So that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life

TUESDAY 21 APRIL (Jn 3,7-15)

Jesus says: “As Moses raised the serpent in the desert, so the Son of man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” In every similitude and also in every figure, some things are similar and many also dissimilar. What is similar and dissimilar between the figure of the snake and the reality that is Christ Jesus? We read in the Book of Numbers: “From Mount Hor they set out on the Red Sea road, to by-pass the land of Edom. But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!” In punishment the Lord sent among the people seraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. 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 from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses, “Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover.” 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 recovered”  (Num 21,4-9). The sin of murmuring against God and Moses, the lethal bite of snakes, the remedy that the Lord gives and the look of faith to be healed and not to die are similar.

First of all, what is dissimilar is sin, which is disobedience to every command of the Lord, and which is consumed in the universal idolatry and immorality. There is Christ Jesus who must be raised on the cross and die on it. There is the conversion and abandonment of all disobedience, idolatry and immorality to be healed. There is the look of faith that is fulfilled for the preaching of the Gospel of life and becoming, through baptism, the body of Christ to live with Christ, in Christ and for Christ always animated and moved by the Holy Spirit. Not only must one look at Christ, but he must become one: one life and one mission, with Christ. And more. The flesh of Christ must be eaten to live for him. His blood must be drunk as a true antidote so as never to sin ever again. Whoever becomes one with him believes in Christ, in the same way that he and the Father are one. The mystery is great.

Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘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.”

If life is in faith in Christ, if who does not believe remains in death, why do today many disciples of Jesus affirm that faith in Christ is not necessary to have salvation and that all without Christ are saved? Can we deceive the whole world, leaving it in death forever, because of our idleness and missionary sloth and foolishness and ignorance in understanding the Word of Jesus? You cannot read the Gospel from the ambo and then affirm the opposite from the teaching posts and from any other place where Christian doctrine is taught. The Apostle, the minister of the Word, was not sent into the world by Christ Jesus to say, announce and teach his thoughts, but only the thought of Christ Jesus. But not an imagined thought, but the Word of the Gospel, according to the truth placed in it by the Holy Spirit and to which He always leads. It is fair to say that today there is a strong, indeed an abysmal separation between the thought of Christ Jesus revealed and kept in the Gospel and what the vast majority of his disciples think. It is as if the mind were protected by a bronze wall, which hinders any transfer into it of the light and truth of the Holy Spirit.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that our thought is the thought of Christ Jesus.