REFLECTIONS TODAY
Today the Church commemorates the discovery of the cross of Christ in Jerusalem by Queen Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, in AD 320. The Gospel rightly brings to fore the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross.
While we may look at it as the defeat of God’s Son, the penetrating gaze of John the Evangelist highlights its exact opposite. It is an act of victory, the triumph of God’s love. The terminology of “descent and ascent” in this Gospel brings us to reflect on God’s desire to unite heaven and Earth through his Son Jesus. And the only reason for that action is love: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” (v 16).
From the fullness of this loving union between the Father and the Son, we receive grace upon grace (Jn 1:16). This loving union was not broken but was revealed even more strongly through the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord, through his paschal mystery. The cross of Christ stands at the center of our faith, and from it we draw healing and strength, peace and reconciliation.
First Reading • Nm 21:4b-9
With their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”
In punishment the Lord sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the Lord and you. Pray the Lord to take the serpents from us.”
So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they 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.
Gospel • John 3:13-17
Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And 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.”
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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Source: “366 Days with the Lord 2024,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.