This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
Close as we are to Holy Week, today’s readings are a clear foreshadowing of those days.
The first reading speaks of those once favorable to the prophet, who now seek to trap him from every side.
The passage in the first reading prefigures the events of today’s gospel, wherein the Pharisees are ready to kill Jesus, to stone Him. If the gospel had gone differently, there would have been no Calvary, no crucifixion, and Jesus would have died here.
But it was not to be. Scriptures had foretold the manner of Jesus’ death; the events in the desert had foreshadowed it, where the seraph serpent was lifted up for the curing of the Israelites.
The Son of Man had to be lifted up, lifted up on the Cross. This was not the Pharisees’ show. The Passion was to be a very specific hour foreordained by Divine Providence. It is God’s world; His enemies are just living in it. Living in it, and against their own desires, fulfilling God’s will by perpetrating an event that is destined to spread merciful grace across the entire world.
Jesus was marching firmly toward His hour, acutely aware that His Father was completely in charge.
Do we do the same with our life’s crosses? Or do we lose hope and trust when they come? Or are we certain, as Jesus was, that they fall within the ambit of Divine Providence, and that He will never take us where He cannot protect us in His grace?
Lack of trust is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as is trust in God. When we do not trust, we truncate God’s ability to care for us, for He plays by His own rules in respecting our free choice to distance ourselves from Him with doubt; but when we do trust, we open the doors wide for Him to enter into our hearts with the gift of His salvation and sanctification.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to give you sufficient faith in His Divine love and Providence, to recognize His invitation to be purified and to help Him save through the crosses He allows into your life. Ask Him, not to reduce your suffering, but to grant you the same firm resolve of faithfulness to Him that He gave to Jesus.
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