IV Lent Sunday, "Laetare" (10 March 2024)

1." All the leaders of Judah, the priests and the people multiplied their infidelities... they defiled the Temple to such an extent that the Lord's anger against his people reached its climax". The first reading of today's liturgy of the word is taken from the second Book of Chronicles and is an interesting example of the theology of history. We read the events of life and history from the bottom up as we can perceive them, and here we see narrated in synthesis the whole story of the Babylonian deportation, which for the Jewish people was a long and great suffering with a general bewilderment caused precisely by their infidelities" with no further remedy". In short, the chosen people had turned away from their Lord, and the destruction of the Temple was perceived as a sign of divine abandonment. But can God deny his people? No, indeed he remains forever faithful to his promises and his covenant. And so, through Cyrus, King of Persia, he goes to meet the unfaithful people to bring them back home. King Cyrus' policy was in fact to send back to their countries of origin all the people who had been deported. And the Jews benefited from this, recognising in this decision an unhoped-for and undeserved intervention on the part of the Lord, despite the fact that they had rejected his incessant reminders coming through the prophets. Their leaders and priests had led the people into unfaithfulness, even tainting them with sacrilegious practices and the desecration of the Temple, which was eventually destroyed. The unfaithfulness of God's people had gone so far as to become the cause of their own misfortunes.  The author of the book of Chronicles emphasises two essential things here: first, God is always faithful, he remains 'the God of our fathers' despite the unfaithfulness of the people and will do everything to prevent them from falling into the abyss.  Secondly, when the people are in the precipice, he will find a way to get them out because nothing is impossible for him. Today as yesterday, God does not hide his face and this comforts us even amidst the din of a humanity that seems determined to abandon the ways of the Lord. From this awareness springs our hope and, halfway through the Lenten journey, the soul of believers is even invited to rejoice because this Sunday, called 'laetare' in Latin, already gives us a foretaste of the triumph of divine mercy at Easter. Moreover, the Old Testament text of the first reading prepares us for the gospel, for Nicodemus' encounter with Jesus, and invites us to contemplate Christ lifted up on the cross like the bronze serpent in the desert. The message is clear: we are saved not by our own merits but by divine mercy: for by grace, St Paul reminds us, we have been saved!

2. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life". What is the relationship between the poisonous serpent that attacked many Jews in the Sinai desert and the Son of Man lifted up on the cross? It is worth returning to this episode in the book of Exodus when the people on their way to the promised land were attacked by poisonous snakes and perceived this as divine retribution for their complaints and recriminations. They then begged Moses to intercede for an end to this scourge deserved by their infidelities, and Moses pointed them to this pagan rite: he had a bronze serpent hoisted up on a pole, which in the collective view represented the healing god, and their belief was that all they had to do was look up at the serpent to be healed (cf. Nb 21:7-9). At first sight, it seems pure magic, but this is not so because Moses transforms a superstitious rite into an act of faith. He does not offend the sensitivity of the people, but gradually, starting from their ancestral traditions, leads them to value them, taking care however to understand well that there is only one God and it is the God of the Covenant who freed them from Egyptian slavery. He therefore commands him to make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole; whoever is bitten and looks at it will stay alive. In the language of the Bible, 'to look at' means to worship, but it is not a matter of worshipping a fetish, much less a snake made by human hands. Rather, it teaches them that when they turn their eyes on the serpent they will worship in their hearts the one true God and not a material object that has come out of their hands. In the gospel Jesus takes up this Old Testament event to offer a new teaching: just as to be healed it was enough to lift our eyes in faith to the serpent no longer considered an idol, so to obtain spiritual healing, our deliverance and salvation we must look with the eyes of the heart, that is, adore Jesus who on the cross offered himself as a victim for the forgiveness of our sins.

3. When Jesus is hoisted up on the wood of the cross John writes: "They will turn their eyes to him whom they have pierced (John 19:37). To lift up one's eyes means to believe in Jesus, recognising in him the love of God. The evangelist insists on inviting people to adore the crucified Christ because when faced with the mystery of the cross, two human attitudes are possible: rejection or acceptance. Welcoming is faith - John reminds us of this in the prologue of his gospel when he states: "He came among his own people, but his own did not receive him. To those, however, who did receive him, he gave power to become children of God" (1:9-12). This statement is taken up in today's gospel because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, and so whoever believes in him does not perish but has eternal life. And he adds: "God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him (3:16-17) . In the Gospel text we are meditating on, the verb to believe returns no less than five times. And juxtaposing the bronze serpent with the exaltation of Christ on the cross clearly shows the enormous leap that takes place between the Old and New Testaments. In Jesus, everything takes on a new dimension: in the desert it was only a matter of the people of the covenant, on the cross Jesus offers salvation to every human being and to the whole world, inviting everyone to believe, that is, to trust him, in order to have life. Twice in fact he returns to repeat that every person who believes will obtain eternal life. So no longer a physical healing, but an inner transformation. The tradition of the Church from the earliest centuries has interpreted this inner renewal as the conversion of man, when in the depths of his being he allows himself to be renewed by divine love.

4. Contemplating Christ's sacrifice on the cross, the evangelist quotes another passage of Scripture: "They will look upon him whom they have pierced" (Jn.19:37). This is the prophet Zechariah, who then explains what the transformation of man, the work of divine mercy, consists in: "I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and consolation: they shall look upon him whom they have pierced (Za 12:10). The heart transformed by God's mercy will be far from the protests and recriminations of the wilderness. Whoever worships the crucified Christ in spirit and truth has understood and accepts God's love for him. The first Christian communities regarded the cross not as an instrument of torture, but as the eminent and gratuitous proof of this infinite divine tenderness. The Apostle Paul reminded us of this last Sunday when he spoke of Christ crucified: scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles; but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God (cf. 1 Co 1:23-25). Ultimately, the word of God today invites us to confront ourselves with the mystery of Christ's cross, which we can consider in two different ways: as the proof of man's hatred and cruelty, but also and above all as the shattering example of Christ's gentleness and forgiveness, who accepted to be crucified there to show how far God's love for humanity reaches.  To Philip, who in the cenacle after the Last Supper asks Jesus to show the face of the Father, he replies: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? Jn 14:9). Contemplating Jesus on the cross, we recognise and adore God's tenderness, whatever the degree of men's hatred against him. It is a contagious love that heals our hearts of all sickness. In this Lenten season, the liturgy invites us to a conversion of gaze: it exhorts us to remain in silence contemplating Jesus on the cross. From this encounter of gazes is born the hope of a new humanity that fears neither pain nor death. In those who abandon themselves in the arms of our dying Redeemer springs the certainty of the victory of love over all forms of hatred and violence, of sadness and fear. It is only necessary to have the courage, despite limitations and sins, to accept this invitation: 'they will turn their gaze to him whom they have pierced'. More than a simple invitation, knowing that the future in biblical language is an imperative, here Christ commands us to turn our eyes towards him. It is a command of love! In short, everything he attempts to the extreme, so that the world may accept his love and be saved.

Happy Sunday! + Giovanni D'Ercole

P.S.A text to continue meditating on: Beauty will save the world

Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes in The Idiot: "Hippolit turned to the prince and asked him aloud, to the amazement of all: 'Is it true, Prince, that you once said that the world will be saved by 'beauty'? "Gentlemen," he said, turning to everyone, "the prince assures us that beauty will save the world! And I, for my part, assure you that if he has such outlandish ideas, it is because he is in love'. 

What beauty is Dostoevsky referring to? A good commentary is the famous painting 'Body of Christ Dead in the Tomb' by Hans Holbein the Younger 1521, to which Dostoevsky refers: it is an oil painting on panel Dimensions 30.5×200 cm Location. Kunstmuseum, Basel, easily found on the internet.

*How is it possible - I imagine Dostoevsky asked himself while admiring that destroyed body - that Christ paid 'that' price to save us?

Is Christ the beauty who will save the world? He who has been called 'the most beautiful among the sons of men' (Psalm 44) could testify to unparalleled physical beauty. But Holbein's painting shows a disfigured Christ, reminding us rather of Isaiah's prophecy: "There is in Him neither beauty that attracts the eyes, nor beauty that pleases" (Is 53:2). Let us see, then, what beauty are we talking about? Ultimately, there is no greater beauty than the love that has conquered death. The love of the One who gives His life for His friends is the most beautiful thing the world knows. The beauty that saves, that truly saves, is the beauty of love that goes to the extreme of redemptive sacrifice. Therefore, the beauty that will save the world is Christ. God became man to save us, died to give us life and offer us resurrection. The story of the corpse that Holbein so cruelly portrays has an epilogue, or rather, a second part, which confirms the triumph of beauty over death: the overwhelming beauty of the Resurrection. In the words of Revelation: 'And the city needed neither sun nor moon, for the light of God shone upon it, and the Lamb was its lamp' (Rev 21:23).