Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
In the time of Moses, God intervened in the life of his people
to deliver them from Egypt and their slavery.
Egypt represents the kingdom of Satan,
and their slavery represented slavery to sin.
And God drew them out of Egypt by means of signs and wonders,
extraordinary miracles, ten plagues,
and then the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt
through the passing through the Red Sea.
The cloud of fire, the pillar of fire that followed them during the day
and the cloud had nothing to do with them.
And yet, in the night, so many signs and wonders
that our Lord worked in their midst
and proved to them over and over that he was with them.
And yet, in order to be delivered from Egypt,
they had to trust him when they were thrust up against the Red Sea
with the pillar of fire behind them,
separating them from the camp of the Egyptians.
They had no place to go.
They were in a boxed canyon.
The pillar of fire was there protecting them,
and they were tempted to lose faith.
And of course, most of them did.
And then God opened the sea and they passed through.
And the same dynamic between them and God
is repeated over and over in the desert.
And eventually, God punishes them
because they tried him so many times in the desert.
And this today is an example of how they did this over and over again.
Our Lord fed them with manna from heaven
so that they had that particular need taken care of.
And of course, the manna from heaven represents the Eucharist,
the providential way in which God spiritually nourishes us
in the midst of our trials and difficulties,
in the midst of our own journey through the desert,
our exile from heaven.
God feeds us with himself.
And yet the Jews said,
we are disgusted with this wretched food.
We've had enough of it.
We want something better to eat.
And that is when our Lord sent the seraph serpents
among the people to strike them down for their complaining.
For their rejection of divine providence.
And then God again delivers them,
has mercy on them through the brass serpent
that he has Moses have set up before the people.
But we can see how these passages from the Old Testament
prefigure what our Lord is going through
as he approaches Jerusalem.
When his own people that were prepared
in this extraordinary way in the Old Testament
for the coming of the Savior,
again do the same thing.
God's providence is manifested to them
through these signs and wonders,
these miracles which our Lord worked right in front of them.
And all they had to do was trust him.
And yet so many of them did not.
We hear towards the end that because he spoke in this way,
many came to believe in him.
But there was a significant group of people who did not.
And even his friends ran away
and some of them turned to call for his crucifixion
on Good Friday.
But this is the contradiction that becomes our salvation.
Our Lord is lifted up like the seraph serpent.
The seraph serpent was the sins,
of the Jewish people coming back to bite them.
It was the venom of their own malice
that came back to bring about their death.
And our Lord took upon himself that venom,
that sinfulness,
and lifted it up on the cross.
Saint Paul says he became sin for us.
Cursed is the one who is hung on a tree.
Our Lord became a curse for our sakes.
He took upon himself
the curse of our sins.
And he was lifted up over the whole world
for everyone to see.
And as he was lifted up between heaven and earth,
over the whole world,
and over each and every individual person
who lived and who had lived and who will ever live,
our Lord performed a giant exorcism
over the whole universe.
And over each and every one of us.
And Satan was ultimately cast out.
And yet that struggle
is not finally determined in our own lives
until our last breath.
So it goes on within our own hearts.
The struggle with divine providence
and with accepting the goodness of God
and rejecting the temptations of the evil one
and trusting the Lord
in the midst of our own trials and difficulties.
Our Lord worked with the Jews in the Old Testament
the way they did to prefigure what he would do
when he finally came into the world
through the incarnation.
And in order to instruct us how we should live
in our own lives.
And all of us in one way or another
somehow are living in this exile in the desert.
It is a desert.
And very often following the Lord
is difficult and we can't do it
unless we trust him.
Unless we abandon ourselves to him.
Unless we do the right thing,
our daily duty for the right reasons
and persevere even though
sometimes it seems to get nowhere
or it seems that it would be better
if we were back in Egypt.
And this is what many fall away and go back to Egypt.
Dream for a soft bed
and for their leeks and onions
and all the rest, their flesh pots
because following the Lord
doesn't seem to be as rewarding as it should.
And yet that's like saying to the Lord
we are disgusted with this wretched food.
You know, underestimating
the inescapable
gift of the Eucharist.
Our Lord feeds us with himself.
And in the Eucharist he is both
victim and victor.
And somehow we are as well
when we receive him in the Eucharist.
Our Lord is on the other side of the veil
in a sense.
He's already in heaven glorified.
And we are on this side of the veil
you know, not yet glorified.
And yet the veil, so to speak, is the Eucharist.
That's where we pierced the veil
because we already received Jesus
who is victorious
when we receive him in the Eucharist.
Even though we have not fully achieved that victory
we already participate in it.
And so we should not complain
or reject the providence of God
but accept his goodness
and know that he feeds us
with himself.
With the finest wheat.
With manna from heaven.
And that should be enough for us.
We should trust him
because his presence
is providence.
And he does provide
for all our needs.
JOE AND MICHELLE
By the militarys of Churchி
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