(2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-21; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21)
In the desert, on their way from Egypt to the promised land, and fleeing from pursuing Egyptian forces, God’s People had allowed themselves to “speak against God and against Moses” and God punished them severely by fiery serpents whose bites killed many. In the general panic the more devout members of the children of Israel besought Moses’ prayers and ultimately were saved by looking up – yes, just that -- by looking up at a bronze likeness of those deadly serpents, and thereby realising through their Israelite Faith, that their bitter complaints against God and Moses, had been a scandal of national sinfulness, and had brought down upon them those fiery serpents as had Eve’s sin against God’s command in the garden of Eden, and Adam’s subsequent compliance with her action – both dupes of the ‘original serpent’-- ruined their idyllic relationship with God.
That saving incident has carried, and still bears with it, salutary teaching for Jewish/Christian people of all times. For God, having sent the punishing serpents to do their work among a sinful and rebellious people, was subsequently willing to turn that deadly surgical weapon of His wrath into a medicinal instrument of His saving grace, willing to save, that is, those who --- looking up at the bronze serpent --- were able and willing to recognize their own sinfulness.
God’s chosen People, for they were learning to recognise and appreciate sin in their own lives nearly one thousand years before the ‘glory’ of the Greeks’, with their love for beautiful boys, constant intellectual searching and social experiments, and before the might of Rome with its lust for military power, pride in technological expertise, and claims to a ‘divine’ promotion of world-wide peace, could even imagine soul-destroying sin.
Both Greeks and Romans --- are so esteemed, admired and imitated by the intellectuals of our modern Western ‘woke’ cultures. And yet, all of them were quite unable to seriously recognise their own sinfulness, an ability which is, in all reality, the priceless -- God-given to those who love Him – key to human concord and spiritual fulfilment.
Jesus says that God the Father allowed His only begotten Son, His Beloved, to be rejected by the religious authorities of His own people, before being cruelly lifted up on a Cross by the powers and principalities of imperial Rome, as an exhibit condemned to suffer an agonisingly slow death. Could that most brutal, most degrading and horrendous event of human sinfulness ever be used to serve any good purpose?
Most assuredly so, only because an absolutely unique love – that of the Son-of-God-made-Man -- was involved: a love which permeated the whole of that degrading suffering and sublime offering; a love that can still find a home today in the hearts and minds of faithful Catholics and Christians, and can inspire authentic resonance among sincere God-believers even today.
As Son, Jesus was consumed with divine love for His Father, Who, eternally loves those He originally created in His own image and likeness; as Man, Jesus loved us because He had put on our flesh and blood in the womb of His mother, Blessed Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth, and had been ‘sent’ to be our Redeemer.
Dear People of God, our Gospel reading today brought us to face to face with that Jesus, when we heard those words:
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
The serpent was lifted up because it was the cause of the suffering, pain, and
because it was the cause of the suffering, pain, and death of many of God’s sinful People in the desert. “So must the Son of Man be lifted up” because sin, the true cause of sinful Israel’s suffering ‘at the hands of God and man’ could only be shown in all its horror by showing its effects on One who was the unique example of pure humanity, absolutely sinless and holy: HE had to be lifted up in agony on the Cross, to show that though God-Man, He knew – from Personal experience -- the pain and agony of all those He had been sent to save.
Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin the world. (Jn. 1:29)
Look on the bronze serpent, raised up on high that all might be able to see it, and find healing! The bronze serpent showed the ultimate cause of Israel’s suffering, for it recalled the original serpent in Eden who injected the poison of sin into human life; Jesus-crucified-on-high likewise represents the horror all humans suffer from sin.
But Jesus’ Pasch did not end with suffering, end with suffering, for His suffering was entered upon and embraced as the initial stage of His way back to His Father; and now it is Jesus -- having returned to His Father and been lifted up in the glory of God by the Spirit of God -- Who manifests the healing power now being offered to all mankind against the primordial and still enduring ‘bite’ of sin and death.
The LORD said to Moses, "Make a serpent and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover."
People of God, it is not enough for us -- the new Chosen People of Spirit and Truth -- to look on Jesus crucified with nothing more than sentimentally sincere sorrow, merely decrying such barbarity, for many humanists and ‘woke’ ones pride themselves on such sentiments. It is necessary for us Catholics and all who aspire to salvation, to look at Jesus on that pole of suffering not only humbly confessing Him to have been raised up there for our sins, but also gratefully acknowledging that that same Jesus – still in His human flesh -- has now been raised up on high in glory, as our Saviour. The Risen and Glorious Lord Jesus is the One to Whom we must commit our sinful selves with absolute faith in His promises of Divine Goodness for our salvation, and with unshakeable confidence in the dying manifestation of His now-eternal human compassion:
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise. (Lk. 23:34, 43)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who in His great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
St. Paul in today’s second reading guides us to the ultimate root of our faith:
GREAT LOVE HE HAD FOR US, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought
us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with Him,
and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.
Dear People of God, the great tragedy and the ultimate wrong afflicting and threatening our world today is ingratitude to, wilful ignorance and defiance of, God’s love for us and all mankind. Above all, however, such ingratitude, ignorance, and defiance is shown by some who were or are nominally Catholic Christians! The very first petition in the only prayer taught us by Jesus goes immediately, as did His whole life, to this most radical evil afflicting our world today: Father, HALLOWED be Thy name.
We all have to treasure our God-given faith most carefully as was explained in our second reading:
For by grace you have been saved through FAITH, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.
And I think it is essential today in lands formerly Catholic and Christian, to think of those former brethren now delighting in a pseudo-freedom to sin – which, they assert, is not real, only imaginary – to be free to do whatever they want in order to enjoy the ‘pleasures of life’ and to proclaim themselves, by boasting about the ‘good’ things they now do without any need of God or grace.
In the words of Jesus Himself, Faith -- for us -- really means, Life and Love:
Now this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and the One Whom You sent, Jesus Christ. (John 17:3)
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world the world but that the world might be saved through Him.
