We hear the Israelites grumbling to God today in our first reading from the book of Numbers. The Israelites are near the end of their journey to the promised land, but they are fed-up and impatient with the sufferings they must endure. They want to engage the people of Edom in battle, as they must go through that land to get to their destination, yet the Edomites do not want to allow them to pass through and God does not want them to engage in battle. So, the people grumble, wishing that they were still in slavery in Egypt, which they see as a better option compared to the hardships they are enduring right now. Their biggest sin right now is the sin of ingratitude, which St Ignatius of Loyola considered to be the worst sin of all. A plague of serpents causes great harm to the Israelites. The people see these serpents as punishment from God, so they repent and beg Moses to intercede for them. God instructs them to mount a bronze serpent on a pole; anyone who has been bitten and who looks at this bronze serpent will live. This is a foreshadowing of Jesus on the cross, as we heard in the Gospel of John a couple of weeks ago in our Sunday Mass: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
We can be like the Israelites sometimes, can't we? We can have ingratitude in our hearts, not being able to see the blessings we have in our lives. To be sure, this past year in the pandemic has been hard on all of us. Many have gotten ill and died in the pandemic. Many have experienced great hardship. Yet, we can see blessings from the circumstances of this past year if we are open to recognizing them. May the Lord open our eyes to see our blessings. And may we always have gratitude in our hearts.
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