Daily Mass Gospel Reflection

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares that he must be lifted up to bring eternal life to believers.

Why would God’s salvation of the human race have to include something as horrifying as crucifixion?
We live in a time when the human predicament is regularly denied,
explained away, or ignored. Despite the massive counter-evidence from the moral disasters of the last century,
we are still beguiled by the myth of progress:
with just enough technical advancement, psychological insight,
and personal liberation, we will solve our problems.

But with this sort of stupidity and superficiality the Bible has no truck.
The scriptural authors understand sin not so much as a series of acts but as a condition in which we are stuck,
something akin to an addiction or a contagious disease.
No amount of merely human effort could possibly solve the problem.

With this biblical realism in mind, we can begin to comprehend why the Crucifixion of the Son of God was necessary.
The just rapport between God and human beings could not be reestablished
either through our moral effort or with simply a word of forgiveness.
Something had to be done—and God alone could do it.

+++Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“‘You must be born from above.’
The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes,
but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes;
so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus answered and said to him,
‘How can this happen?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this?
Amen, amen, I say to you,
we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen,
but you people do not accept our testimony.
If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe,
how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
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.”+++

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