Word to the Wise
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - Tuesday in the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
[Numbers 21:4-9 and John 8:21-30]The Lord said to Moses, "Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live." Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived." [Numbers] "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me." [John]
The image of the "serpent" on a pole is internationally known as a symbol of the health care profession. In Jesus' time, the reference was to the incident in the first scripture of today. Jesus' use of the words, "When you lift up the Son of Man," are a reference in this gospel to an earlier mention at 3:14 of Moses lifting up the serpent in the desert. It all focuses on the terrible and yet saving moment when Jesus would be "lifted up" on the cross as well as being "lifted up" to the Father in his resurrection. All who witness this moment and believe (as we do when we look on a crucifix) will experience eternal life. The gospel passage shows once more the difficulty Jesus' opponents experienced in understanding his teaching. They were unable to make the "leap of faith" that a human might be the incarnation of divinity. Jesus states "You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins." The moment of confrontation with the reality of Jesus is the moment of faith. It is what the Gospel of John refers to as krisis [judgment]. For many of us Catholics who are baptized as infants, this "moment" seems strange but when we look at the surrounding secular culture that is shaping our faith environment, the expression begins to take on an urgent quality. If our faith becomes purely a private "opinion" then our world is proclaiming its independence from its creator by denying that the Creator even exists except in the private minds of believers. This process has been going on a long time and even the Church has been slow to respond. It is one thing to separate Church and State. It is entirely another to deny the existence of God. AMEN