Traditionally this Fourth Sunday of Lent is known as Leatare Sunday. From the Latin for Rejoice!, Leatare Sunday serves as a reminder that we are more than half-way over our Lenten journey. Flowers in the sanctuary and the priest’s rose vestments emphasize this bid to rejoice. However, albeit the invitation to rejoice in hope, this Sunday is still a Sunday of Lent. In other words, Lent is not over yet, and the call to repentance remains present. Therefore, this Sunday, the Church offers us an opportunity to contemplate, from within the context of the penitential season of Lent, the hope given to us in Christ. And this is also what the readings propose to us: hope in the midst of suffering.
In the Gospel, Jesus points Nicodemus to the experience of the Israelites with the seraph serpents in the desert. (Num. 21:1-9) As Moses lifted the bronze serpent for the people to look at and live, so too will “the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:14-15) It is into the midst of human suffering and trial that God intervenes to, again and again, make his mercy and healing available. Moreover, as Jesus points out, the remedy offered through His Cross is definitive. While the bronze serpent preserved the Israelite’s mortal lives, the Son of Man is lifted up to give eternal life to those who believe.
But what is required of the Israelites, of us, to attain the hope given to us amid our toil? The incident of the seraph serpents may contain some clues.
First, we ought to recognize that what kills the Israelities is sin. Understanding the image of the serpents makes this plain. On more than a few instances before, the Serpent figure has taken the stage in the Scriptures. In Genesis 3:15, God promises that the Serpent will be crushed, but what we tend to forget is that He also promises an enduring enmity between its seed and the Woman’s before the final blow is dealt. In this instance of the seraph serpents, the people’s death is indeed the immediate result of the Israelite’s giving in to the Serpent’s temptation. The people themselves admit as much when they come to Moses, acknowledging that they have sinned and asking for the serpents to be taken away.
Second, we should also notice that implied in looking at the bronze serpent for healing is the admittance of being bitten and needing to be saved. This becomes all the more apparent when we remember that the Israelites were not just a few. The number of military-aged men alone, taken at the beginning of the book of Numbers, is 603,550. (Num. 1:46) Hence, their camp would have occupied a large portion of land. Therefore, the prescribed remedy of looking at the bronze serpent would have required the intentional recognition of sickness and faith in the prescribed medicine. Both of which were manifested in the act of going to look at the serpent on the pole.
What is required of us to attain the hope given in Christ? Exactly what the Lent season is about: repentance and faith. “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” we are told on Ash Wednesday. Both of these are acts of the will, meaning that although the hope of salvation is granted to us, we still need to avail ourselves of it. How? By the humble recognition of our sins, faith in God’s mercy, and the deliberate resolve to seek it.
Santiago Torres – St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta
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