＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

Numbers 21:4b-9

From Mount Hor they set out by the Red Sea road to go around the land of Edom.

The people were  discouraged  by  the  journey  and began to com­plain against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is neither bread nor water here and we are disgusted with this tasteless manna.”

ahweh then sent fiery serpents against them. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, speaking against Yahweh and against you. Plead with Yahweh to take the serpents away.”

Moses pleaded for the people and Yahweh said to him, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard; whoever has been bitten and then looks at it shall live.”  So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard. Whenever a man was bitten, he looked towards the bronze serpent and he lived.

 

Ps 78:1bc-2, 34-35, 36-37, 38

Do not forget the works of the Lord!

 

＊＊＊ 2nd Reading ＊＊＊

Philippians 2:6-11

 Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped,  but emptied himself, taking on the nature of a servant, made in human likeness, and in his appearance found as a man.

 He humbled himself by being obedient to death, death on the cross. That is why God exalted him and gave him the Name which outshines all names, so that at the Name of Jesus all knees should bend in heaven, on earth and among the dead,  and all tongues proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father.

＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

John 3:13-17

No one has ever gone up to heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man.  As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

 Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world; instead, through him the world is to be saved.

 

Gospel Reflection：

As the world exerts efforts to advance comfort and painfree life, there is increasing evasion from the message of Christ’s love through His death on the cross. Watching movies like The Passion of the Christ, many are asking whether this violent passage is necessary.

But try visiting a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. Would you ask: “Is it necessary for you to have that pain?” Isn’t it more helpful that you stay with him or her and that you make him or her feel not abandoned in that suffering?

The first reading speaks of the brazen serpent as antidote to the serpents’bites. Then, Jesus empties Himself and suffers to invade and defeat this world’s afflictions.

That is what the embrace of the cross does to those crucified by illness, family distress, and brokenness. Someone cared to enter and bear their pain.