My Dear People, 

Today we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a very important feast that precedes the Sunday Liturgy. Jesus spoke of how Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert so those, if  bitten, would be healed when they looked at it. Jesus made the comparison with His being lifted up on the cross similar, or parallel to, Moses lifting up the bronze serpent. We read today from the Gospel of John where Jesus employs a biblical figure to explain how He will reveal the Father bringing us eternal healing: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life!”  

This is the first of three occasions in the Gospel where Jesus incorporated the verb “lifted up” as having a twofold meaning. It can mean “lift up” in a literal sense, as Jesus being physically lifted up from the ground onto the cross. It can also mean lift up in the sense of exaltation. Jesus uses the word in both senses—Jesus being lifted up in ignominy from the ground; yet, while on the cross, it will also be the moment of His exaltation when He preeminently reveals God’s love.

Like the title “Lamb of God” (1:29), the mention of “lifted up” is an allusion to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. In the Septuagint text of Isaiah 52:13, the Lord says that His servant will be “lifted high”—using the same Greek verb—“and be exceedingly glorified.” The same Servant, “like a lamb led to the slaughter. . . took away the sins of many”  (Isaiah 53:7). The Son of Man, who will be lifted up, is also “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Jesus unfolds the mystery of His cross by referring to the bronze serpent raised up by Moses in the wilderness (Num. 21:4-9). In that incident, the Lord afflicted the Israelites with fiery serpents as punishment for their rebelling and complaining. The Israelites then appealed to Moses to intercede for them. God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and affix it to a pole. When an Israelite gazed at the symbolic portrayal of the effects of his sin, the bronze serpent, he was granted healing and life (21:9). Similarly, whoever gazes in faith at the ultimate effect of human sin, the crucifixion of the Son of God, “is”  the spiritual reality. Thus, a living faith experience of heavenly realities becomes the means of entry into eternal, divine life. With this biblical example for Nicodemus, Jesus opens up the possibility of a spiritual understanding of His own tradition inviting Nicodemus to have genuine faith in Him. 

Having set forth Jesus’ teaching about eternal life, which His cross makes available, and into which beliefs are born by the Spirit’s action, the Evangelist now penetrates to the heart of this Gospels’ message: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,

so that everyone who believes in  Him might not perish 

but might have eternal life!”  

 The Father’s love for mankind leads Him to give His only Son for the world’s salvation. The world is under condemnation and in spiritual darkness on account of sin, but the Father does not want anyone to perish. Hence, He gives His Son so that the world might be saved through Him. The gift of salvation, which the Father offers us all through Jesus, is eternal life: a participation in the divine life of the Trinity.  We accept this gift through faith in Jesus. 

Faith is yielding to the action of the Spirit, who first moves a person to address what God has revealed, and to commit one’s whole life to God.   

Jesus will later tell the crowd, faith is our consenting to and cooperation with God’s work in us: “None can come to me unless the Father, who sent me, draws Him.”  [Taken from commentary on The Gospel of Joh by Francis Martin and William M. Wright]

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente