The Seraphic Cross of Christ

Each year on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14), the Church invites us to reflect on the Cross of Christ, the true “measure of the world,” as the Church’s newest doctor would pen it.¹

Through the prescribed lection for this Feast, we are invited to ponder the Cross of Jesus as it is enfigured in the event of the bronze serpent narrated in the book of Numbers:

With their patience worn out by the journey,
the people complained against God and Moses,
“Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,
where there is no food or water?
We are disgusted with this wretched food!”

In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents,
which bit the people so that many of them died.
Then the people came to Moses and said,
“We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.
Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.”
So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,
“Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.”
Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole,
and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent
looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:4b-9)

It is interesting to note how the biblical text indicates that these were not simply “serpents,” but “seraph serpents.”² The type of serpent the text is describing remains a mystery, since the descriptor “seraph” isn’t defined, but it is noteworthy that we might be familiar with that word through another lens: the seraphim that surround the throne of God in heaven (cf. Isaiah 6:4, 6). Both of these creatures—the serpents of Numbers 21 and the angels of Isaiah 6—share a similar description in that they are both seraphs (שָׂרָף), a Hebrew term meaning “burning” or “fiery.”

It is plain that this term is being used to describe the type of serpent—perhaps more specifically the effect of its bite. As a corollary to their sin of complaint, these serpents were unleashed throughout the camp of Israel inflicting poison or burning sensations as a result of their bites. The account even notes that some died because of this (Num 21:6).

I do not intend to press a foreign meaning onto the text. Rather, I invite us to reflect on the spiritual overtones of its inclusion of the peculiar description, seraph serpents, especially given the title’s curious connection to the highest of angelic creatures, and ultimately to our Lord himself on the Cross. We’ll pursue this reflection in relation to three concepts which the seraph serpents of Numbers 21 help to illuminate: 1) the deadly nature of sin; 2) the atoning nature of the Cross; and 3) the Sacred Heart of the Crucified Christ.

The Seraph Serpents Reveal the Deadly Nature of Sin

We noted that the serpents caused deep turmoil in the camp of Israel. Their presence was an invasion, something that came into their midst from without the camp, bringing pain and suffering, even death. In the figure of these serpents, the Scriptures reveal to us the painful and even deadly nature of sin that invades the camp of God that is the Church.

Sin is an invasion into God’s good creation. It had no place in Eden, and was unwelcome to enter. God’s role for humankind is expressed in the lines found in the Bible’s second chapter: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). The responsibility of any gardener to “keep” the land is not only to see to its fertility but also to drive out anything that would threaten its vitality. The Hebrew word for the command “to keep” is שׁמר, which is also translated “to watch over” or “to guard.”³

While Adam’s first sin lay in distrusting his Creator (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church §397), it was his failure to obey God’s command and to protect the order God had established—including the rightful environment in which his wife and home would flourish—that forms the larger context for understanding the atrocity that occurred.

Upon sin’s infection of the race of men came spiritual death, just as the Lord forewarned: “…for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). So it was that the seraphic serpents in the wilderness, a sign of sin’s spiritual infestation, caused not only pain but death.

The Scriptures are also clear that while all sin injures our relationship with God, there are some sins that separate us completely to the point of spiritual death, that is, the total depravity of grace in our souls (cf. 1 John 5:16; CCC §1855). Thus, some of the serpents caused only a burning irritation, while others caused death (compare Numbers 21:6//8-9).

The Seraph Serpents Reveal the Atoning Nature of the Cross

A brief word here must suffice, since the topic of atonement is much greater than we can cover in the scope of these reflections. In the account in Numbers, the Lord God instructed Moses to mount an image of the invaders themselves to be the sacrament of healing to Israel (Num 21:8). They were not tasked with looking upon something other or better for healing or relief—such as an ointment or a desirable salve. No, their healing would take place only by coming face-to-face with the culprit itself, mounted upon the bronze pole.

This helps us to see how, according to Paul, God “made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).”⁴ Mankind had to come face-to-face with the horrific nature of sin—made visible in the Crucified Christ—in order to be spared from its morbid effects. If the Risen and Glorified flesh of Jesus points us toward restoration, the Crucified Victim of Calvary shows us how distorted sin has made us. His flesh, pierced, mangled, and torn, fastened to the splintering Wood, images the corrupting effect that sin bears on the soul.

Perhaps this is why, in his famous epic, the Divine Comedy, Dante does not first climb up to the heights of heaven. At the outset of his spiritual journey, he first climbs down. The journey of salvation begins with a descent, down into the icy pit of hell. His heavenly destination bids that he press on, with no way out but to crawl down the shaggy sides of the giant beast that was Satan, “tuft by tuft…between the tangled hair and the frozen crust” (Inferno, 381). It is not sufficient to look at the ugly face of sin from a distance; we are called to come face to face with its unpleasant reality. Only there can we meet the gaze of the One who conquered it.

The Seraph Serpents Reveal the Sacred Heart of the Crucified Christ

Peering deeper into the connection of the belly-crawling reptile to the six-winged angelic servant, it would appear that seraphic burning can be experienced as a good or an evil. The fire of the serpent’s fang that plagued Israel is the same fire depicted of the angel that purged the tongue of Isaiah. Perhaps, then, the fire is not so much the problem as is the state of the soul with which it comes in contact.

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that our God is a “consuming fire” (12:29). It has always been his intention to consume us—to fill us with his divine life, refining us (as fire does with gold) and transforming us from within. While we cannot withstand the glory of this fire on our own, the power of God within us safeguards our being harmed by it. Sin, on the other hand, corrupts the presence of grace in our souls, causing the divine fire of grace to sear where the residue of sin lingers. Like Israel, we cannot stand the searing of this divine flame when left to our own powers.

God, though, is not content to let his creatures suffer. As for Israel of old in the wilderness, he commanded a sign to be lifted before our eyes that would bring us healing and enable us to come into contact with the fire of divine love once again. Just as the seraph serpent was bound to the bronze pole, Jesus Christ, the Seraph of God, would be mounted to a cross for our salvation. As our Lord himself teaches, “[A]s Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15, fittingly the Gospel reading for this Feast).

Our Lord came to this earth to set it aflame with his own fire: “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:29). And the way he deemed fit to set it ablaze with this divine fire was to open the burning heart of God from the Cross and to draw all people to it there. It is this fire that we consume—and that then consumes us—when we receive him at the Eucharistic table.

Conclusion: Look Upon the Seraphic Cross 

The Cross of Christ is the climax of the entire drama of creation: “We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.” (Entrance Antiphon for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross). It is by looking upon this Cross that we encounter our Salvation.

If the biblical account of Moses and the bronze serpent teaches us anything, it is that in and upon the Cross of Christ, we encounter our own personal pains and sins. The fiery bite of each serpent, manifestly present on the body of each Israelite, had to be confronted and redeemed. Likewise, we must confront our own sins and shortcoming as we gaze upon that perfect Image; upon the one who bears our offenses (cf. Is 53:2-12). When we do, it will no longer be the sting of the bite that we feel, but the salvific fire of that Divine Physician that consumes, heals, and restores us.

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1. John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6 (London: Rivingtons, 1868), Sermon VII, cited from https://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume6/sermon7.html on September 12, 2025. ↩︎
2. I am aware that the lectionary copied here translates שָׂרָף as “saraph,” though I will use the more popular rendering, “seraph/-im” as can be seen in the ESV-CE and RSV2CE translations of שָׂרָף in Isaiah 6. Note that the ESV-CE and RSV2CE both translate שָׂרָף as “fiery” in Numbers 21.  ↩︎
3. Cf. Gen 3:24; Ex 23:20; Josh 10:18; 2 Kgs 11:5; Neh 13:22; Pss 91:11; Hos 12:12.  ↩︎
4. Paul’s language here—using shorthand to refer to the sacrificial rites for sin offerings developed in Leviticus 4—is not to be confused with the notion that that Jesus become sin in an incarnational way. Rather, he offers himself as a sin offering. For a fuller development of this issue, see Chad Steiner’s lecture, He is the Atoning Sacrifice for Our Sins”: Christ’s Achievement on Good Friday ↩︎