Tuesday – 5th Week of Lent – A

In the first reading here, God has just liberated his people Israel, and they set out on the Red Sea road to bypass the land of Edom. But 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” (Numbers 21:5). My dear friends, it's very tempting for us to get annoyed and to get angry at this people—so stiff-necked, so stubborn, so ungrateful. But we really do need to look at ourselves now as the new people of God, the ones who are claiming to follow Jesus, because following Jesus is not always going to be easy, and we will be tempted to grumble. We will be tempted to challenge him. We will be tempted to offend him.

In punishment, the Lord sent among the people seraph serpents which bit the people, so that many of them died. And so God commanded Moses to make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten 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” (Numbers 21:9).

Now our Lord Jesus himself, in the New Testament, with the New Covenant being realized, points back to this event in salvation history and says that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14), and “when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him” (John 8:28–29).

My brothers and sisters, Jesus is not only God in our midst, but he grew in age and wisdom in his human nature (Luke 2:52). He didn't have just a divine nature, but he had a human nature as well, but that human nature was inhabited by the one, the second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God.

Now, my brothers and sisters, when Jesus says that they will realize, and he uses the name “I AM” (John 8:28) to identify himself, he is saying he is Almighty God. At the same time, he is saying that he does nothing on his own, that he is always saying only what the Father taught him, and that the one who sent him was with him, that the Father never left his side. So our Lord is pointing to the fact that even in his human nature he was united to the Father. In his divine nature, they are inseparable. He and the Father and the Holy Spirit are three Persons, but one God—inseparable. They are distinct; they have distinct missions, distinct attributes and appropriations, but they do things in unison, as one.

If you look at the Incarnation and the Annunciation (Luke 1:26–38), and our Lord's public ministry and his baptism (Matthew 3:16–17), and his eventual Passion, death, resurrection, and ascension (Matthew 28:5–6; Acts 1:9), all three Persons are involved in all of these major actions of salvation history.

My brothers and sisters, we need to look at ourselves and ask: how have I been cooperating with the grace of God? Am I an Israelite in heart? Don't forget that now the true Israelites are the ones who do the will of the Father, which means: what is the will of the Father? “That everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life” (John 6:40). To receive Jesus, to embrace Jesus, to live Jesus and everything he has taught us.

To that end, and through the intercession of the Holy Queen of Heaven, may Almighty God send down upon you his most special blessing this day and illuminate your heart and your mind to continue following Jesus all the days of your life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.