The “serpent” certainly plays its part in the play of the Pentateuch. In Genesis it is the Tempter for Adam’s satisfying his hunger for all. In our First Reading for this feast, the “serpent” bites and kills the complaining hungry.
Moses speaks with God about God’s punishing the complainers and is told to make a “bronze” image of a “serpent” and all shall be saved who look upon it. Apparently, God created us to hunger for more without complaining about what we have.
John’s Gospel places Jesus as King, nailed to His Throne and gazing upon His fallen kingdom with acceptance and with His arms stretched out in embrace.
In our Gospel Reading for this feast, Jesus, Who is being interrogated by a Jewish holy official, puts it clearly, He has entered our human condition of hunger. Nicodemus, who wants to know mor, that believing is a way of knowing. We easily can say, “O, I see” when we understand. Nicodemus desires to see and in John’s account of Jesus’ life, seeing signs is the invitation to believe what is behind and within the signs.
Jesus’ being lifted is an historical reality and a living-unto-death a deeper than historical revelation. “I desire to tell you Who I have been and am, so you can accept who you have always been and will be eternally.”
In John chapter nineteen, verse 37, we read, “They will look upon him whom they have pierced.” In all of John’s Gospel, seeing, looking is the invitation to go beyond, go into and receive what’s being revealed. The Exaltation is the raising of the cross with the body of Jesus upon it and even more, the whole human race and history are raised from trying to save itself, fill itself. What we all have hunger for is to be loved so that we might be saved from our not loving ourselves.
As we will always want mor of whatever is good so by that getting more we will be more and so be loved. The Exaltation of the Cross is the most more God reveal to us, share with us, not in “condemnation” but embraced and saved, not in a judicial, but loved mor than we can humanly see, but believe. The Cross was inserted into the earth as an Exalted permanent sacrament which saves us from hungering for what God gives without our complaining.
Entrance Antiphon
We should glory in the Cross
Of our Lord Jesus Christ,
In Whom is our salvation,
Life and resurrection, in Whom we are saved and delivered.
Rev. Larry Gillick, SJ
I entered the Society of Jesus in 1960, after graduating from Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and attending St. Norbert College for two years. I was ordained in 1972 after completing theological studies at the Toronto School of Theology, Regis College. I presently minister in the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton and give retreats.
I enjoy sharing thoughts on the Daily Reflections. It is a chance to share with a wide variety of people in the Christian community experiences of prayer and life which have been given to me. It is a bit like being in more places than just here. We actually get out there without having to pay airlines to do it. The word of God is alive and well.
