First Reading
Numbers 21:4-9
From Mount Hor the children of Israel set out on the Red Sea road,
to bypass 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 saraph 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 away from us.”
So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,
“Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.”
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 lived.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 102:2-3, 16-18, 19-21
R. (2) O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.
O LORD, hear my prayer,
and let my cry come to you.
Hide not your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
in the day when I call, answer me speedily.
R. O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.
The nations shall revere your name, O LORD,
and all the kings of the earth your glory,
When the LORD has rebuilt Zion
and appeared in his glory;
When he has regarded the prayer of the destitute,
and not despised their prayer.
R. O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.
Let this be written for the generation to come,
and let his future creatures praise the LORD:
“The LORD looked down from his holy height,
from heaven he beheld the earth,
To hear the groaning of the prisoners,
to release those doomed to die.”
R. O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.
Gospel
John 8:21-30
Jesus said to the Pharisees:
“I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.
Where I am going you cannot come.”
So the Jews said,
“He is not going to kill himself, is he,
because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?”
He said to them, “You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.
That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.
For if you do not believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins.”
So they said to him, “Who are you?”
Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning.
I have much to say about you in condemnation.
But the one who sent me is true,
and what I heard from him I tell the world.”
They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.
So Jesus said to them,
“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.
The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone,
because I always do what is pleasing to him.”
Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
REFLECTION
SOURCE: One Bread One Body
TITLE: CROSS PEACE
"Where I am going you cannot come." –John 8:21
Jesus told His sinful audience that He was going somewhere that they couldn't come (Jn 8:21). One possible way to interpret this saying is to identify His destination as the cross. In our old, sinful nature, we "cannot come" (Jn 8:21) to the cross.
If we haven't committed our lives to Jesus, we "cannot come" near the cross; rather, we flee from it (see Mk 14:50). Chained to our old, sinful nature, we are doomed to die in our sins (Jn 8:21, 24). We are "enemies of the cross" (Phil 3:18). In fact, when we live in our sins, the only time we come near the cross is for the purpose of nailing Jesus to it (see Heb 6:6; Catechism, 598).
What a miserable dilemma! To avoid dying in our sins, we need to believe that Jesus is God, I AM (Jn 8:24). However, we need to come to the cross to realize that Jesus is God (Jn 8:28).
Therefore, in His mercy, Jesus came down from heaven to go where we could not: the cross. When the crucified Jesus was lifted up on the cross, He snatched up our sinful nature and nailed it to the cross to be crucified with Him (Col 2:14). Hanging on the cross, Jesus draws all to Himself (Jn 12:32). By the grace and favor of God, we sinners who flee from the cross are given the desire to turn and look on Jesus. If we accept this grace, we will realize this crucified Jesus is God (Jn 8:28). We will believe in Him, accept Him as Lord and Savior (Jn 3:14-15), and be healed (Nm 21:9).
Come to the cross today. Be set free in Jesus.
PRAYER: Jesus, nail Your crucified self to me so I can never leave You. May I be crucified to the world and the world to me (Gal 6:14). May I be a man or a woman of Your cross.
PROMISE: "You will surely die in your sins unless you come to believe that I AM." –Jn 8:24
PRAISE: Robert has found direction to his life by spending time before the Blessed Sacrament.
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