Daily Retreat 04/04/06

2006 Apr 4 Tue: Lenten Weekday/ Isidore of Seville, bp, dr

Nm 21: 4-9/ Ps 101(102): 2-3. 16-18. 19-21/ Jn 8: 21-30

From today’s readings: "We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.... O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to You.... 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. "

Disdaining God’s Way

When God’s chosen people were enslaved in Egypt, they called out to God, and He delivered them through His servant Moses. But even after being delivered, they continued to need God’s saving help and call out to Him - when they were pursued by Pharaoh, and made the crossing at the Red Sea, when they had no food, and God gave them Manna, when they had no water, and God gave them water from the rock.

At Mount Hor, the Israelites disdained God’s sufficient grace and His chosen means of providing for them. They couldn’t really say that God had abandoned them - there were too many counter-proofs! But they could say God wasn’t giving them what they wanted, and so they complained against His Providence.

And so, in punishment, they were plagued by serpents, and only when they recognized their sinfulness, did God use a sign of their sinfulness (the bronze serpent) to heal them. Centuries later, God raised up the sign of His Son’s Cross as the definitive remedy for all sin - when we recognize the times we have disdained God’s grace and His will because things aren’t the way we want them to be, our sinfulness can only be healed by the saving power of His Cross!