Love & Mercy Lifted Up

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Lenten Feria (Violet)
Eve of the Annunciation (White)

Today's readings:
[ Num 21:4-9; Ps 102:1-2, 15-22; Jn 8:21-30 ]

In today’s readings, we find the mercy of God in the very place of our suffering.

In Numbers, the people grow weary and speak against God, only to find themselves afflicted by serpents. Yet even here, judgment is not the final word. God instructs Moses to lift up a bronze serpent, and “everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live”. The healing comes not by escaping the consequence, but by turning toward the very sign of it—lifted up, transformed.

This image finds its fulfillment in Gospel of John, where Jesus says, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he”. The cross, like the bronze serpent, becomes the place where death is made the instrument of life. What appears as defeat is, in Franciscan vision, the perfect revelation of divine humility and love.

St. Francis saw in the crucified Christ not only salvation, but a pattern for living: to embrace rather than flee suffering, to trust that God is most present in what the world rejects. The psalmist cries, “Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress”, yet discovers that God “looks down from his holy height” to hear and redeem.

Today invites us to lift our gaze. Where we are tempted to grumble, to turn away, or to despair, we are instead called to behold Christ lifted up in love. In that gaze, even our wounds can become places of grace.

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