The Journey of Lent

Details: 16 March 2012

Lifted Up

This coming Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the Gospel passage at Mass is part of the great discourse and dialogue that Jesus had with Nicodemus, as recorded by Saint John the Evangelist. It is "the first of three statements in the Gospel according to Saint John in which Jesus refers to His being "lifted up" (John 2:14; 8:28; 12:32-34)". In this first statement, our Lord’s words indicate a compelling necessity: "So must the Son of Man be lifted up..." His being "lifted up" seems to be needed to make faith in Him efficacious and salvific for believers. In the second statement, in the context of arguments with His Jewish enemies, He asserts His divinity by invoking the sacred tetragram ("Yahweh"): "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM..." In the third statement Jesus says that His being lifted up will have the effect of drawing all human beings to the possibility of salvation: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men to Myself". After reporting those words, Saint John comments, "Now He said this signifying by what death He was to die". Most Catholic scholars say that the expression of Jesus about being "lifted up" did not refer, however, exclusively to crucifixion and His death on the cross, but also included His resurrection and ascension.

Our Lord Himself compared His being lifted up for the salvation for the world that would flow from that lifting to the incident recorded in the Old Testament when God sent poisonous snakes (saraph serpents) to punish the Israelites for "speaking against God and Moses" (Numbers 21:6-9; Deuteronomy 8:15). The deadly bites and the burning sensation caused by them ("saraph" in Hebrew means "burning") brought the people to repentance. In answer to their pleas for mercy, God told Moses to make a saraph image out of brass (a brazen serpent) and to set it up "as a sign". Those people thereafter who were bitten by the snakes had only to look at that sign and they would be healed. Jesus told Nicodemus that in a similar way "the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life." The irony of the incident in relationship to Jesus, of course, is that the fall of mankind took place through the suggestion of the Devil who took the form of a cunning serpent. Now through the symbol of the brazen serpent, God Himself in Christ would begin to undo the primordial calamity of humanity’s fall which has so scarred the race of man from its beginning.

Love

Our Lord, after explaining to Nicodemus the deeper meaning of the brass serpent episode in the Gospel passage, went on to tell him about the self-sacrificing love of God for the world, that He sent His only-begotten Son, indeed, He gave Him up not to condemn the world but to save the world, that is, to make it possible for human beings to be happy beyond telling forever. Pope Benedict XVI teaches that "our life tends in the end toward a discovery of love, toward receiving love and giving love. And, the crucified Christ, Who presents us with love lived out to the end lifts this principle up into the realm of absolute reality. God Himself is love.

The Holy Father goes on, "In this sense love is indeed both the fundamental rule and the ultimate aim of life. Here we come again to the mystery of the grain of wheat, to the mystery of losing oneself and finding oneself. And we must link this to the observation that no one can manufacture love. It is given to us. It comes to me from someone else. It enters into me. Even from a purely human point of view, love is what we are looking for and is the goal toward which our lives are directed. But within its own framework and on its own terms. it directs our view toward God and brings us to wait upon Him." The Bishop of Rome states, "Only with the heart can we see Jesus. Only love purifies us and gives us the ability to see. Only love enables us to recognize God Who is love itself."

"But, love seeks understanding. It wishes to know even better the one whom it loves. It ‘seeks His face’, as Saint Augustine never tires of repeating. Love is a desire for intimate knowledge, so that the quest for understanding can even be an inner requirement of love. Put another way, there is a coherence of love and truth. Christian faith can say of itself, I have found love. Yet love for Christ and of one’s neighbor for Christ’s sake can enjoy stability and consistency only if the deepest motivation is love for the truth. Real love for a neighbor also desires to give him the deepest thing man needs, namely, knowledge and truth."

Sign of Cross

When, especially during Lent, we think for a few moments about the brass serpent and how it symbolized and foreshadowed the cross of Jesus, it might serve as a reminder about the gesture we make so often, and sometimes so thoughtlessly, namely, the sign of the cross. Pope Benedict calls it "the most basic Christian gesture in prayer". He says, "It is a way of confessing Christ crucified with one’s very own body. To seal oneself with the sign of the cross is a visible and public ‘yes’ to Him Who suffered for us, to Him Who in the Body made God’s love visible even to the utmost, to the God Who reigns not by destruction but by the humility of suffering and love, which is stronger than all the power of the world and wiser than all the calculating intelligence of me. The sign of the cross is a confession of faith. I believe in Him Who suffered for me and rose again, in Him Who has transformed the sign of shame into a sign of hope, and of the love of God that is within me."

"By signing ourselves with the cross we place ourselves under the protection of the cross. We hold it in front of us like a shield that will guard us in all distress of daily life and give us the courage to go on. We accept it a signpost that we follow. The cross shows us the road of life, the imitation of Christ. Whenever we make the sign of the cross we accept our Baptism anew. Christ from the cross draws us, so to speak, to Himself. We make the sign of the cross on ourselves and thus enter the power of the blessing of Jesus Christ. Through the cross we can become sources of blessing for one another."

"Man is redeemed by the cross. The crucified Christ is the completely opened Being, the true Redemption of man. This is the central principle of the Christian faith, and, in the last analysis, of man. One cannot become wholly a man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved. Love (for and from God) represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and deepest need."