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On the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Catholic Church provides the following Gospel, where Jesus makes a specific connection to an Old Testament event.
Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
The connection makes the most sense when reading the Old Testament account of the event.
The bronze serpent
Pope Benedict XVI summarized the Old Testament story in an Angelus message he gave in 2012:
The reference is to the episode in which, during the Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites were attacked by poisonous serpents and many of them died. God then commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent and to set it on a pole; anyone bitten by serpents was cured by looking at the bronze serpent (cf. Number 21:4-9).
Jesus specifically points to this episode as a foreshadowing of what would happen to himself on the cross.
Benedict XVI further comments by explaining how these two events are spiritually related:
Jesus was to be raised likewise on the Cross, so that anyone in danger of death because of sin, may be saved by turning with faith to him who died for our sake: “for God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
Whenever we gaze upon a crucifix, we can think back to the story of Moses and the bronze serpent, and how the cross can be an instrument of spiritual healing.
We are all in need of healing. Jesus came to earth to heal us, both body and soul, and to bring us to a place of eternal healing, where all of our tears will be wiped away.
