St. Joseph Catholic Church in Battle Creek recently celebrated the feast of the cross, "which drove away darkness and brought in the light," Pastor Christopher Ankley said.

"As we keep this feast, we are lifted up with the crucified Christ, leaving behind us earth and sin so that we may gain the things above," Ankley said in the church's Sept. 13 bulletin. "So great and outstanding a possession is the cross that he who wins it has won a treasure. Rightly could I call this treasure the fairest of all fair things and the costliest, in fact as well as in name, for on it and through it and for its sake the riches of salvation that had been lost were restored to us."

Without the cross, Jesus would not have been crucified to take away our sins. This is what has allowed us to be free to enter through the gates of paradise.

"Therefore, the cross is something wonderfully great and honorable," Fr. Ankley said in the bulletin. "It is great because through the cross the many noble acts of Christ found their consummation— very many indeed, for both his miracles and his sufferings were fully rewarded with victory. 

"The cross is honorable because it is both the sign of God’s suffering and the trophy of his victory. It stands for his suffering because on it he freely suffered unto death. But it is also his trophy because it was the means by which the devil was wounded and death conquered; the barred gates of hell were smashed, and the cross became the one common salvation of the whole world."