Thursday September 14, 2017
The seraph was mounted on a pole and the people were told to look at it-to look at what had bitten them. And they were healed. This bronze serpent is seen as an image of Jesus on the Cross. But Jesus went to the cross, under the burden of the law and of people's hatred. He took it upon himself to live the way of God truthfully and to die clinging to God and being obedient to God's will, even if that meant being rejected and killed. Jesus was the fullness of God, God in our flesh and blood, and he humbled himself to come and live with us as a human being, dying with us, even dying on a cross as the least of us.
Somehow this mystery of the incarnation of God is what we are to become-we, our flesh and blood in Jesus, are to become the Body of Christ given in love to the Father in the power of the Spirit. Our humanness is to become the holiness of God. This is our salvation. We are loved and given the very life of God in Jesus.
Does it feel like Lent? Monastic Lent began on this day and the liturgical calendar reflects this still. It is time to look upon our God, upon the cross, and kiss the symbol of our life and recognize that we are made in the sign of the cross.
Alternative
The feast of the Triumph of the Cross marks the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335 CE. On this feast, we are called upon to meditate on the salvific mystery of the Cross. The Israelites who were bitten by poisonous snakes looked up to the metal image of the fiery serpent on the standard and lived. Similarly, anyone bitten by the poisonous snakes of sin, who looks up to the living Christ on the Cross, shall not die, but live. It is God’s will that everyone shall be saved. But we have the freedom of choice to look toward the Cross or away from it. The choice is ours; so are the consequences.
Take a few minutes today to look at a cross and meditate on it. Keep gazing. What do you find there? Who is there? What happens to you as you keep gazing?
