Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures, and as we draw ever closer to the beginning of the Holy Week, we are reminded of the important events that we are going to commemorate and focus on during this upcoming Holy Week and Paschal Triduum. We heard of the great love which the Lord has shown us all that He sent us His Son to bring us all into reconciliation with Him, so that by His ultimate show of the most generous and enduring love of God, He might restore hope to all of us sinners, and bringing us all into the justification of those who have been made worthy by God’s grace. We are reminded as we come towards the end of this Lenten season that by God’s most generous mercy, we have the means to reach Him and to be once again fully beloved and worthy of Him.

In our first reading today, taken from the Book of Numbers we heard of the account of what happened during the time of the Exodus of the Israelites from the land of Egypt where they had been enslaved for centuries towards the land of Canaan, the land promised by the Lord for His people to be their own land and dwelling place. It was there during this journey that the Israelites, having frequently and persistently grumbled and disobeyed the Lord, rebelled and complained against Him, despite all the good things that God had done for their sake. They complained that what they had received were the tasteless manna and they were not keen on journeying through the desert as they had done. Many among them had also grumbled saying that they should have remained in Egypt where they would have good food to eat even though they were enslaved by the Egyptians.

For their lack of faith and trust in Him, the Lord sent fiery serpents as we have heard, and how many of the people were struck by those fiery serpents and perished in the desert. This represented and showed to us the consequences of sin, which is death, that has struck upon the rebellious people of Israel. By their rebellion and disobedience against God, they have sinned against Him, and for their refusal to trust in God and to love Him wholeheartedly, therefore, they had to endure separation and sundering from the Lord and Master of all life. Yet, when the people sought forgiveness from God and showed repentance for their many sins, God showed His mercy and love, offering the assurance of new life and salvation, by what He had told Moses to do, in crafting a bronze serpent and putting them on a standard, promising that all those who were bitten and gaze upon the bronze serpent would not perish but live.

This raising of the bronze serpent of Moses, later on known as Nehushtan, was in fact a prefigurement of Christ’s sacrifice and offering on Calvary, the moment when He bore all of our many sins upon Himself, on His Cross, and was raised on the Cross high for everyone to see. Just like the bronze serpent of Moses raised up high with the figure of the serpent that brought death to the people of God, representing sin and the punishments for sin, the Cross of Christ with the Lord being nailed on it, showed forth the salvation of God through the sins of mankind that He Himself had borne, endured and persevered through, in all the wounds and stripes that He had to face. Yet, amidst all of these, He showed us all His most wonderful love and desire to be reunited with us, by offering us freely His own Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood, broken and shared for all of us to partake, that we may be saved through Him.

Then, from our Gospel passage today, we heard of the account from the Gospel according to St. John the Apostle and Evangelist in which we heard of the moment when the Lord Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who sought to destroy Him and to plot against Him for having disagreed with them and threatened their influence and teachings among the people of God. That was when the Lord revealed to them more of the truth about Himself, how He had come into their midst as sent by the Father to bring about the salvation of the world. He also revealed how He would eventually soon be raised for all to see, much like that of the bronze serpent of Moses, so that through this act, He would become the source of salvation to all who saw Him and believed in Him.

As we heard from our first reading today, this moment of the Crucifixion and its significance as revealed earlier on through the bronze serpent of Moses served as a reminder for all of us of what we are preparing for during this season of Lent. The Lord has reminded us all of everything which He had done for our sake in bearing the massive burden of our many sins, which should have been ours to suffer from. But the Lord in His infinite and ever enduring love for each and every one of us continue to provide for us and reach out to us, desiring our reunion with Him, through our repentance and our willingness to embrace His love and mercy. And thus, as we gaze upon the Lord on His Cross, we should remember just how fortunate and beloved all of us have been, to be shown this most wonderful love of God manifested to us.

Let us therefore deepen our relationship with God and learn to focus our attention and efforts particularly as we are about to enter into the more solemn time of Holy Week, and as we are already in this period of Passiontide, where our attentions are brought to focus on the important events and mysteries that we are about to commemorate during that sacred period and time, leading towards the Paschal Triduum, the most important moments in the history of our salvation, when God Himself offered His own life, His own Most Precious Body and Blood to be the perfect and most worthy offering on our behalf, to bring about our certain reconciliation with our loving God and Father, as He promised us all His constant care and love, giving us opportunities one after another to help us to attain this salvation by His grace, love and mercy.

In this remaining time of Lent before the important events of Holy Week and Paschal Triduum, let us all therefore make good use of this time that we have been provided with so that we may come to realise the state of our sinfulness and corruption because of the sins which we have committed in life. Let us not tarry or delay any longer, but strive instead to seek God and His forgiveness as soon as possible, that by His grace and love, we may truly be cleansed and freed from the chains of our sins, that being purified and made clean once again, we may be truly worthy of God and His love, no longer separated from Him due to our sins. Let us realise that sin is truly something that can bring us all a lot of danger, as what the Israelites in the past had experienced, and we should hence turn away from the path of sin, embracing once again God’s love in its fullest. May God be with us always, and may He strengthen and guide us in our journey towards Him. Amen.