The Burning Bush

Yesterday, being Sunday, I was at the early Mass at Carmel (it was still quite dark when I got up; autumn is here, winter is coming...), and, partly beforehand, partly during and after, I prayed Matins and Lauds.  (A good day, Sunday: plenty of time for Office, and for having a nap later in the day, and a good walk around the Gorge.)

Now, Matins struck me for its Scripture readings - for these (taken from Exodus iii, 1-15) concerned Moses happening upon the Burning Bush, that mysterious theophany, the Lord speaking to him therefrom, and receiving God's commission to go set His people free from the yoke of Pharaoh; God even revealed His Divine Name, Ego sum qui sum - I Am Who Am.  God the terrible and great, the All-Holy, the Apart, the One Necessary Being, suffers Himself to concern Himself with the concerns of mortal men, to choose to Himself a people, and by great and mighty acts to bring them forth out of Egypt, the house of slavery, into a land where milk and honey flow.  

It ought go without saying that what He once did for Israel, to free them from Pharaoh, is an image and foreshadowing of the greater liberation and redemption wrought in later time by Christ the Incarnate Word, delivering us from our slavery, from our spiritual Egypt, from sin, Satan, death and hell, by His Cross, that, set free for freedom in Christ, in grace, we may in due time pass to our eternal homeland of heaven; and that it is for us, inspired by and faithful to grace, to appropriate to ourselves this salvation - and how better to so do than to join in the sublime mysteries of the Mass.