Fr. Jerome Pistoni sx
After the image of the temple on which we stopped last Sunday, on this fourth Sunday, Laetare Sunday, the Paschal Journey invites us to meditate on a second image: the serpent lifted up in the desert.
This elevation clearly refers to the Cross, which for John is the moment of the glorification of the Son and the revelation of the Father's love for humanity.
The image makes reference to the serpent lifted up by Moses in the desert. The episode is narrated in Num 21:4-9, where it is described as a healing experience. After murmuring against God and Moses, the people are hit by poisonous snakes that cause their death. Moses therefore asks God for forgiveness and God instructs Moses to make himself a bronze serpent and to raise it on a pole, so that anyone who looks at it will be healed of the bite of snakes.
Just as the serpent gave life to the children of Israel, wounded by evil, so the Son of Man, lifted up, transmits life to those who believe in him. This is what Jesus asks of Nicodemus, as of every reader of the Gospel: to believe in the Son, who, for John, is the perfect human being. The whole history of salvation, and in particular the Cross of the Son, is oriented to "nothing being lost" and to "the world being saved through him"
To believe not as an intellectual action, but entrusting oneself to the crucified Christ: this is what the human being is called to do so that the beneficial effects of the salvation created by the Son, may pass into his existence. Faith saves, heals, because it breaks the circle of self-sufficiency.
Here, then, is the image that Laetare Sunday gives us: Jesus is the Son of Man lifted up like the serpent in the desert. The one who gives us the gift of life, every day. He asks us only to "look at him", to grant him our trust, to believe in him, without fear of exposing ourselves to the light that comes from his cross, because it is not light that blinds or kills, but light that liberates.
After the image of the temple on which we stopped last Sunday, on this fourth Sunday, Laetare Sunday, the Paschal Journey invites us to meditate on a second image: the serpent lifted up in the desert.
This elevation clearly refers to the Cross, which for John is the moment of the glorification of the Son and the revelation of the Father's love for humanity.
The image makes reference to the serpent lifted up by Moses in the desert. The episode is narrated in Num 21:4-9, where it is described as a healing experience. After murmuring against God and Moses, the people are hit by poisonous snakes that cause their death. Moses therefore asks God for forgiveness and God instructs Moses to make himself a bronze serpent and to raise it on a pole, so that anyone who looks at it will be healed of the bite of snakes.
Just as the serpent gave life to the children of Israel, wounded by evil, so the Son of Man, lifted up, transmits life to those who believe in him. This is what Jesus asks of Nicodemus, as of every reader of the Gospel: to believe in the Son, who, for John, is the perfect human being. The whole history of salvation, and in particular the Cross of the Son, is oriented to "nothing being lost" and to "the world being saved through him"
To believe not as an intellectual action, but entrusting oneself to the crucified Christ: this is what the human being is called to do so that the beneficial effects of the salvation created by the Son, may pass into his existence. Faith saves, heals, because it breaks the circle of self-sufficiency.
Here, then, is the image that Laetare Sunday gives us: Jesus is the Son of Man lifted up like the serpent in the desert. The one who gives us the gift of life, every day. He asks us only to "look at him", to grant him our trust, to believe in him, without fear of exposing ourselves to the light that comes from his cross, because it is not light that blinds or kills, but light that liberates.