2 Chronicles 36:14-16.19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21
The
episode in the desert to which the first lines of the Gospel refer was and
remains most mysterious. The people complain against God in the desert. God
punishes them by sending poisonous serpents among them. Their bite is deadly.
The people repent and in accordance with God’s instructions Moses makes a
bronze snake and puts it up on a pole so that anyone bitten by a snake and looks
at it will live.
I
find it rather appropriate that God sent those snakes among his People for that
is precisely what they had become - poisonous snakes, ungrateful whingers -
biting each other and attacking Moses and even blaspheming God with their toxic
rebelliousness.
But
God offered his mercy in the form of a stark and powerful image. A bronze serpent
raised up on a standard above the heads of the people. A serpent made in the
image of the poisonous snakes but without poison. A bronze serpent raised high
on a tree as the giver of healing and life - a presence which draws the people
together and speaks to them of God’s forgiveness and loving care. But a
presence which is ignored at the cost of one’s life.
And,
of course, as we all know, thanks to Jesus’ prophetic words, the standard is
the cross, the serpent is Christ, and we are now the new People of God who must
lift our eyes to him in order that we may live.
Jesus
said to Nicodemus: ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the desert, so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in
him.
And so
there it stands – the Cross – lifting up the Crucified One. It stands over our
battlefields, over the starving thousands in drought stricken regions, over the
hospitals in our cities, the martyrs in the Middle East, the brothels and the
abortion mills of the world.
Salvador
Dali’s painting ‘The Christ of St John of the Cross’ portrays the Cross
suspended over the entire world. Our own
personal experience tells us that it is also planted in every human heart. If
only we would raise our heads and gaze upon it in faith it would heal us and give
us life.
It
is to this cross, the one planted in your life and in mine, that we now turn
our eyes by asking with the anonymous priest who wrote a 'Stations of the
Cross': "What is it in yourself, then, which resists His Love? What a
great question. Let us listen to his answer with open hearts. "It is
not your weaknesses, not even your bad habits; Jesus came to save sinners and
it is nothing for Him to overcome the most vicious of habits. No, the
impediment to His Love and to His grace is not your weakness, not your bad
habits alone; the essential impediment is your lying and your hypocrisy, your
deep and hidden desire to convince yourself of your own goodness; your goodness
in yourself – when all the force of your experience and of the truth is to
convince you of the opposite…"
These
are hard words to listen to and our reflex action is to turn away from them, to
discount them. But if they are true then our Lenten task is to acknowledge them as
such, and then to make a good confession; to cast aside the blanket of lies we hide ourselves under.
Jacques
Fesch, the last man to be guillotined in France, reflecting on own journey of
life says: "It is only recently that I have come to understand the
meaning of the cross. It is at once prodigious and atrocious: prodigious
because it gives life, and atrocious because if we do not accept to be
crucified all life is denied us. This is a great mystery…"
He
goes on: "Now consider that in order to be saved, one is bound to
suffer. The servant is not greater than
the master… Do
not let us struggle against redemption, under the pressure of egotistical
thoughts."
Jacques clearly saw the work of pride in his own (atheist) father, for whose conversion he offered his death, Writing to his mother-in-law he says: "Look at my father. He flees from what he cannot
possibly escape. At each blow of the battering ram which strikes him to the
earth, he tries to get up again, stiff with pride. Suffering pursues him,
strikes him, already his cross is prepared … but woe to him who, in a last
thrust of rebellion, rejects his cross."
If you look at the cross and feel nothing, don't be alarmed or dismayed. Jesus understands how hard it is. It is truly a sign of contradiction and that's why we need to meditate on it regularly, to allow its meaning to permeate our fear of suffering.
Speaking with the voice of Jesus from the cross, the anonymous priest concludes
with some of the best Lenten advice I've ever heard: "And yet, I would not
want you to feel sad because you are unable to appreciate and fathom My Love
for you. No, I only want you to know how much I love and accept you. Only come
to Me now, and let Me love you. Do not try to suffer for Me first! That way you
will only force your love. But love Me spontaneously by letting Me show you how
much I love you first. Then you will want to suffer for Me - in order to allow
Me to give Myself to you…"
And
that is precisely the pointy end of the message. Do we want our Lord to give
himself to us? Of course we do. Then we must remember the words of St Paul that
it is a 'crucified' Lord, a crucified Lord who longs to give
himself to us.
