{"id":8874,"date":"2025-09-10T17:22:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/predication.net\/?p=8874"},"modified":"2025-09-10T17:22:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:22:05","slug":"feast-of-the-exaltation-of-the-holy-cross-joh-3-13-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/predication.net\/?p=8874","title":{"rendered":"Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Joh 3, 13-17"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Christ on the cross took away the poison of the evil serpent and freed Christians from the vitriol \u2026The cross is the gallows leading to death, and yet on this festive day, we celebrate the elevation of Christ’s cross. For on that wood Jesus took upon himself our sin and the evil of the world and defeated them with his love. That’s why we celebrate today. The word of God we have heard tells us about it and contrasts the poisonous snakes whose bite causes death and, on the other hand, the snake that saves. Let’s stop at these two paintings. Above all, there are snakes, attacking people who have fallen into the sin of grumbling for the umpteenth time with their bite. To grumble against God is not only to speak evil of him and to complain about him; it means that trust in him and in his promises has failed in the hearts of the Israelites. For God’s people, who walk through the desert towards the promised land, are overcome by fatigue and cannot endure the journey (see Num 21:4). People therefore lose their minds, lose hope, and at some point seem to forget the Lord’s promise: these people no longer have the strength to believe, that He is the one who leads their way to the rich and fertile land. It is not by chance that people whose trust in God has been exhausted are subject to snakebite. Deadly snakes resemble the first snake mentioned in the Bible in the book of Genesis, a tempter who poisoned the human heart to make him doubt God. In fact, it is in the form of a snake that the devil mistrusts Adam and Eve by convincing them that God is not good, but rather envies their freedom and happiness. And now, in the desert, snakes return, “poisonous snakes “(v. 6); that is, original sin returns. The Israelites doubt God, distrust him, grumble, and rebel against the one who gave them life, and so they go to their deaths, when the distrust of the heart leads here! Dear brothers and sisters, this first part of that story encourages us to take a closer look at the moments in our personal history and the history of the community when trust in the Lord and among us has failed. How many times have we hardened ourselves, disappointedly and grumpily, in our deserts, losing sight of the destination of the journey! Even in this great country, there is a desert that, although it offers a beautiful landscape to look at, at the same time speaks to us about the effort and aridity that we sometimes carry in our hearts. These are moments of weariness and trial, when we no longer have the strength to look up to God; they are situations of personal, ecclesiastical, and social life, when we are bitten by a snake of mistrust, which will inject into us the poisons of disillusionment and despondency, pessimism and resignation, lock us into our ego, and extinguish enthusiasm.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
However, there have been other painful bites in the history of this country: I mean the poisonous snakes of violence and atheistic persecution, that often troubled path on which people’s freedom was threatened and their dignity wounded. It is good for us to keep memories of what we have endured: we must not cut sure dark sides out of memory, otherwise we might think that they have already passed away like water and that the path of goodness is forever marked out. No, peace is never won once and for all; it must be fought for every day, as well as achieved through the coexistence of different ethnic groups and religious traditions, integral development, and social justice. If Kazakhstan is to grow even more “in brotherhood, dialogue and understanding [\u2026], build bridges of solidarity and cooperation with other people, nations and cultures “(sv. John Paul II, speech at the welcoming ceremony, September 22, 2001), everyone needs to be involved. Before that, it is necessary to renew the act of faith towards the Lord: to look to Him, to look at Him, to learn from His universal and crucified love.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So we come to the second image of the snake that saves. While the people were dying from the snake bite, God heard Moses’ intercessory prayer and said to him: “Make a snake and raise it on a stake; everyone bitten when he looks at it, stays alive “(Nm 21.8). And indeed, “when the snake bit someone and they looked at the copper snake, they remained alive “(v. 9). However, we can ask ourselves: why did God not simply destroy the poisonous snakes instead of these laborious instructions to Moses? This way of acting reveals to us his actions in the face of evil, sin, and people’s distrust. Then, as today, in the great spiritual struggle that will inhabit history until the end, God does not destroy the meanness that man freely commits: poisonous snakes do not disappear, they are still there, lurking, they can bite at any time. So, what has changed? What does God do?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Jesus explains this in the Gospel: “As Moses exalted the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be exalted so that everyone who believes may have eternal life through him “(John 3,14 15). Here comes the turning point: the serpent that saves has come among us; it is Jesus who, after his exaltation on the cross, will not allow attacking poisonous snakes to bring us death. Compared to our mundaneness, God gives us a new height: if we fix our gaze on Jesus, gnawing evil can no longer control us, because He on the cross took upon Himself the poison of sin and death and defeated His destructive power. This is precisely what the Father did in the face of the spreading evil in the world; he gave us Jesus, who approached us in a way we could never have imagined: “S the one who was without sin, he acted for us as the greatest sinner, so that through him, we might be righteous with God “(2 Cor 5,21). Therein lies the infinite greatness of God’s mercy: Jesus, who “became a son” for us, Jesus, who on the cross so to speak “stayed the hand of death “, so that at the sight of him we can resist the poisonous bites of the evil snakes that attack us.<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"