We are nearing the summit of Lent, and today’s readings turn our gaze in a single direction: upward. Israel must look up at a bronze serpent. The psalmist looks up, pleading that the Lord hear his cry. And Jesus speaks of the hour when he will be “lifted up”; that in this lifting the world may finally see who he is.
The venom of complaint
Numbers shows a people exhausted by a long road. Israel has been rescued from Egypt, fed with manna, led by cloud and fire. Yet “their patience wore out,” and complaint took hold: “We are disgusted with this wretched food.” In Scripture, murmuring is never a minor vice; it reveals a deeper distrust. The people do not merely dislike the menu; they suspect the Giver.
The saraph serpents externalize what was already coiling within them. Sin is a venom that moves fast: it narrows vision to the immediate lack, corrodes gratitude, and pushes the heart to interpret God’s providence as indifference or harm. The punishment in Numbers is severe, but it is also revelatory; showing Israel what complaint becomes when it runs its course.
Modern life knows this venom. Exhausted by delays, thwarted by detours, we come to despise the very “ordinary” graces that keep us alive: the daily bread of prayer, the patient fidelity of loved ones, the stability of the Church’s worship. When these start to feel like “wretched food,” it is a sign not that the manna has soured, but that trust has.
The strange cure: look and live
God does not remove the serpents. He commands Moses to forge their likeness and lift it high; those who look upon it are healed. The cure is not flight from the sign of death, but a gaze of trust at it under God’s promise. To be saved, Israel must face what has wounded them, within the Word God speaks.
This is the Gospel’s grammar. Jesus says, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM.” He will not be simply taken away from suffering; he will be lifted up through it. The Cross is as strange a remedy as the bronze serpent. It is the likeness of our sin and violence; brutal wood and iron, shame and exposure; yet it becomes the place where death is undone. As Saint Paul will say, God sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh” and condemned sin there (Romans 8:3).
To “look and live” is not a passing glance. It is the steady, obedient gaze that consents to be read by the Cross even as we read it: here is what sin does; here is what Love does in response. The first humbles, the second heals.
“You will die in your sins” or believe “I AM”
In John 8, Jesus speaks with bracing clarity: “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” He is not offering a technique for self-improvement but the decision of faith in his divine identity. “I AM” is the name revealed to Moses at the bush. The one lifted up is not a tragic hero or wise moralist; he is the living God incarnate, refusing abandonment; “The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone”; and revealing the Father’s heart precisely where the world expects only judgment.
The alternative is stark: either life gathered into the One from above, or a death enclosed within sins that we will not relinquish. The Gospel does not flatter our capacities; it confronts our need. Yet it does so with mercy: “Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.” The very warning becomes an opening.
Prayer that rises from the dust
The responsorial psalm gives the words of those who finally look up: “O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you… When the Lord has regarded the prayer of the destitute, and not despised their prayer.” If complaint tightens the chest, this prayer loosens it. It confesses distress without accusation. It expects not an easy road but a faithful God who “looked down… to release those doomed to die.”
Notice the psalm’s horizon: “Let this be written for the generation to come.” Israel wrote down the cure so that those not yet bitten; or not yet aware; could live. The Church hands on the same: not spiritual novelties, but the saving pattern that never grows old; confession and trust, gaze and healing.
Belonging to what is above
Jesus contrasts two belongings: “You belong to what is below; I belong to what is above.” He is not scorning creation; he is exposing an orientation. To belong “below” is to be determined by immediacy, to judge truth by usefulness, to regard suffering as an absolute veto. To belong “above” is to receive life as gift and mission, to allow the Father’s will to define what is real, to see in the Cross not the failure of love but its form.
Lent trains this belonging. Fasting loosens the grip of the immediate. Almsgiving pries open the logic of usefulness. Prayer returns us to the Father. None of these practices earns grace; they make space for it. They reeducate desire so that, when we lift our eyes to the Crucified, we recognize not a scandal to flee but a Presence to trust.
Practicing the gaze
As Holy Week approaches, a few concrete ways to “look and live”:
- Place a crucifix where your eyes fall often. When weariness or complaint rises, pause and simply look. Say, “Jesus, I trust in you,” or repeat the psalm’s refrain: “O Lord, hear my prayer.”
- Make a thorough examination of conscience before the Triduum. Confess specific complaints that have hardened into ingratitude or contempt. Let absolution draw out the venom.
- Read John 8 slowly. Each time Jesus says “I AM,” linger. Ask for the grace not merely to understand but to entrust yourself to the One who speaks.
- When asked to carry an unwelcome task today, do it as a small consent to being “lifted up” with him; quietly, without display.
The Father who does not leave
“He has not left me alone,” Jesus says, “because I always do what is pleasing to him.” On the Cross, he will cry the psalm of abandonment; yet underneath runs this unbroken current of communion. Our healing shares in both: we learn to voice our distress with the psalmist and to rest our weight upon the Father with the Son. The serpents may not immediately vanish. But the venom loses its power when faith lifts its eyes.
To those who feel the sting today; of sin, of delay, of a hope deferred; the Word stands firm: look and live. The One lifted up is the I AM, and he has come not to despise your prayer but to draw you into the life that is above, already present, already reaching for you from the wood.