Look at the cross

Tuesday January 25, 2022

Look at the cross

“They departed from Mount Hor by the way of the Sea of ​​Reeds to circumvent the country of Edom. The people grew impatient on the way.” Numbers 21. 4

The Hebrews angered God by not seriously considering all the graces they had received up to that point. They went so far as to despise the food that God offered them every morning in the desert. The biblical narrator says of them that they were impatient, on their way to the Promised Land. Suddenly, it is God who “loses patience” and who decides to teach a lesson to this ungrateful people. The camp of the Hebrews is invaded by snakes whose bite proves fatal. Aware that this is a punishment, the people turn to Moses : “We have sinned, because we have spoken against God and against you. Pray to the Lord to take these serpents away from us.” This reversal would be laughable if it were not dramatic : suddenly, we remember that God is a saviour ! Moses then makes a bronze snake (copper alloy), places it at the end of a pole and exposes it in the center of the camp. Anyone who had been bitten by a snake and looked at the sculpture of Moses, preserved life. This episode of the Old Testament imposed a strong image that the New will rightly take up. We are there in front of the inescapable figure of Christ on the cross, the savior exposed. Anyone who looks at the cross is saved ; he is freed from the punishment with which every sinner is marked. All men have been bitten by the serpent, figure of disobedience and rejection of God since the birth of the world and the Garden of Eden. But he who, knowing that he has been bitten (and therefore mortally affected), contemplates the cross where Jesus takes His place, that one passes from death to life. From the brazen serpent in the desert to the Cross of Golgotha, there is only one reality to grasp. This is what John affirms before pronouncing the most famous sentence of his Gospel : “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in he shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3. 14-15).

Source (His Word for Today)