculpture. They become part of the art.”

Schmalz, now 55, has spent the past 35 years devoted exclusively to Christian sculpture. His journey began as a teenager in Elmira, Ont., when he discovered a magnetic love for sculpture. At 16, after completing a school piece depicting a man dreaming, he knew he wanted to spend his life creating in clay and bronze.

Raised in a secular, art-filled home, he had been baptized Catholic but with little religious formation. At 17, he experienced a profound conversion. “I absolutely identified as a Christian at that point,” he told Van Vliet in the interview.

He was accepted into the Ontario College of Art after winning a national sculpting prize, but he lasted only three months before dropping out, disillusioned by what he saw as shock-for-shock’s-sake art. He returned home, briefly worked in a fabric factory, then set up his first studio in Toronto at 19.

It was then he made a fateful decision: he would sculpt only Christian art.

“Art schools always told me: develop a style. But I realized I didn’t want a style. If the sculpture is great, the style disappears,” he said.

One of the defining features of the new St. Paul’s Hospital was front and centre during a recent tour of the state-of-the-art facility under construction in Vancouver’s False Creek Flats: every patient will have a private room.

Archbishop Richard Smith said he found the concept of private rooms “revolutionary” and shows how the new hospital has been designed to put patient dignity at its centre with features like private rooms.

Patients feel vulnerable in a hospital, he said during the tour with Providence Health Care leaders, and something as simple one’s own space can make a difference by allowing privacy, better conversations with doctors, and a sense of safety.

“Sometimes you hear people say, ‘I don’t want to go to a hospital, I don’t feel safe there,’” he said. “We want to let them know they are surrounded by safety and love.”

The tour began with an elevator ride to the roof, followed by a descent floor by floor, stopping at key areas such as the patient rooms, surgery, and ending at the hospital’s chapel, just off the main entrance.

Archbishop Smith described the chapel as another visible sign of the hospital’s Catholic mission. “It’s a great reminder of who we are and why we do what we do.”

Catholic health care carries forward the healing ministry of Jesus, the Archbishop said. The chapel not only reminds staff and patients of that mission, but its prominent placement near the hospital entrance is “a testament to the faith that inspires everything we are doing here,” he said.

 “You see right away who we are. You see this is our identity. This is why we do what we do.”

Francis Maza, Providence’s vice president of mission, ethics, and spirituality, said the project builds on more than a century of Catholic health care in Vancouver.

“Providence and St. Paul’s is well known by the community,” he said. “[The new building] stands as a testament of the commitment we have to the people in the community.”

The Archbishop is bringing to the project a “new energy and desire to be involved in health care,” reaffirming the organization’s commitment to social justice and serving the poor.

“When I think of the mission of Providence Health Care as it’s transferred from archbishop to archbishop—130 years later we are still here serving the people of Vancouver.”

Kevin Hunt, the construction site’s chief project officer, said design decisions were shaped by collaboration with clinical staff, right down to practical details such as door hinges. 

This is my second and final column on some of the similarities between mental training in high-performance sports and the development of one’s spiritual growth.

1. Playing with a big lead and our attitude when life is going great
 During competitions, when a team or individual builds a big lead, there is a tendency to take the foot off the pedal and relax. Victory seems assured, the opponent appears conquered. The player leading starts to feel prematurely good about themselves, resulting in a loss of focus and a drift from what brought success in the first place. This opens the door for the opponent.

The same can happen in our daily lives. In times of prosperity, many of us become comfortable and self-congratulatory. We often forget about God, who gave us all that we have. We may stop praying and let pride convince us we are fully responsible for our success. We start thinking of ourselves as self-made men and women. This is a serious mistake that allows the devil to infiltrate our lives.

As with the winning athlete, we must never forget the tactics that got us there. For Catholics, that winning tactic is love of God, prayer, and the sacraments. Never relax in your faith life; keep a sense of urgency. Athletes who are ahead are advised to keep setting micro goals to stay hungry and focused. Likewise, we should continue meeting with our spiritual directors, who provide tools to renew our love of Christ daily and to foster a hunger for heaven.

2. Visualization
 Top athletes, along with their coaches, work on learning to visualize positively. If they can see themselves in the winner’s circle, on the podium as gold medallists or as world champions — and do this regularly — it can strengthen self-belief and motivate them to work harder.

In the same way, our faith calls us to keep our eyes on the prize: Jesus our King. Picture heaven in all its beauty, love, and joy. See yourself praising God in his majesty once your pilgrimage on earth is complete. Let this vision inspire you to fall more deeply in love with our Lord and his holy Church, and to pray and serve more fervently.

3. Gratitude
 Grateful athletes are successful athletes. Coaches encourage them to express gratitude in practice and in competition, after victories and defeats. They realize that very few people in the world get the opportunity to perform at their level. With this perspective, they see every chance to compete as a gift.

Is it any different in our daily life? We are not guaranteed another day, so every morning we wake up we should be thankful to God.

Triumph of the Cross
First Reading: Nm 21:4-9
Second Reading: Phil 2:6-11
Gospel Reading: Jn 3:13-17

Think of the contradiction in this Sunday’s feast: the Triumph of the Cross. Imagine celebrating “the triumph of the noose,” “the triumph of the electric chair,” or “the triumph of the lethal injection.”

Crucifixion, initiated by the Persians, was used by the Carthaginians and the Romans for treason, sedition, and rebellion. It involved public shame, humiliation, and degradation.

A condemned man was forced to carry the cross’s horizontal beam to the execution site, where it was connected to a vertical beam. He was scourged and stripped naked; then his hands and feet were nailed or roped to the beams and his midsection perhaps tied to the vertical beam so that he could not wriggle free.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus called it the “most wretched of deaths.” Muscle fatigue, exhaustion from physical and psychological stress, lack of food and drink, and exposure to the elements usually – often over a period of days – led to asphyxiation or heart failure. The naked prisoner could not care for his bodily needs, and bystanders would observe and comment derisively.

Jesus suffered all this for us. It was the Jewish elders, chief priests, and scribes who handed him over to the Roman authorities, but we cannot foist responsibility onto the Jews alone, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In truth, we sinners were “the authors and the ministers” of his suffering. “We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins.” As St. Francis of Assisi said, “It is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.”

Nevertheless, the Church says we should “glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is our salvation, our life, and our resurrection; through him we are saved and made free.” Jesus’ death was “redemptive”: by it, he redeemed, or bought back, the whole human race from Satan.

As early as 742 BC, the prophet Isaiah had intuited that one person could suffer for another. “Through his suffering, my Servant shall justify [make just] many, and their guilt he shall bear,” Isaiah prophesied. Jesus was “pierced for our offences, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole; by his stripes we were healed.”

“By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant,” the Catechism says. In fact, this was how Jesus himself interpreted the Scriptures to the disciples after his Resurrection.

No other man, not even the holiest, could have taken on the sins of the whole world and endured all their consequences, including death, for all of us.