With Their Patience Worn Out by the Journey
The Israelites were free. They were no longer slaves subject to Pharaoh. They had escaped through the waters of the Red Sea. They were not yet in the promised land, though. They were in the desert, being purified by the Lord for their sins at Sinai. We don’t know how many years they had been wandering at this point, but it was enough that they had grow tired. In their fatigue they were impatient and rebellious. God punished them for their lack faith.
We don’t like to think of God as punishing or condemning. Many dismiss these passages as being some relic of an ancient, pre-modern mentality that clouded the author's mind. Or maybe the problem is us.
Whatever the case, Moses prays for God to relent, and God responds by supplying a remedy in the shape of the thing that was ravaging the people. All they have to do is look upon the bronze serpent, and they are healed.
We are free from slavery to sin. We are no longer bound by satan. All we have to do is believe and pass through the waters of baptism. We believe that baptism and all the sacraments have their power from Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. As the preface for the Mass of the feast says, he did this so that “the evil one, who conquered on a tree, might likewise on a tree be conquered”.
We can grow impatient with the journey. We may wonder why we haven’t been delivered into the promised land of the Resurrection yet. Why does Jesus delay in returning? Some continue to wait, patiently in prayer. Some have given up hoping. Many have given up the Faith. Others cling to the name of Christian, even though they have abandoned any real supernatural hope. To be a disciple of Jesus, for them, is to follow a party platform. All that is hoped for is earthly justice. They often reject the Cross as the necessary remedy for a sinful world because it seems so cruel; so unenlightened. Again, the problem is with us. We can imagine ourselves so enlightened that we forget that only the childlike enter the Kingdom.
Our continued wandering has less to do with punishment as with patience. The Lord wants the Gospel preached to every nation. He wants to give all humanity a chance to accept His saving Word. He wants all nations to worship around the Altar of His Body and Blood; be nourished by the Bread of angels.
On a personal level, the Spiritual life is like a pilgrimage through the desert. We can be impatient with God's purifying fire. The easy pleasures of sin, though temporary, still tempt us. We may need more than one lesson before we learn that sin is a dead end, both in this life and the next. He also has patience with us as He was with he Israelites in the desert. He wants us to return to Him. He wants us to gaze upon His wonderful Cross, believe and be healed.
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