Look up and live!

Conversion – from death to life

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 – TUESDAY FIFTH WEEK

March 24 – Number 21:4-9; John 8: 21-30

Our journey from death to life is possible only with the One who gives us life… we are surrounded by the experiences of death, the culture of death. Just as the people of Israel for whom God did so much, but still forgot readily all the good and gave into lamentations and murmur, so do we tend to choose what is death-inducing instead of life-giving – as we reflected yesterday.

If we wish to ensure that we live, and live to the full, we need to concretely make a choice for the One who fills us with life – the Word says today: look up to Him and live. We need to look up to the Lord if we wish to really live.

Jesus describes and interprets in the Gospel of today, the experience we read about in the first reading, where the people are asked to look up at the bronze serpent and receive life. It is a symbolic prefiguring of the Saviour who would be raised too on the salvific wood, as the bronze serpent was raised on a staff.

Looking up… is the reference here that weaves the Word into one theme today, and this looking up can gives us at least three messages to reflect on:

Firstly, looking up is to surrender to the Lord above, knowing well that God alone is in control of everything. When the people were dying of the brunt of the serpents and they did not know what to day, the only recourse that could redefine their experiences was the Lord above…looking up was giving themselves into the hands of God and living our lives in mercy and grace.

A second significance of that looking up is to receive the light that can offer sense to our lives. Looking so much at our treacherous circumstances, the wars and violence, the arrogance and animosity, the avarice and egocentric tendencies, the unforgiveness and inhumanity around, we could be lost in a sense of meaninglessness in life. It is the Cross that can give us the true sense, giving us the message, that God’s love and mercies never cease. We have a reminder of that love, of that forgiveness, of that never-failing mercy in the Cross.

The third is a reminder that when we look up, we not only surrender and ask for the light of the Lord, but we behold a lesson – the only way to live, is to empty oneself. Jesus on the Cross, every time we look up, gives us a powerful message – the message of self-emptying: he emptied himself, becoming a slave and accepting death on the cross, the greatest of all life-giving acts. In a world which teaches us to seek our own well being and survival, the Lord from the Cross teaches us to empty ourselves and find life, life that is whole, life that is eternal. The Word invites us to look up and live, live to the full