Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Meeting Our sins On The Cross

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 3.28.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

FIFTH WEEK OF LENT
John 8:21-30

Friends, in today’s Gospel,
Jesus predicts his death on the cross.

We are meant to see on that cross not simply a violent display
but rather our own ugliness. denial, unspeakable cruelty, scapegoating, fear, etc.
In other words, all of our dysfunction is revealed on that cross.

So far so awful.
But we can’t stop telling the story at this point.
Dante and every other spiritual master know that the only way up is down.
When we live in convenient darkness, unaware of our sins,
we will never make spiritual progress.
So we need the light, however painful it is.
But then we can begin to rise.

On the cross of Jesus, we meet our own sin.
But we also meet the divine mercy
that has taken that sin upon himself in order to swallow it up.
We have found, in that cross, the way up.
We want to hold up this thing that was considered too horrible to look at.
We want to embrace and kiss the very source of our pain.

[MurphsLaw]

Nm 21

Then the people came to Moses and said,
"We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.
Pray the LORD to take the serpents away from us."
So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,
"Make a saraph 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.

+++Jesus said to the Pharisees:
"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.+++

[No name given]

Amen 🙏🏻!!!!