[00:00] The Lord once said that when the Son of Man is lifted up, "He will draw all things to Himself." And we see that in other places in the Gospel, that He says that He is to be set up as a sign of contradiction. And in the reading and the Gospel today,

[00:30] we see that sign of contradiction. We know that in medical practice, you have that symbol of it's like a staff with a serpent wrapped around it. And we know that when someone is bitten by a serpent, a venomous snake, the solution is a little bit of the venom to cure the antivenom, which we call it, but it's actually venom which cures the venom.

[01:01] And we all know this, but in a way it's sort of a contradiction. I think a lot of us will have that same realization when we first hear about that, when we're maybe kids or something, and we realize, well, you have to use the venom to actually cure the bite. And it's the same as what happened in the desert with the Hebrews, when they had sinned against God, He had Moses, as we read today, raise up a bronze serpent in the desert

[01:34] so that all those who would look upon it being almost a sign of contradiction because the very thing that was killing them ended up becoming the source of their salvation, so to speak. And it is the same with our Lord. We too have been bitten in a way from obviously our first parents through the consequence of sin, at the provocation of the devil in the form of a serpent,

[02:09] that poison entered into God's creation, the poison of sin, the very thing which He Himself came to remedy. And He speaks of the sign that He is going to be, a sign of contradiction, so that the hearts of many may be revealed. And we see throughout our Lord's public ministry that even His words were signs of contradiction

[02:39] for the Pharisees. They were constantly putting up obstacles to the people in coming to our Lord with faith. They were causing dissension, division, and twisting our Lord's words so that the people would be hindered in coming to Him. And we've read that many times in the Gospel over the past couple of weeks, where the Pharisees pretend to be incredulous. They pretend to not know where our Lord's from.

[03:11] "Where are You from?" He's from Galilee. "Shouldn't the Messiah be from Bethlehem?" They knew all this. They weren't dumb. They had memorized everything of the Scriptures. It was required by the time they were 13, 14 years old to have most of the Scriptures memorized. They knew exactly what the prophecies of the Messiah were, but it was not so much that our Lord didn't fulfill all the criteria to be the Messiah.

[03:43] It was that they themselves did not have the dispositions. They were like the Hebrews who refused to look upon the serpent. They were like the Hebrews who understood exactly what was happening to them. They heard the words of Moses. They were given the solution, but they refused to look upon the sign of contradiction. They thought it was crazy. "How could we be looking at something like a bronze serpent that's going to cure us?"

[04:13] And then they ended up dying in their sin. And we too have this sin from inception, original sin, but also in our lives we see even after Baptism and we have that tendency to go towards sin in our lives. We always have this tendency to head in that direction. However, God gives us the tools. He's so merciful that even through our little faults, our failings, our sins,

[04:44] He always draws us back to Himself, to the right path. And we must understand that the Cross of Christ is not just a symbol, but it's a reality. The symbol was the serpent raised in the desert. And even that healed because of the faith of the people who obeyed Moses and looked upon that sign of contradiction. But our Lord, when we think of the Cross,

[05:15] we have to realize that as Catholics, we have the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the sacrament which is first and foremost, the Sacrament of Sacrifice. And that sacrifice will impart life of God within our souls just by attending Mass. Then you have obviously the presence, you receive Him into you. Then you have His presence just remaining in the tabernacle. So we have this great means of grace,

[05:48] which is the Sacrament, the Sacrament of the Eucharist. So that sign of contradiction is also the greatest sign of the worship due to God alone. The greatest form of worship is the Mass. And that is a reality that our Lord is truly present and that He gives us the remedy for sin. The Cross of Christ being something that's so horrible

[06:23] that it's a result of our sin. He took on that sin, but it became that horrible thing that happened to Him. That is the sign of contradiction because that is our source of salvation. So He turned the poison into a remedy to our salvation. And He did so because of His great love for us, His great mercy. And the other part of it is that He didn't really have to do that.

[06:56] The Cross, that sacrifice was something that He did in order to instill in us a greater awe and wonder at how deep His love for us really is. Because one of the things that we should take away from the faith is how great our Lord's love for each one of us is. And His providence in guiding us and giving us many, many remedies to heal our sin.

[07:31] To heal our soul from the poison of sin, from the detachment to sin. And He will never abandon us to even our own faults, our own failings, the things that we sort of do to ourselves, just like the Hebrews did in the desert. It was their lack of faith and lack of trust and their lack of humility really, and their desire to control everything around them

[08:01] that led them into this dilemma that they had and the complaining against our Lord. So one of the things that we want to do is avoid complaining when we're looking at our lives. Just ask our Lord to give us the helps and the strengths that we need every day. And then also understand where our remedy is. It is through the Cross. And one of the best stories, one of the best examples of the healing

[08:38] from that sign of contradiction, which is the Cross, that sacrifice of the Cross is the good thief. That's the disposition we want to have. We can be sinners, we can have that within us, but we want to have the disposition of the good thief. And the good thief understood that remedy, whereas the bad thief didn't. And the good thief looked at Our Lord and said,

[09:10] "Lord, remember me when You enter into Your kingdom." And that's all our Lord needs, just a little bit of disposition from us to look inwardly, self-reflect, realize that, yeah, I'm a sinner. I'm the one that deserves the cross. I'm the one that caused our Lord to be there, but I trust that His divine providence and His love will heal. And if I just show our Lord a little bit

[09:43] and just in a moment to ask Him to heal my soul, all of us to heal our souls, to look at Him on the Cross and ask the same thing, "Lord, remember me when You enter into Your kingdom." And our Lord will say to us each day when we attend Mass before the Eucharist, "Truly I tell you, this day, you shall be with Me in paradise." Because where is paradise? Paradise is where our Lord is.

[10:16] Where is our Lord? Our Lord is here. He's in the tabernacle, but in Communion when we receive Him, it'll be the closest union that we can possibly have this side of heaven. So let us always remember that. Our Lord doesn't abandon us, that He always gives us a remedy, even to our own mess-ups, our own sins, our own faults, the things that we do to ourselves. Our Lord even takes care of that, even obviously the things that we do to Him.

[10:47] So let us always seek first the kingdom of God. And when we encounter our Lord in the Eucharist, just like the good thief, ask Him to heal our souls and to draw us closer to Him in His kingdom.