3 March 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
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“And just 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.” John 3:14–15
Today we stand at the middle of the Great Fast, and our Church does something striking: it lifts up the Cross. The Panchangam calls this day Pakuthi Nombu, Mid-Fast, and names it “the setting up of Golgotha.” In the Syriac tradition the faithful who have been walking through the Fast are shown, halfway, where the road leads: to the hill of Calvary, where the Cross will stand, and to the empty tomb beyond it. The Cross set up in the middle of the church is like a milestone and a signpost together. It tells weary travellers: you are not lost; this is where we are going; and this is what will give you strength for the rest of the way. Many of us have begun to tire. Some resolutions have already slipped. The Church does not scold; she lifts up the Cross and says: look.
The readings explain why looking is enough. In the wilderness the people grew “impatient on the way” and spoke against God and Moses, and poisonous serpents bit them. When they confessed, “We have sinned,” God did not simply remove the serpents. He told Moses: “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” Jesus himself takes up this image in the Gospel: “And just 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. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” St John Chrysostom explained that in the wilderness the bronze image of a serpent healed bodies from the bite of real serpents, while on the Cross Christ, in the likeness of sinful flesh yet without sin, heals souls from the bite of the ancient serpent (in substance). The cure looks like the wound: the Son of God takes our curse upon himself so that we, looking at him in faith, may live.
The other readings fill out the picture. Zechariah foresees a day when God will “pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication” and the people “look on the one whom they have pierced” and mourn for him “as one mourns for an only child.” St John saw this fulfilled at Calvary. Samuel gathers Israel at Mizpah, where they fast, pour out water before the Lord, and confess, “We have sinned against the Lord,” and Samuel cries out to God for them; later he will set up a stone there and say, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” That is a perfect Mid-Fast prayer. Paul reminds the Corinthians that their ancestors in the desert “drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ,” warns them not to put Christ to the test “as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents,” and then encourages them: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” The apostles in Acts lift needless burdens from the Gentile believers, and the evening Gospel already announces the Passion and the third day. And the Psalm gives the response of the whole day: “Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed… O taste and see that the Lord is good.” We look at the Cross, and we taste the Lord's goodness in the Holy Qurbono, where the One lifted up on Golgotha gives us his Body and Blood.
Theme: “So must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
At Mid-Fast the Church lifts up the Cross: the bronze serpent, the pierced one, and the God who has helped us thus far.
“Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” Numbers 21:8
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John 12:32
Apply: Spend five minutes each day this week looking at a crucifix in silence.
“And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child,” Zechariah 12:10
“They will look on the one whom they have pierced.” John 19:37
Apply: Make a good confession before the Passion Week, looking at the Cross as you examine your conscience.
“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”” 1 Samuel 7:12
“God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13
Apply: Write down how God has helped you in the first half of the Fast and take up one dropped resolution again.
Halfway through the Fast, the Church lifts up the Cross so that we may look and live.
The God who has helped us thus far will carry us to Golgotha and to the empty tomb.
Take-home resolution: Look to the Cross every day until Easter, and finish the Fast with fresh courage.
Dear friends, today we are halfway through the Great Fast, and the Church lifts up the Cross. The Panchangam calls this day the setting up of Golgotha. It is a signpost for tired travellers: this is where we are going, and this is what gives us strength.
In the desert the people became impatient on the way, and serpents bit them. God told Moses: make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live (Numbers 21:8). The cure was simply to look, in faith.
Jesus says: just 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. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:14–16). Zechariah adds: they shall look on the one whom they have pierced, and mourn (Zechariah 12:10).
Paul encourages us: God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength (1 Corinthians 10:13). Let us say with Samuel: thus far the Lord has helped us (1 Samuel 7:12). Look at the Cross, taste the Lord's goodness at the altar, and walk on to Easter. Amen.
Children, today is the middle of the Great Fast! The Church puts up a big Cross for us to see. Long ago, God told Moses to lift up a bronze snake, and everyone who looked at it got better. Jesus was lifted up on the Cross so that everyone who looks at him with love can be healed from sin. Look at the Cross today and say: thank you, Jesus.
Lord Jesus Christ, at the middle of this holy Fast your Church lifts up your life-giving Cross. As the bitten Israelites looked at the bronze serpent and lived, let us look at you, lifted up for us, and live. Pour out on us the spirit of compassion and supplication, that we may look on you whom our sins have pierced and turn to you with all our hearts. Thus far you have helped us; carry us through the rest of the Fast to Golgotha and to the joy of your Resurrection. To you, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory for ever. Amen.
At the middle of the Great Fast our Church lifts up the Cross. The Panchangam calls the day Pakuthi Nombu and names it “the setting up of Golgotha”, and it gives a long set of readings. The Evening Gospel (Matthew 17:22–27) has Jesus foretell his death and his raising. In 1 Samuel 7:5–9 the people gather at Mizpah, fast, and say, “We have sinned against the Lord”, as Samuel prays for them. Psalm 34 invites us: “O taste and see that the Lord is good”. Zechariah 12:6–14 speaks of those who “look on the one whom they have pierced” and mourn. In Acts 15:22–33 the apostles and elders lay “no further burden than these essentials” on the Gentile believers. We study here the three that speak most directly to the day.
In Numbers, a serpent of bronze is set on a pole in the wilderness, and those who look at it live. In First Corinthians, Paul reads the wilderness story as written for us, serpents included, and tells tired believers that “God is faithful”. In John, Jesus himself explains what the serpent was for. The key words are looking, testing and lifting up. Halfway through the road, the Church shows us where we are going and what we are to look at.
Setting.
Israel is near the end of the wilderness years. Miriam and Aaron have died (20:1, 28). The chapter opens with a short, hard episode: Israel is attacked by the king of Arad, in the dry south of Canaan, vows to destroy his towns, and does so. The name Hormah recalls that vow. Such war stories belong to an ancient setting, and the Church does not hold them up for imitation (see the question below).
Then the journey turns back to go around the land of Edom (20:21), and the people lose heart. This is the last of the great complaint stories of the wilderness. Their language is worse than before: they speak against God as well as Moses, and they call the manna that has kept them alive “this miserable food”.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”” (21:7)
An honest confession, in place of complaint. The man they had spoken against is the one they now ask for help, and the text records no word of reproach from him: “So Moses prayed for the people.”
“Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” (21:8)
The cure has the shape of the wound. Nothing is asked of the bitten person except to look. No sacrifice is mentioned, and no great effort. They do have to raise their eyes.
“So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole” (21:9)
The wording is simple, and the object itself has no power. The Book of Wisdom makes this plain: “the one who turned toward it was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you, the Savior of all” (Wisdom 16:7).
How the Church reads it.
Wisdom 16:6 already calls the serpent “a symbol of deliverance”. Jesus takes it up in today's Gospel. St Justin Martyr asks why the God who forbade images commanded this one, and answers that it was a sign by which the serpent's power would be broken and salvation proclaimed to those who flee to the Crucified (Dialogue with Trypho 94, in substance). The Catechism names the bronze serpent among the images God ordained or permitted, which pointed in symbol toward salvation by the incarnate Word (CCC 2130).
Setting.
Paul is answering a question from Corinth about eating food sacrificed to idols (chapters 8–10). Some Christians there felt secure. They had been baptized, they shared the Lord's table, and they knew that idols are nothing. So why worry? Paul answers from the Exodus story. Israel also had its baptism and its spiritual food, and most of them still did not reach the land.
The argument works only if the story is taken seriously as Scripture for Christians, and it is one of the New Testament's clearest examples of reading the Old Testament in the light of Christ.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” (10:4)
The water from the rock is told in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20. Later Jewish tradition speaks of a well that travelled with Israel, and many scholars think that Paul knows some form of it. His own point is that Christ was already present to Israel in God's care for them.
“We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents.” (10:9)
This is the verse that ties the reading to Numbers 21. Ancient manuscripts differ here, some reading “Christ” and others “the Lord”; the NRSV follows the first, and the POC the second. In verse 8 Paul counts twenty-three thousand who fell, where Numbers 25:9 has twenty-four thousand. Perhaps he is quoting from memory; the point does not depend on the number.
“So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” (10:12)
This is meant for those who feel secure. Sacraments are real gifts and not a protective charm; they ask for a life that matches them.
“God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (10:13)
After the warnings comes the comfort. The strength of the believer rests on the faithfulness of God. People in the middle of a long fast, or a long illness, can lean on this verse.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that the Church's catechesis unveils what lay hidden in the Old Testament, and it reads the crossing of the sea as a figure of Baptism, the water from the rock as a figure of the spiritual gifts of Christ, and the manna as a figure of the Eucharist (CCC 1094). It also says that Christians read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen, and that the Old Testament keeps its own value (CCC 129). Paul's warning does not mean that Israel was rejected and the Church replaced it. He calls them “our ancestors” (10:1), and he speaks to the Church in order to warn the Church.
Setting.
Nicodemus, a leader of his people, has come to Jesus by night (3:1–2) and has asked how one can be born from above. The conversation slowly turns into a long saying of Jesus, and we are not told where it ends. Some scholars take verses 16–21 as John's own reflection, and the punctuation of translations differs. Either way, this is the Gospel's teaching.
The reading contains John 3:16, perhaps the best known verse of the New Testament. In its own place, it explains how the lifted serpent is to be understood: God's love is the reason for the Cross.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“And just 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.” (3:14–15)
What Israel did with its eyes, believers do by faith. The little Greek word for “must” (dei) speaks of God's plan. Where the serpent gave back life for a time, the Son gives eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (3:16)
The Cross does not change God's mind toward us. It begins in his love. The “world” in John is often the world that resists God, and that is the world he loves.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (3:17)
The purpose of the sending is plainly stated. A Fast lived in dread of God's anger has not yet heard this verse.
“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” (3:19)
People who love the dark are not those who have never seen a light, but those who would rather not be seen. Every one of us knows something of this.
“But those who do what is true come to the light” (3:21)
“To do the truth” is a Hebrew way of speaking: truth is something one does as well as something one knows. Nicodemus, who came by night, will appear again at the end, bringing myrrh and aloes for Jesus' burial (19:39).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism uses John 3:16 to teach that the Word became flesh so that we might know God's love (CCC 458). It says that the lifting up on the Cross signifies and announces his lifting up by his Ascension into heaven (CCC 662). On judgment, it says that the Son did not come to judge but to save, and that by rejecting grace in this life one already judges oneself (CCC 679). This is why the Church's Cross, set up in the middle of a fast, is a sign of the Father's love, and not a sign of threat. We do not look at it in order to feel crushed, but in order to live.
Wasn't the bronze serpent an idol? What about the commandment against images?
God himself commanded it, and it was never meant to be worshipped. When the people later did make offerings to it, King Hezekiah “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made” (2 Kings 18:4). So the Bible shows both the proper use of a sacred sign and its abuse. The Catechism draws on the serpent in explaining why the Church's images are not idols (CCC 2129–2132): the honour given to an image passes to the one it represents, and adoration belongs to God alone. Wisdom 16:7 says the same thing of the serpent itself. When we venerate the Cross today, we are looking through it to the one who hung on it.
Why does God send serpents? And what about the destruction of the towns at Hormah?
The Old Testament often speaks of everything that happens as coming directly from God, and it reads suffering as a call to return to him. We should not conclude from this reading that a particular illness or disaster is God's punishment for a particular sin; Jesus himself refuses that conclusion (John 9:3; Luke 13:1–5). As for Hormah, the Church reads such ancient accounts of war in the light of the whole of Scripture and of Christ, who tells us to love our enemies. They are not a command for any later people to do the same to anyone.
“Those who do not believe are condemned already.” What about people who have never heard of Jesus?
John is speaking of those who meet the light and refuse it. The Church teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who seek God with a sincere heart and try by his grace to do his will as they know it, may also attain eternal salvation (Lumen Gentium 16; CCC 847). This never lessens the urgency of the Church's mission, since Christ is the one Saviour.
In our Antiochene tradition the middle of the Great Fast is marked by the Holy Cross. The name the Panchangam gives to the day, the setting up of Golgotha, says it plainly: the hill of the Cross is brought into the middle of the church, and the people who have walked this far are shown where the road leads. In many parishes the Cross is set up in the middle of the church, honoured with a procession and hymns, and kept there for veneration through the rest of the Fast. Customs vary, so follow the practice of your parish. When you pass that Cross on your way to the Holy Qurbono in the coming weeks, remember the people in the wilderness and do the one thing they were told to do: look, and live.