The first reading today tells us of the Israelites in the desert growing weary at the tediousness of the route by which the Lord is leading them. For their ingratitude the Lord punished them with a plague of poisonous snakes. The people then turned to Moses and asked him to intercede for them. The Lord took pity on them and showed His loving power and wish to heal them (and not let them die) of the snake bites. He instructed Moses to make a bronze snake. Those who gazed upon it in faith would recover from the deadly bites. The Lord of love, mercy and patience intervenes in a most extraordinary way in delivering an obstinate, troublesome and unfaithful people. The Responsorial Psalm 102 echoes this response of the Lord: "He looked down from Heaven to the earth that He might hear the groans of the prisoners and free those condemned to die."

The Gospel takes up this theme of the intervention of a loving Father in saving from destruction (sin) His unfaithful people. It is in the lifting up of the Son to the Father that we will be healed of our division, ambition, anger, hatred and unbelief. We must look up at the Crucified, believing that we will be healed. We will then know 'Who he is', and we too will be lifted up with Him into the glory of the Father forever. 'He made peace by his death on the cross; (Col. 1:20).