In today's first reading, Numbers 21: 4-9, we meet the Israelites on the Red Sea road, a road taken to bypass the land of Edom. "...[W]ith their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, 'Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in his desert, where there is no food or water? we are disgusted with this wretched food!" God's anger is aroused, so to speak and in "punishment sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died." Acknowledging their sin against God, the people repent and ask God to take the serpents away from them. Moses prays on their behalf and God instructs Moses to "make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live."
We are being "bitten" by the coronavirus throughout the world. And, no doubt, some people are complaining bitterly against God and praying: "Remove this "saraph serpent" from our midst. Let us look to Jesus upon the cross as the Israelites who looked up at the mounted serpent after being bitten and lived.With the psalmist in today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 102, we pray:
O Lord, hear my prayer,
and let my cry come to you.
Hide not your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
in the day when I call, answer me speedily....
Let this be written for the generation to come,
and let his future creatures praise the Lord:
'The Lord looked down from his holy height,
from heaven he beheld the earth,
to hear the groaning of [those affected by the coronavirus]
to release those doomed to die.'"
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