Easter Vigil Mass (Year B)

 

EASTER VIGIL MASS (B)

(Romans 6:3-11; Mark 16:1-7)

Mark tells us that three women followers of Jesus came to anoint His body in the tomb, and, to their great surprise and joy, found that the exceptionally large stone used to block the entrance to the tomb had been rolled aside; so:

            Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing      a white robe; and they were amazed.

We too have reason to be surprised, if not amazed, at the fact that this young man sitting at the right and wearing a white robe is not named.  He was obviously an angel, and that is the surprising thing, because Pope St. Gregory writing about the Angels and Archangels tells us that:

“Angels are only sent when something is announced through them.  Those who make minor announcements are called angels, those who make important ones are called archangels.  Hence it is that not just any angel was sent to the Virgin Mary (at the Annunciation) but that Gabriel the archangel was sent: it was right that the proper one for this role should be of the highest rank of angels since he was to announce the greatest news of all … When angels come to minister to us, even the names by which we know them are taken from their ministry -- Michael means ‘Who is like God’, Gabriel ‘Strength of God’, Raphael ‘Healing of God’.”

Isn’t it strange then that we are told nothing about this ‘young man in white sitting at the right’ in the tomb; one who was there, had been sent, to announce the very greatest news of all -- pace St. Gregory -- which is the news of the Lord’s Resurrection?  There he is, in the tomb, not a glorious, named, archangel, but simply, a young man dressed in white!!

In that way all our attention is directed to the message he has been sent to deliver; and yet, all that he says about the Resurrection is:

            He has risen; He is not here.

The women could see that the Lord was not there, so really all the young man says about Our Lord’s Resurrection is, “He has risen.”   What, indeed, was the young man there for?  You might say, “perhaps he was there to roll away the stone.”  Very well, but, having done that job, why did he remain?  Just to say: “He is risen”?  Yes; that was, indeed, the main reason for his coming and remaining, because those three words both state a supremely important fact and contain a most important teaching.

First of all, the simple fact is so very important for the disciples because otherwise they might well have thought, as did Mary Magdalen, that the body of Jesus had been taken away by some unknown persons: after all, there were many important people who wanted His name to be totally forgotten.  Had the young man not been there to declare Him risen, the disciples would, it is true, most probably have eventually recalled that Jesus had spoken of rising of the third day, but, due to our human weakness, they could not have had any certainty about whether or not that had actually taken place without their seeing and touching Him.  And this is why the teaching is revealed dear People of God: Jesus did not want to see his disciples hesitant and unsure, fearful and doubtful, for He hates the anxious worrying and the corrosive hesitancy that easily prevents men and women from embracing hope and committing themselves in trust.  Such worry and hesitancy is the tap root, so to speak, of humankind’s sinful self-love; it is, spiritually, a mortal threat for a disciple of Jesus, for a child of God.  That is why the young man in white straightway states the fact simply, clearly, and surely: “He is risen”.

Moreover, the young man’s words, reported back to the disciples, would give them a necessary jump-start, so to speak, moving them to hope again; it would encourage them to look forward to seeing their Risen Lord.  He therefore went on to speak more expansively about that future meeting with the Risen Lord:

            Go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee;            there you will see Him, just as He told you.'

How remarkable!  There is no mention of the Crucifixion of only two days ago; the Resurrection itself has been allotted but a very few words, and the angel goes on to speak mainly about the future meeting saying: “the arrangement He made with Peter and the disciples still stands; nothing has happened to change that planned meeting.  He is already going ahead to Galilee.”

And that was what Jesus wanted: His disciples had to begin living again, depression and worry had to be replaced by hope; and all uncertainty and anxiety had to be totally dispelled even before that promised meeting restored and renewed their commitment to Him.  See how self-effacing is Jesus’ love, you might say how careless He is in respect to His own glory!!  The angel’s message was phrased first and foremost for the well-being of His disciples, only secondly for Jesus’ glory.

And so, on this vigil, nothing is said of how things happened or where Jesus had gone.  How did He look: glorious, heavenly, majestic, awesome?  Wouldn’t we love to take away with us tonight a picture, some understanding, of that glorious, never before heard of, event that would give us a spiritual infusion of heavenly zeal and joy?  But nothing of the sort!

Now we know, God is wiser than we are: He is infinitely good, and knows all our real needs; so let us look again, yet more closely, at what is being offered us this holy night.  In our relationship with God, we have, first of all, to appreciate Who we are dealing with, what sort of Person, so to speak, He is.  The angel’s message, as I said, ignored the Crucifixion, skipped over the Resurrection, and concentrated on a future meeting of the Lord and His disciple.  It would seem as if that meeting was of such importance, that nothing, not even a horror such as the Crucifixion, could possibly, in any way, have prevented it taking place; and that nothing so gloriously transcendent as even the Resurrection can be allowed to push it aside into forgetfulness or oblivion!  The angel’s message is, therefore, about God’s Providence and Power: surely you did not think that the Crucifixion could prevent the meeting:  God’s Providence and Power is total and unassailable; it is also about the Lord’s Love and Faithfulness: never fear that the Lord in His Risen Glory could ever forget you and His meeting with you.  His Love and Faithfulness are constant and unfailing!  Surely you can’t fear He might have more important things than you on His mind?’  People of God, these are fundamental truths about Jesus, about the God we worship and serve: first of all, He is the omnipotent Lord of both heaven and earth, Satan can do nothing that will prevent the coming of God’s Kingdom; and secondly, His Personal love and faithfulness is more tender and tenacious than the human mind can imagine, nothing can separate us from His watchful care.

We are next privileged to catch a further glimpse of the Risen Lord’s love in the angel’s last words to the three women:

Go tell His disciples and Peter!

The disciples, as you will remember, had fled and left the Lord; that was bad enough; but Peter had three times publicly denied His Lord.  Since then he would have been breaking his heart with grief and his soul with regret at the recollection of what he had done.  These few words of the angel show the tender, personal, love of the glorious Risen Lord; they assure us that the Risen Jesus has indeed a gloriously human sensitivity in our regard.  He was well aware of the turmoil in the mind and heart of Peter, and He wanted Peter to be assured that he was in no way to be excluded or cut off.  Therefore the angel had to refer to him by the very name Jesus Himself had first given him (‘Go to the disciples and Peter’), insisting that he be present at the meeting in Galilee as planned.  People of God, note well: our God and Saviour is Almighty and -- in the same Breath of the Spirit so to speak -- most lovingly Personal.

Finally, however, for an authentic relationship with God, we must know not only Who we are relating to, but we must also be aware of how we are to relate to Him: for in our life with God we must have total trust and confidence in God and in the Faith we have been given, the Faith that enables us to appreciate and contact Him.  God’s power and the Lord Jesus’ love will never fail us no matter what the appearances may be!  Therefore, we have to develop within ourselves -- for that is where the weakness lies -- our confidence, above all, in God Himself, but also in the blessing of the Catholic Faith which has been bestowed upon us and handed down to us:

The young man said to them, ‘Do not be amazed; Go, tell His disciples and Peter, "He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.'"

Very often, People of God, men and women want to wonder at some apparently marvellous happening -- whether or not it is so marvellous does not really matter -- because they have no sure rock on which to rest within themselves.  They glory in the wonder and for a time they feel confident, think they have faith; but then, as the human chemistry within them, or as the outside circumstances around them, gradually change, they are not quite so sure, and they begin to feel the need of another wonder to give them another boost.  Now we must not treat the Lord’s Resurrection in such a way.

To that end, the anonymous young man who this evening said hardly anything about the Resurrection itself, as we have noted, actually said almost everything about the Faith God wants us to have:

            Do not be amazed.  He is going ahead of you.  You will see Him just as          He told you.

This Easter morning we should leave here with renewed trust and confidence in, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude to, God the Father, Who has invited us this day to a deeper appreciation of the mystery of His Son, our Risen Lord, ever abiding with us, and by His Spirit in us, in Mother Church.    Moreover, we should seek to make this blessing of deeper love for, and appreciation of, Jesus, this blessing of renewed confidence in our Catholic Faith handed down to us over twenty centuries by Mother Church, a permanent feature of our Catholic character. And towards that end, we should constantly seek to strengthen it within us by making acts and aspirations of confidence and trust, in the same way as we make the more customary acts and aspirations of love:  Just as ‘My God, Lord Jesus, I love You’ should always be at home on our lips if we want to grow in such love, so also exclamations of trust, prayers for hope, outbursts of gratitude such as, ‘My God I trust you, I hope in You’, or ‘Thank you Father, Lord, for the gift of the Faith and for Mother Church’ should always be hovering around in our mind and heart.  That is the sort of fruit the Father wants from our Easter celebration.  Therefore, as we leave here wishing each other a Happy Easter, let us all resolve to give Easter joy to the Father Himself by striving to bring forth the fruit that He expects from those who wish to become true disciples of His beloved Son.  A Happy and a Holy Easter to all here present.

Palm/Passion Sunday

Palm Sunday,  (B)

(The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark)

In the responsorial psalm today you repeated words that were horrendous, coming, as they did, from the mouth of Jesus:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Such a cry can only have been forced out of Jesus by unimaginably intense suffering, for He was, on earth, the very Son of God made flesh: as a Child He had been loved and taught by Mary, most reverently supported and protected by her husband Joseph; He had grown up in constant favour with God and man, and it had been His ever-deepening delight to learn – through his habit of prayer and with help from the Scriptures both at home and in the synagogue -- to recognize and respond to His heavenly Father ever more and more in all the details of His daily life and experience among men.  Having come to know Himself as sent by the Father, Personally commissioned and endowed to save Israel and -- ultimately, through His Church -- the whole of mankind, in all that He did He sought exclusively and whole-heartedly to please and give glory to His Father in Heaven by leading Israel, through repentance, to peace with her God and fulfilment in her calling.  How unimaginably intense, therefore, must those sufferings have been which led Jesus to cry out:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Listen again to a little more of the psalm:

All who see me mock at me; they mock me with parted lips, they wag their heads: “He relied on the Lord; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, if he loves him.”   (Ps 22:7-8)

It is hard to suffer unjust, ignorant, derision; derision from those whose life and actions could not endure any investigation at all; from those ever ready to bend and blend with every prevailing wind because they have no principles, and have courage only to run with the hounds or share in the jeers of the crowd or the violence of the mob.

But even those who find themselves suffering such derision -- when, finally brought low, and their suffering and agony made manifest to all -- will sometimes hear individual voices being raised on their behalf, find some compassion and sympathy from one or two onlookers more humane and tender-hearted than the others.  And there were, indeed, some such who witnessed Jesus’ agony; but they had no appreciation of His Person and character, no understanding of His aims and purpose: they lamented His wounds, but as spectators otherwise uninvolved, with the result that His persecutors were able to laugh at His helplessness, and deride His abandonment.  Even worse, they abused the very thread of life sustaining Him by saying:

            He relied on the Lord, let Him rescue Him, if He loves Him!

Yes, Jesus had trusted in the Lord, His Father!  Throughout His life He had trusted Him totally because He alone knew that His Father was totally trustworthy.  Now, however, it seemed that, as His life was draining away, He found Himself in a situation unimaginably alien to the ideal for which He had lived and now found Himself dying: He had wanted to lead His fellow Jews and Chosen People to recognise the Father He proclaimed as the one true God Who had originally chosen, liberated, and wondrously blessed their fathers before bestowing upon them the land on which their own feet now most gratefully stood, even though their worship of Him was now lacking love’s true obedience.  And here were those to whom He had been sent, and for whom He had laboured long and was suffering much, mocking His Father and their God with that jibe: “let Him save this fellow if this fellow is His friend”.

Compared to this Personal agony the physical torment was as nothing; nevertheless, physical torment it was: He could count every one of His bones, and was wracked by agonizing cramps as He hung there; He experienced a horrible difficulty in breathing, continually having to struggle to raise His rib-cage to find relief from the dreadful and continuous threat of being smothered; and then, from those gaping holes in His hands and His feet, His life-blood was pouring out and leaving Him with a such a terrible thirst!

We know that the psalm which Jesus was reciting went on:

But you, O Lord, be not far from me; O my help, hasten to aid me.

It witnesses to the fact that He trusted His Father to the end; indeed, the psalm closes with words of triumph:

I will proclaim Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.  You who fear the LORD, praise Him!  All you descendants of Jacob, give glory to Him, revere Him, all you descendants of Israel!

However, granting such a final outcome, the question becomes all the more pressing: why did Jesus have to suffer so dreadfully in order to carry out the work God -- His most loving Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- had decided He should accomplish for our salvation?  What, precisely, was that work He had set Himself to do in fulfilment of His mission?

It was a work of sublime love, divine love indeed: not simply to save us from the result of our sins, but to give eternal glory and praise to the Father, and to turn us back again to the recognition and love of Him from Whose face and presence we had originally and most wrongfully turned at the instigation of the serpent, the father of lies.

And so, Jesus did not suffer horribly because such much suffering was needed to free us from the weight of our sins; no, He suffered so much to give supreme glory and honour to the goodness of His Father, and to show us, His own brethren, just how far and to what extent He Himself as Perfect Man would, and how we -- though sinners yet disciples – can and should, in and with Him, trust the Father.  To that end He willingly allowed Himself to be emptied entirely of physical and emotional strength, of all awareness of any remnant or residue of former sources of comfort and relief, of any hope of possible escape or deliverance other than His Father’s love and faithfulness which, however, He could no longer feel, recall, or imagine.   He suffered thus because He wanted to proclaim to suffering humankind that no matter what their situation – for no human suffering could possibly measure up to this – the Father was the One to trust.  He might have said this again in words, but words could in no way have the weight of conviction carried by the living example of this Man who, so totally forgetful of Himself, relinquishes all that He has and is and commits Himself into His Father’s loving arms from the Cross, in order to make manifest to sinful men just how good the Father is, how totally and absolutely trustworthy.

Only thus, by enduring and triumphing over the worst the devil might inflict, would Jesus be able free us from fear of the devil by giving us an unquenchable hope in the Father’s goodness, and thereby empower us to follow wherever His Spirit might lead us; only thus, could we be raised in and with Him to the dignity of children of heaven, able and called to collaborate with Him in the continuance and fulfilment of His work for the salvation of mankind; only thus, could we be taught and brought to give fitting glory to the God, the Creator and Father of us all.  

Hear now the words of St. Peter giving encouragement to a tiny flock of bewildered and persecuted Christians in Asia Minor, and recognize how your faith today is indeed being offered the same nourishment as that which enabled those Christians of old to triumph over their sufferings and transform their world:

You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.   He, indeed, was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. (1 Pet 1:18-21)

Glory and praise to you Lord Jesus Christ!  You are the Saviour of the world!

                                   

5th. Sunday of Lent (B)

  Fifth Sunday of Lent   (B)   

 (Jeremiah, 31:31-34; Hebrews, 5:7-9; John 12:20-30)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when relations between Israel and the Lord her God had, so to speak, broken down, with the result that the Lord determined to punish Israel’s faithlessness by sending her children to exile in Babylon, the Lord had, nevertheless, taken care to assure Jeremiah, and through him the whole people of Israel that, despite the adversity and fear to be endured, there would be a future to look forward to, to hope for, after the years of exile and apparent abandonment.  He spoke of a new covenant -- the covenant to be ultimately ratified in the blood of Jesus -- saying:

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will place My law within them and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Israel had not been faithful to the covenant God had made with her through Moses; she had sought to behave as did the nations around her, not truly wanting to be a chosen people, holy as her God was holy.  The pride and pomp, the pleasures and plenty, of the surrounding nations having seduced her, she wanted to enjoy such things with them.

After around seventy years of exile in Babylon, on returning to Judea, thanks to Cyrus king of the Medes and Persians who had conquered Babylon, the Jews recognized their ancestors’ unfaithfulness to the Law of Moses and did try to reverse that infidelity by close, indeed minute, study of the Law and its implications, together with a scrupulous, and at times excessively literal, observance of all its prescriptions.  This resulted in them proudly putting scholarly knowledge and extravagant observance of the Law first and foremost, while gradually losing touch with humble humanity and the spirit of the Law.  Their attention came to centre on the people’s awareness of their own knowledge and practice of all the Law’s requirements, of their exact conformity with each and every prescription whether written by God or deduced and handed down by themselves. They had the Law, as it were, on the operating table, and like supremely skilful surgeons or morticians, they cut and dissected each and every individual passage and phrase of the Law for classification and documentation; but all the while, the over-riding meaning and significance of the Law was becoming more and more unrecognisable to them, for, having cut the body up into every conceivable constituent part, they were increasingly unable to put it together again as a vital and recognizable whole.   Instead of themselves being formed by the Law they were re-fashioning the Law according to their own ideology and preferences.

When the Lord spoke to Jeremiah of a new covenant, He had, most critically, said:

I will place MY law within them and write it upon their hearts.

God would Himself place His new Law of the new Covenant into man’s mind and heart to guide and inspire him: man would not be allowed to take charge of it in order to make it fit into his merely human categories; on the contrary, this new Law from within -- gifted us by the Father, through His Son, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit -- would raise man up, above and beyond himself, to the level of a true child of God, and living member of the Body of Christ.

Surely this historical precedent is reflected in Our Lord’s own fundamental choice of Church before book: He could have written, drafted, or caused to be suitably prepared, an authoritative Personal account of His own life’s work, teaching, and intentions; but He made no such attempt.  Instead He chose to found a Church based upon the witness and testimony of apostles chosen by Himself after prayer to His Father, then founded and established for all time by the outpouring of His Spirit.  This choice ultimately determined and signifies the central importance of faith in the Christian and Catholic way of life, as the supreme means of man’s total gift of self to God: in accordance with the witness and teaching of a humanly visible Church -- the Body of Christ – and on the basis of faith in the supernatural promise and enduring presence of Jesus to His Church, with the supreme power and sublime wisdom of the Holy Spirit ever at work in her.  Catholic, Christian faith is not commitment to any independent understanding of chosen books, no matter how holy, of themselves, such books might be, no matter how authoritative that understanding considered by human standards.

Later on we were told of a voice coming from heaven in response to Jesus’ prayer, a voice some bystanders thought was that of an angel speaking with Jesus, while others considered it to have been nothing more than a peal of thunder.  Jesus knew it to be the voice of His Father, but He made it expressly clear that:

            This voice did not come for My sake but for yours.

For Jesus was always seeking to give His utmost for the greater glory of His Father; and loving Him in such a way -- utterly and absolutely -- He denied Himself, in the little things as well as the great ones, with a total and selfless commitment that would remain the most sublime model for His future disciples’ life of faith. 

And that choice and appreciation is mirrored in today’s Gospel reading by a most striking fact, for in the Gospel reading today we are told:

There were some Greeks among those who had come up to worship at the feast; they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”  Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

Thereupon, however, we are told nothing whatsoever about any Personal contact  between Jesus and these ‘first-fruits’ of the Gentiles!   How strange!  Why?

Jesus saw the saving presence of His Father’s Law at work in the hearts and minds of these Greek pilgrims and from this He recognized that His own work was nearly complete: His saving Death, poured-out Blood, and Resurrection alone could seal and ratify His new Covenant and enable His Church to take up and continue His saving work on earth, beginning with these Greeks and continuing throughout the rest of time among all nations and peoples of the world.   Now, with complete selflessness and total trust in His Father, He ‘handed over the reins’ of His life’s work and imminent Death to the Church of His choice saying:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.  Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.

What significance does all this have for us, here and now?  Much indeed; because in today’s readings we have been given an outline of our human situation in the world today.

Although Christianity is spread world-wide today, many, many Christians behave like the Israelites of old: they do not want to belong to a chosen people called to be holy because their God is holy; they want to be free, they say, to taste whatever the world has to offer; they do not want a law which would forewarn them let alone forbid such unacceptable practices.  The irony of their situation, however, is that though they might claim, at times vociferously, to be advocates of freedom, they gladly abdicate their freedom of spirit by enslaving themselves -- becoming addicts indeed -- to pleasure, money, and pride.

There are others who like the Jews, apparently zealous, try to manipulate the Gospel and indeed God Himself, rather than allow themselves to be formed by the Spirit according to the way of the Good News of Jesus.  They seize upon some particular aspect or teaching of that Good News and then try make their choice the whole of the Gospel message: they rejoice in their version of the Good News but have no time or desire to let their minds be illuminated and guided by the whole Gospel.  The Gospel, some say, is Good news, which, for them, means that Christians should be make themselves seen to be continually rejoicing with clap-happy attitudes which worldly people can recognize.  Others will seize upon the discipline of the Gospel and forget compassion, sympathy and understanding for others: strong in their own observance of that discipline they freely give way to criticism of the failings and weaknesses they think they observe in others.   Even more frequently encountered today is the idea that the Gospel is compassion and love to such an extent that the Gospel has no commands and no sanctions, nor does the majesty of God demand any soul-sanctifying reverence or humility from us.

People of God, the Father has drawn us to Jesus in Mother Church, and He has given us His Holy Spirit, not simply to save us from sin and death, but to save us from sin and death by reforming us for heavenly life.  That formation extends to and involves the whole of our being: the way we think, the way we love; the hopes we cherish for the future and the ideals we try to realize here and now; the joys we gratefully embrace and the sorrows we patiently accept; the service we seek to give and the selfishness we try to reject.   Because we are being formed for a life we cannot yet see, a heavenly life, therefore we cannot prescribe for ourselves; on the contrary, we have to pray the Holy Spirit that He will guide us in the way of Jesus; and, having prayed thus, we must have the humility to accept life as coming from Him and the patience to respond with love for Him in whatever situation we find ourselves involved:

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.  Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, there also will My servant be. The Father will honour whoever serves Me.

Perhaps the greatest, most difficult and yet most beautiful lesson we have to learn from the Gospel is love of the Cross, because the Cross seems to contradict all that is natural within us.  We have to be willing, therefore, to accept, with Jesus, that we are here for a purpose which is not of our own choosing, it is God’s purpose and plan for each and every one of us individually, in Jesus: one which, through the Cross, we seek to embrace personally and fulfil sincerely throughout our life; one that is already -- here on earth -- our greatest privilege, one that will be -- in heaven -- our supreme glory:

“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”

In order that God’s name be glorified and His purpose be fulfilled in and through us, we have to be totally informed by the presence, and reformed by the working, of His Holy Spirit in our lives.  Let us therefore beseech the Spirit to form us in Jesus for the Father, to the extent that we may be brought to cry out with Him:

Father, glorify you name

and hopefully be privileged to share, in Him, that heavenly response:

            I have glorified it (in my Son), and I will glorify it again (in you, my child).

4th. Sunday of Lent (B) Laetare Sunday

 

Fourth Sunday of Lent (B)

Laetare Sunday

  (2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21)

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

People of God, let us first of all call to mind the event referred to in our Gospel reading which originally took place when Israel was being led through the desert from slavery in Egypt towards freedom in the Promised Land.

The people spoke against God and against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread."   So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.   Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD that He take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people.   Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live."   So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:5-9)

It must have seemed very mysterious to the People of Israel when, later on, scrutinizing the Scriptures in order to better understand and serve the Lord their God, they were faced with that bizarre incident taken from the history of their forebears journeying across the desert.  It was, indeed, mysterious for them -- and unavoidably so -- because the whole episode was rich with meaning and significance for not only subsequent Israelites over more than 1000 years, but even more particularly for the whole future Christian people.  In the desert, a few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand, of the children of Israel were saved by looking up at the bronze likeness of a serpent: however, interpreted for us by Jesus’ Gospel words, the memory of their experience carries with it a salutary teaching for countless millions of Christian people throughout time.

God, having sent the punishing serpents to do their work among a sinful and rebellious people, was then, subsequently, able to turn that deadly instrument of His wrath into a saving grace: look faithfully at the bronze serpent in sincere acknowledgment your sin, and you will be healed of your wounds.  For us now, Jesus says, God the Father has allowed His only begotten Son, His Beloved, to be rejected by the religious authorities of His own people, before being most cruelly tortured and exhibited on the Cross, and left to suffer a slow and agonising death by the powers and principalities, the might and dominion, of imperial Rome.

Can God turn that most brutal, degrading, and horrendous event to any good purpose?  Most assuredly He can, for we have not yet mentioned the pearl of great price covered but not smothered by those happenings.  For He Who suffered was -- as He loved to name Himself -- the Son of Man: as the Son (of the Father) He was consumed with divine love for us; while, as Man, and as our Head, He loved, divinely, His Father with the total fullness of His sublimely perfect humanity.   The complete answer to our question was made manifest when Jesus, three days later, rose from the dead; for then His rejection and exposition on the Cross of suffering and death was shown to have been but a prelude to, and preparation for, His sublime exaltation into heavenly glory.

Father, the hour has come.  Glorify your Son that your Son may also glorify You.  (John 17:1)

Subsequently, for those who, by the Gift of the Spirit, would come to believe that what God’s infinite goodness and omnipotent power had brought about in and for Jesus could also be extended to us, despite our human sinfulness and all the wiles of Satan; yes, for all who would learn to reject themselves for humble love of Jesus and confident trust in God, the Father does, indeed, accept His beloved Son’s triumph on the Cross for our salvation and His own glory.

Just go back in your mind to the original event in the desert.  God had sent venomous snakes which killed many Israelites who had sinned grievously by inveighing against the Lord and against Moses.  Imagine the terror of those bitten by the serpents: their fear as the poison began inexorably to work in their bodies; why, even those who were not bitten must have been agonized to see all this horror going on around them and hear the cries of those who were in searing pain and staring death in the face.  It was such people, people like us but in such a situation, who were told to look up at the bronze serpent.

Trust the command!  Stop your screaming, stop your panic, stop your frantic attempts to somehow suck out the poison or cauterise the wound, stop even your hugging and your sobbing: stop all that and just get a hold of yourself, and then do what the Lord says: Look at the bronze serpent!

People of God, the message is startlingly clear for us today.   If we are to look at the Crucifix and draw life from the Lord of life shown hanging there, if we are to consider Our Blessed Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection in the course of our Lenten devotion, we must look, consider, in a special way.  We cannot look in a merely notional way: nodding our acceptance (for it could hardly be called ‘belief’), and remaining otherwise indifferent and disinterested.  We have to look with the eyes of people who are deeply involved: people who are painfully conscious of sin and its effect in their own lives; who deeply regret their own sinful participation in and promotion of ‘the sin of the world’; people who, having not the slightest doubt of their own great need of salvation, are consequently willing to commit themselves completely -- their life, death, and destiny – to the Saviour upon Whom they are told to fix their eyes.

We have, therefore, to be honest with ourselves: we are not allowed to hide our sinful tendencies, our own weaknesses, ignorance, and selfishness, from ourselves.  We have to be willing to acknowledge not only our own past sins but also the potential for wickedness that still lurks within and around us through our abiding self-love and largely-unsuspected spiritual fragility, dangers which could -- but for the saving grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the icon of God the Father’s love  for us -- work in us the spiritual equivalent of the serpent’s burning, lethal, bite.

Our Lord on the Cross is, I say, the icon of the Father’s love for us; but likewise He is also the icon of God’s hatred of sin and of His determination to eradicate sin from His future Kingdom by uprooting it from the hearts of all who would be His children in Jesus.  To this end, for those of us who believe, for those who, like us, look with hope and love at the Crucified One, the Father has given us His Son’s Holy Spirit -- that other Advocate and Comforter promised by Jesus -- to abide with us, to be in us, guiding and sustaining us throughout our lives.  And God’s Gift  of the Spirit has already begun our healing because, in our celebration of Holy Mass, the living presence of the once crucified, still self-offering, Son of the Father, is also shown -- when lifted up – as the sublime source and symbol of, the supreme food for, mankind’s repentant love for the Father.  Moreover, the Spirit has placed us in another promised land, or rather, in that other garden, which is Mother Church, where the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is given us according to our measure along with the grace that enables us to use such knowledge to our greater good.  That is what you heard in the second reading:

Even when we were dead in our transgressions, (God) brought us to life with Christ.

And now, living by the Spirit of Jesus Who is to be henceforth our divine Guide, we have to allow ourselves to be led by Him -- not constantly complaining as did the Israelites of old -- but willingly and gratefully guided and conducted by Him along the way of Jesus.  For, ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit Who is guiding Mother Church; and it is by the action of His grace in our lives that we are enabled to appreciate her sacraments and obey her teaching, as St. Paul said:

(God) raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus; for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you, it is the gift of God (that is, the work of the Spirit, Who is Himself the very Gift of God’s own Being).

‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done …’, that is what we pray, People of God, and that is what is happening in us, to us and through us, because the Father -- imperceptibly, yet always and irresistibly – is, by the Spirit, forming us in Jesus for His Kingdom, bearing us along on the flood tide of His eternal goodness, wisdom and power.

On this ‘Laetare Sunday’, therefore, let us indeed rejoice with great joy and deep gratitude that the Lord has so mercifully chosen us for His eternal purposes; and let us humbly pray that we may always swim wholeheartedly along with that tide of divine love and compassion until it brings us to our home shores:

Raised up and seated with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.