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Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God)

For: Tuesday, March 30, 2004

5th Week of Lent

From: Numbers 21:4-9

The Bronze Serpent

[4] From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the
land of Edom; and the people became impatient on the way. [5] And the people
spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of
Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we
loathe this worthless food." [6] Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the
people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. [7] And
the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken
against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord, that he take away the
serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. [8] And the Lord said to
Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is
bitten, when he sees it, shall live." [9] So Moses made a bronze serpent,
and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the
bronze serpent and live.

Commentary:

21:4-9. The people continue to complain against Moses, this time because
they have to go right around Edom. But their protest is also directed
against God. When they are punished, Moses once again intercedes on their
behalf. The events covered in this account may have taken place in the
region of Araba, where copper mines existed from the 13th century BC
onwards. In the town now called Timna, an Egyptian shrine has been unearthed
which contained a copper serpent, indicating that some sort of magical power
was attributed to these serpents.

This passage in Numbers is interpreted in Wisdom 16:5-12, where the point is
emphasized that it was not the bronze serpent that cured them but the mercy
of God; the serpent was a sign of the salvation which God offers all men.
The bronze serpent is mentioned later, in the Gospel, as typifying Christ
raised up on the cross, the cause of salvation for those who look at him
with faith: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the
Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believes in him may have eternal
life" (Jn 3:14-15) When Christ is raised above all human things, he draws
them towards himself; so his glorification is the means whereby all mankind
obtain healing for ever more.

Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God)

For: Tuesday, March 30, 2004

5th Week of Lent

From: John 8:21-30

Jesus Warns the Unbelieving Jews

[21] Again He (Jesus) said to them, "I go away, and you will seek Me
and die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come." [22] Then
said the Jews, "Will He kill Himself, since He says, `Where I am going,
you cannot come?'" [23] He said to them, "You are from below, I am
from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. [24] I told
you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins
unless you believe that I am He." [25] They said to Him, "Who are
You?" Jesus said to them, "Even what I have told you from the
beginning. [26] I have much to say about you and much to judge; but He
who sent Me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from
Him." [27] They did not understand that He spoke to them of the
Father. [28] So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man,
then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on My own
authority but speak thus as the Father taught Me. [29] And He who sent
Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do what is
pleasing to Him." [30] As He spoke thus, many believed in Him.

Commentary:

21-24. At the outset of His public ministry, Jesus could be seen to
have all the features of the promised Messiah; some people recognized
Him as such and became His followers (cf. John 1:12-13; 4:42; 6:69;
7:41); but the Jewish authorities, although they were expecting the
Messiah (cf. John 1:19ff), persisted in their rejection of Jesus.
Hence the warning to them: He is going where they cannot follow, that
is, He is going to Heaven, which is where He has come from (cf. John
6:41ff), and they will keep looking out for the Messiah foretold by the
prophets; but they will not find Him because they look for Him outside
of Jesus, nor can they follow Him, for they do not believe in Him. You
are of the world, our Lord is saying to them, not because you are on
earth but because you are living under the influence of the prince of
this world (cf. John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11); you are his vassals and you
do his deeds (cf. 8:44); therefore, you will die in your sin. "We are
all born with sin", St. Augustine comments, "all by our living have
added to what we were by nature, and have become more of this world
than we then were, when we were born of our parents. Where would we be
if He had not come, who had no sin at all, to loose all sin? The Jews,
because they did not believe in Him, deserved to have it said to them,
'You will die in your sin'" ("In Ioann. Evang.", 38, 6).

The salvation which Christ brings will be applied to those who believe
in His divinity. Jesus declares His divinity when He says "I am He",
for this expression, which He repeats on other occasions (cf. John.
8:28; 13:19), is reserved to Yahweh in the Old Testament (cf.
Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 43:10-11), where God, in revealing His name
and therefore His essence, says to Moses "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus
3:14). In this profound way God says that He is the Supreme Being in a
full, absolute sense, that He is dependent on no other being, that all
other things depend on Him for their being and existence. Thus, when
Jesus says of Himself, "I am He", He is revealing that He is God.

25. A little before this Jesus had spoken about His Heavenly origin and
His divine nature (cf. verses 23-24); but the Jews do not want to
accept this revelation; which is why they ask Him for an even more
explicit statement: "Who are You?" Our Lord's reply can be understood
in different ways, because the Greek text has two meanings: 1) our Lord
is confirming what He has just asserted (cf. verses 23-24) and what He
has been teaching throughout this visit to Jerusalem--in which case it
may be translated "precisely what I am telling you" or else "in the
first place what I am telling you". This is the interpretation given
in the New Vulgate. 2) Jesus is indicating that He is the "Beginning",
which is the word St. John also uses in the Apocalypse to designate the
Word, the cause of all creation (Revelation 3:14; cf. Revelation 1:8).
In this way Jesus states His divine origin. This is the interpretation
given in the Vulgate. Either way, Christ is once more revealing His
divinity; He is reaffirming what He said earlier, but without saying it
all over again.

"Many people in our own days ask the same question: 'Who are You?'
[...] Who, then, was Jesus? Our faith exults and cries out: it is He,
it is He, the Son of God made man. He is the Messiah we were
expecting: He is the Savior of the world, the Master of our lives: He
is the Shepherd that guides men to their pastures in time, to their
destinies beyond time. He is the joy of the world; He is the image of
the invisible God: He is the way, the truth and the life; He is the
interior friend; He is the One who knows us even from afar; He knows
our thoughts; He is the One who can forgive us, console, cure, even
raise from the dead; and He is the One who will return, the judge of
one and all, in the fullness of His glory and our eternal happiness"
(Paul VI, "General Audience", 11 December 1974).

26-27. "He who sent Me": an expression very often found in St. John's
Gospel, referring to God the Father (cf. 5:37; 6:44; 7:28; 8:16).

The Jews who were listening to Jesus did not understand whom He was
referring to; but St. John, in recounting this episode, explains that
He meant His Father, from Whom He came.

"He spoke to them of the Father": this is the reading in most of the
Greek codexes, including the more important ones. Other Greek codexes
and some translations, including the Vulgate, read, "He was calling God
His Father."

"What I have heard from Him": Jesus had connatural knowledge of His
Father, and it is from this knowledge that He speaks to men; He knows
God not through revelation or inspiration as the prophets and sacred
writers did, but in an infinitely higher way: which is why He can say
that no one knows the Father but the Son and He to whom the Son chooses
to reveal Him (cf. Mt 11:27).

On the type of knowledge Jesus had during His life on earth, see the
note on Luke 2:52.

28. Our Lord is referring to His passion and death: "`And I, when I am
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself'. He said this
to show by what death He was to die" (John 12:32-33). Rounding out the
Synoptics and the Letters of St. Paul, the Fourth Gospel presents the
Cross, above all, as a royal throne on which Christ is "lifted up" and
from which He offers all men the fruits of salvation (cf. John 3:14-15;
cf. also Numbers 21:9ff; Wisdom 16:6).

Jesus says that when that time comes, the Jews will know who He is and
His intimate union with the Father, because many of them will discover,
thanks to His death and resurrection, that He is the Messiah, the Son
of God (cf. Matthew 15:39; Lk 33:48). After the coming of the Holy
Spirit many thousands will believe in Him (cf. Acts 2:41; 4:4).

Tuesday March 30, 2004 Fifth Week of Lent

Reading (Numbers 21:4-9) Gospel (St. John 8:21-30)

Our Lord, in the Gospel reading today, tells us that we will die in our sins unless we come to believe that He is I AM, that is, that He is Yahweh, that He is God. When the people ask Him, “Who are you then?” He says, “What I have been telling you from the beginning,” once again making very clear to them Who He truly is, because the only one who was in the beginning was God and the One Who spoke to them from the very beginning is the One Who wrote the Bible. The Jewish people, of course, knew and believed that the Scriptures were divinely inspired; so it was not a matter that Moses wrote them, but rather Moses wrote down the words that were inspired by God. And so in the same context, when Our Lord tells us that He does nothing except what He has heard from the Father, it is the exact same point. Moses did not write down anything other than what he heard, and Jesus, Who is the Word – not merely the written Word, but the living Word, the Word that was made flesh to dwell among us – He has done nothing other than what He heard from the Father, and He is the One Who is the Word written about in Scripture. But the people still did not understand, and Our Lord reiterated again when they would come to believe. When you have lifted up the Son of Man from the earth, then you will believe that I AM, He told them.

For us, it is the only way. We recall the high priest taunting Our Lord and saying, “Come down from that cross and we will believe!” But it is exactly the opposite because He tells us that He does not belong to this world. Why would He come down from the Cross so that He could once again place His feet upon this earth when this is not where He is from and it is not what He is about? It is only when He is lifted up, as He was lifted up three times. He was lifted up from the earth when we hung Him on the Cross. He was lifted up from the earth when He rose from the dead. And He was lifted up a third time when He ascended into heaven. Each time it was when He rose above this world to demonstrate that He is not of this world. But still people did not understand; they did not believe.

But we need simply to ask the question within our own hearts if we believe. After all, we see, for instance, in the Old Testament reading, the people grumbling and complaining against God. So God sends the seraph serpents among the people to bite them. And rather than just simply taking the serpents away, rather than just simply healing the people as God certainly had the power to do, He has Moses make a bronze serpent so the people have to look at the serpent. The serpents were still among them and they still got bit, but they had to look at this serpent upon a pole in order to remind them that it was God Himself Who was going to heal them, to remind them of all their grumbling and complaining, and that if they were really going to have faith in God as they claimed to have that they needed to stop grumbling and complaining and begin to believe.

What about us? How much do we grumble and complain against God? When it does not go our way, when we think things ought to be different, when we do not like what is happening in our life very well, the first thing we do is grumble and complain. And so the Lord tells us, “In the midst of your suffering, rather than taking it away, I’m going to make you look upon the One Who will relieve you of your suffering.” You are going to have to look at the Cross and see Our Lord in the midst of His agony, and then ask, “Do we really have anything to complain about?” When He is lifted up from the earth, then we will believe that He is I AM – but only when we look at the Cross, only when we look beyond what is of earth and recognize that He is not of this world and that we are not called to be of this world either, that we too are to be elevated above this world to live for the next, which means to accept our share in the suffering but to recognize the good that can come out of it, to be able to see and understand that this unites us with the suffering of Christ and raises us up so that we will be able to live for the next world.

So if we truly recognize Who He is – the One Who has spoken to us truly from the beginning, the Word spoken by the Father from the beginning in the silence of eternity, the Word written of in Scripture, the Word Who became flesh, the One Who is raised up so that we would believe – in the midst of our suffering, look upon the One Who is on the Cross and believe that He is I AM.

John 8: 21-30
Jesus said to the Jews, "I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come." So the Jews said, "He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, 'Where I am going you cannot come'?" He said to them, "You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins." So they said to him, "Who are you?" Jesus said to them, "What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world." They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said (to them), "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." Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

Introductory Prayer:Father of everlasting goodness, our origin and guide, be close to us and hear the prayers of all who praise you. Forgive our sins and restore us to life. Keep us safe in your love. Grant this through Christ our Lord.

Petition:Lord, increase my faith in you.

1. Where I am going you cannot come. When Adam sinned, Paradise was closed to man. Nothing within man’s power could reverse the course of history now marred by sin. Even the greatest of the patriarchs and prophets could only “salute the Promised Land from afar”, so to speak, as symbolized by Moses who led the Israelites to the Promised Land but never entered it himself. But what is impossible for man is still possible for God. By taking our flesh, taking on every dimension of humanity, all humanity takes on a new meaning, a higher dignity. Then, the key to opening the door was placed on Christ’s shoulders in the form of a cross. As the one true High Priest he entered into the sanctuary alone to atone for our sin and the sin of the world. Where he has gone no other human can go of his own accord. But once the Son has opened the door, we, his adopted brothers and sisters, possess the hope of entering into the eternal life of God. ”In other words, through the blood of Jesus we have the confidence to enter the sanctuary by a new way which he has opened for us, a living opening through the curtain, that is to say, his body” (Hebrews 10:19).

2. If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins. Life or death, the blessing or the curse. This is the choice Moses placed before the chosen people of Israel who had consistently witnessed the saving power of Yahweh. Eternal Life is a choice, a continual decision to choose the good, to serve the truth, to do God’s will. But eternal death is no less a moral choice. Jesus brings this choice to a new level – to believe in him is to have life, to reject him is death. The faith in Jesus that leads to life is not merely a series of personal preferences. It is a matter of life or death because it assumes a genuine search for the truth about life and death. To see Jesus is to see his Father. In Jesus, “God has made himself known in the fullest possible way. He has revealed to mankind who he is. This definitive self-revelation of God is the fundamental reason why the Church is missionary by her very nature. She cannot do other than proclaim the Gospel, that is, the fullness of the truth which God has enabled us to know about himself” (Pope John Paul II, The Mission of the Redeemer, n.5). The proper response to God's revelation is the “obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26), a personal adherence to the person of Christ as truly God and truly man.

3. When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM. Every parent knows that love is a sacrifice. The most sublime symbol of all selfless devotion is the Son of God nailed to the cross, nailed by those he came to save. It is an often-stated truth that if I were the only person on earth, Christ would have died for me on the cross to save me. The corollary to this is that, were I the only person on earth, then I would have been the one who drove in the nails and hoisted the crossbeam in its place. He came offering life and I responded with death. Yet in “lifting up” Christ, I discover the bedrock truth of his boundless love. A love that was at the beginning, is now and ever shall be. He is love. He is mercy. He is life. He is truth … all because HE IS.

Dialogue with Christ: Blessed Lord, thank you for the gift of life and most especially for the gift of faith. Help me to enter into your life by exercising my faith. I trust that you will guide my steps. Grant me wisdom and prudence in my choices, and with your grace I will strive to lovingly give you every act of my day. Mother of Purity, make my heart only for Jesus.

Resolution: Today I will look for at least three opportunities to make hidden acts of charity in reparation for so many sins against Christ’s Sacred Heart, especially for my own sins.

Saint of the Day - Roman Rite
Today is Martyrology

The Thirtieth Day of March

At Rome, on the Appian Way, the suffering of blessed Quirinus, a tribune, who was the father of the virgin St. Balbina. He, with all his household, was baptized by Pope St. Alexander who was in his custody. When, in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, this unconquerable soldier of Christ was handed over to the judge Aurelian and remained firm in the confession of his faith, his tongue was cut out; he was stretched on the rack, his hands and feet were cut off, and at last he won the fight for martyrdom, by the sword.

At Thessalonica, the birthday of the holy martyrs Domninus, Victor, and their companions.

At Constantinople, the commemoration of many holy martyrs of the Catholic faith in the time of Constantius. They were killed by Macedonius the heresiarch who subjected them to unheard-of kinds of torture. Among other cruelties, he mutilated faithful women by pressing them between the heavy lids of chests, and burning them with red-hot irons.

In the town of Senlis in Gaul, the death of St. Regulus, Bishop of Arles.

At Orleans in Gaul, St. Pastor, bishop.

At Syracuse in Sicily, St. Zosimus, bishop and confessor.

On Mount Sinai, St. John Climacus, abbot.

At Aquileria in Spain, St. Peter Regalatus, priest and confessor, of the Order of Friars Minor, born in Valladolid. He restored regular discipline in the Spanish monasteries. The Sovereign Pontiff, Benedict XIV, added his name to the list of the saints.

At Aquino, St. Clinius, confessor.

Saint of the Day - Eastern Rite

ST. JOHN CLIMACUS, ABBOT 525-605 A. D.

Feast: March 30

From his life, written by Daniel, a monk of Raithu, soon after his death, and from his own works. See Bulteau, Hist. Monast. d'Orient, and d'Andilly, or rather his nephew, Le Maitre, in his life prefixed to the French translation of his works. See also Jos. Assemani, in Cal. Univ. ad 30 Martii, t. vi. p. 213.

St John, generally distinguished by the appellation of Climacus, from his excellent book entitled Climax, or the Ladder to Perfection, was born about the year 525, probably in Palestine. By his extraordinary progress in the arts and sciences he obtained very young the surname of the Scholastic. But at sixteen years of age he renounced all the advantages which the world promised him to dedicate himself to God in a religious state, in 547. He retired to Mount Sinai, which, from the time of the disciples of St. Anthony and St. Hilarion, had been always peopled by holy men, who, in imitation of Moses, when he received the law on that mountain, lived in the perpetual contemplation of heavenly things. Our novice, fearing the danger of dissipation and relaxation to which numerous communities are generally more exposed than others, chose not to live in the great monastery on the summit, but in an hermitage on the descent of the mountain, under the discipline of Martyrius, an holy ancient anchoret. By silence he curbed the insolent itch of talking about everything, an ordinary vice in learned men, but usually a mark of pride and self-sufficiency. By perfect humility and obedience he banished the dangerous desire of self-complacency in his actions. He never contradicted, never disputed with anyone. So perfect was his submission that he seemed to have no self-will. He undertook to sail through the deep sea of this mortal life securely, under the direction of a prudent guide, and shunned those rocks which he could not have escaped, had he presumed to steer alone, as he tells us.1 From the visible mountain he raised his heart, without interruption, in all his actions, to God, who is invisible; and, attentive to all the motions of his grace, studied only to do his will. Four years he spent in the trial of his own strength, and in learning the obligations of his state, before he made his religious profession, which was in the twentieth year of his age. In his writings he severely condemns engagements made by persons too young, or before a sufficient probation. By fervent prayer and fasting he prepared himself for the solemn consecration of himself to God, that the most intense fervour might make his holocaust the more perfect; and from that moment he seemed to be renewed in spirit; and his master admired the strides with which, like a mighty giant, the young disciple advanced daily more and more towards God, by self-denial, obedience, humility, and the uninterrupted exercises of divine love and prayer.
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