The Opening Prayer of today's Mass recalls the single-minded obedience of the Son in accepting death on the Cross for the salvation of humankind. Contrast this with the lack of obedience amongst the people Moses led through the desert. Yet here we see something which recurs endlessly - God's love and compassion, God's forgiveness. Through the centuries, man's insincerity towards God, man's willingness to compromise his fidelity to God has always been overlooked by Him.

This love and forgiveness is inseparable from the Cross, for it was to the Cross that God's love led Jesus. God's only Son won forgiveness for man by accepting the Cross and thus turned things upside down. The shame, the humiliation, the indignity, the wickedness were, with that one acceptance, converted into a triumph, a triumph which St Paul describes so graphically in verses 9-11. The triumph was that "everyone may not be lost but may have eternal life." God did not condemn, but through His Son and through the Cross, the world was saved. Obedience in accepting the Cross was the basis of our salvation.