Our readings for this Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent are here. (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031024.cfm).
These are my notes and interpretations of Fr Dennis Dillon SJ’s homily from the 10AM Mass on March 15, 2015 at St Mary Student Parish, Ann Arbor, MI.
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The poem Fr Dennis references in 2015 is:
A Drink of Water by Jeffrey Harrison (15 Mar 2015 10AM)
In 2015, D2 reflected —
- The Cycle A readings, which we may use any year we have an RCIA class of catechumens (who are now the Elect by this time of Lent), are geared for those to be newly initiated and entering into a renewed church … which means, the readings are to renew us, the people of God as the church, too! But, in the case of St Mary’s, there has been an RCIA class virtually every year, so we heard the Cycle A readings every year at all the Sunday Masses for a while. As a result, we were missing out on the Lenten readings of Cycle B and Cycle C. Now some of the Lenten St Mary’s Masses may use the Cycle A readings, for an RCIA observance of passage closer to Easter Vigil, and, of course, during Cycle A.
- On the First Sunday of Lent, we were reminded of God’s ways and generosity by God’s setting of the rainbow to remind God’s self not to destroy the humans or other living creatures of the Earth through water again. And while God may condemn to the 3rd or 4th generation, God blesses to the 1000th!
- In the Chronicles reading today, the Jewish people are nearing the end of being held captive in Babylon, almost destroyed … near to no hope that they would ever be a nation with their own lands again. They had almost disappeared after 70 years of captivity … and then, defying any expectation, restored by God acting through King Cyrus of Persia.
- The history that the Jewish people and we are a part of is one of a God who is not predictable.
- In the Gospel of John there is a pattern (not a logical construction, but a pattern)
- In Genesis: We hear of Eden and the serpent’s cross-talking words having Adam and Eve upend their relationship with God through their choice.
- In Numbers 21:9, Moses stretches out and lifts the serpent up (so there is the foreshadowing of the Cross), and any who look at it will be cured.
- Gospel o’ John: The Son of Man will be lifted up so that those who look upon Him on the cross will be cured.
- In Aramaic, “heals” = “salvation.”
- Jesus’ spirituality heals and the physical healing is a sign of it.
- (rl notes that this healing pattern played out in Greek tradition with the Rod of Asclepius, a serpent-entwined staff, and even to this day being used as the symbol of the American Medical Association.)
- back to D2’s homily / reflection — This notion of pattern across the millennia helps raise the question of us now: How, Who, and Which patterns are we repeating? What frailties, what darknesses are we repeating? And, also importantly, what echoes of Jesus are we repeating, bringing forth into the world?
Today’s poem, A Drink of Water, by Jeffrey Harrison, offers this sense of patterns repeating in people. The poet watches the son repeat the pattern of drinking water straight from the kitchen sink faucet, like the poet’s now deceased brother (“decades before anything went wrong, …”). This pattern, a “small habit born of a simple need, // which, natural and unprompted, ties them together // across the bounds of death, and across time … //”
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Our image today is of the Italian artist Gian Paolo Fantoni’s monument entitled The Brazen Serpent. It is on display at Mount Nebo to represent the bronze serpent on Moses’ staff (Numbers 21:9) and as the foreshadowing of Christ on the cross (John 3:14), his salvation / healing of us. The 20+ foot sculpture is not quite halfway between Madaba (south of Amman, Jordan) and Jericho (roughly due east of Jerusalem) on Mount Nebo (elevation ~ 2300 feet). The viewer can look across the valley containing the Jordan River and the Dead Sea to Jericho and Jerusalem.
The Surest Sign 