THE WORD IN LENT - Tuesday, Fifth week in Lent
April 8, 2025 - Numbers 21: 4-9; John 8: 21-30
These days the Word presents to us some symbols from the Old Testament that prefigures the culmination of the Salvation plan in the person of Jesus the Christ. Yesterday we came across Susanna, the innocent condemned by the wicked to death; today we come across the bronze serpent raised in the desert as the sign of restoration of life!
Just as the bronze serpent in raised in the desert that gave life to those people, the Word tells us today - Jesus raised on the Cross is ready to give us life. The allusions of the image of the serpent to the evil one who deceived the first parents, and the tree from on which the serpert deceived them to the staff of the bronze serpent and later to the Tree of the Cross - it all amounts to one message: the Lord is out there to give you new life. But what have we to do?
We need to look up to Him - all who look up to him shall be radiant (Ps 34: 5), because we shall have new life. Looking up... and looking up to him, is the key here. To whom or to what do we look up to: our own capacity, to power, to possession, to happiness, to ease, to vain glory? At times we say we look up to Jesus, but which Jesus? The one who preaches eloquently, the one who has great things to say, the one who did miracles after miracles, the great hero? Or the Son of God, who gave up everything, gave up himself totally for the sake of the Will of his Father, and died for us there on that tree, lifted up and crucified? When we look up to him, we look up to problems, struggles, sacrifices but at the end of it all, life eternal. Are we prepared to look up to Him?