O HAPPY FAULT, O NECESSARY SIN OF ADAM THAT GAINED FOR US SO GREAT A SAVIOR

For Tuesday of Passiontide, the Old Testament reading for the Mass is about the serpents who bit the Jews in the desert and some of them dying. Moses is directed by God to make a bronze serpent and mount it on a poll and when those who had been bitten looked at it, they will be healed.

Did the Jews of that period know that you could make a similar antidote for snake bites out of the very  poison that can kill you? I doubt it. Yet a similar principle is at work in the bronze serpent fashioned by Moses at God's command. 

And this is related to Jesus to whom we look to save us from our sins. He becomes sin for us and takes our sins unto Himself and His Body.   "Go and find it there, in the wounds of the Lord and your sins will be healed, your wounds will be healed, your sins will be forgiven."

The following is very true! Can you guess who said it? 
 
“Christianity is not a philosophical doctrine, it’s not a programme for life survival or education, or for peacemaking. These are consequences. Christianity is a person, a person raised on the Cross, a person who annihilated himself to save us, who became sin. Just as sin was raised up in the desert, here God who was made man and made sin for us was raised up. All our sins were there. You cannot understand Christianity without understanding this profound humiliation of the Son of God who humbled himself and became a servant unto death, even death on a cross, in order to serve us.”

This is why the apostle Paul said we do not have other things to boast about, apart from our sins, and this is our misery. But through the mercy of God, we rejoice in the crucified Christ. It’s for this reason that ‘there is no Christianity without the Cross and there’s no Cross without Jesus Christ.

“The Cross is not an ornament that we must always put in the churches, there on the altar. It is not a symbol that distinguishes us from others. The Cross is mystery, the mystery of God who humbles himself, he becomes ‘nothing.’ He becomes sin. Where is your sin? ‘I don’t know, I have so many here.’ No, your sin is there, in the Cross. Go and find it there, in the wounds of the Lord and your sins will be healed, your wounds will be healed, your sins will be forgiven. The forgiveness that God gives us is not the same as cancelling a debt that we have with Him, the forgiveness that God gives us are the wounds of his Son on the Cross, raised up on the Cross. May he draw us towards Him and may we allow ourselves to be healed by Him.