EDITH STEIN

Jesus heals a lame man, by James Tissot . The Prayer of the Ever-Living Christ . By Edith Stein (1891-1942) The prayer of the church is the prayer of the ever-living Christ. Its prototype is Christ's prayer during his human life.  Jesus' public prayer life The Gospels tell us that Christ prayed the way a devout Jew faithful to the law prayed. Just as he made pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the prescribed times with his parents as a child, so he later journeyed to the temple there with his disciples to celebrate the high feasts. Surely he sang with holy enthusiasm along with his people the exultant hymns in which the pilgrim's joyous anticipation streamed forth: "I rejoiced when I heard them say: Let us go to God's house" (Psalm 122:1).  From his last supper with his disciples, we know that Jesus said the old blessings over bread, wine, and the fruits of the earth, as they are prayed to this day. So he fulfilled one of the most sacred religious duties: the ceremonial passover seder to commemorate deliverance from slavery in Egypt. And perhaps this very gathering gives us the profoundest glimpse into Christ's prayer and the key to understanding the prayer of the church.  While they were at supper, he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you."  In the same way, he took the cup, filled with wine. He gave you thanks, and giving the cup to his disciples, said, "Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven."  Blessing and distributing bread and wine were part of the passover rite. But here both receive an entirely new meaning. This is where the life of the church begins. Only at Pentecost will it appear publicly as a Spirit-filled and visible community. But here at the passover meal the seeds of the vineyard are planted that make the outpouring of the Spirit possible.  In the mouth of Christ, the old blessings become life-giving words. The fruits of the earth become his body and blood, filled with his life. Visible creation, which he entered when he became a human being, is now united with him in a new, mysterious way. The things that serve to sustain human life are fundamentally transformed, and the people who partake of them in faith are transformed too, drawn into the unity of life with Christ and filled with his divine life.  The Word's life-giving power is bound to the sacrifice. The Word became flesh in order to surrender the life he assumed, to offer himself and a creation redeemed by his sacrifice in praise to the Creator.  Through the Lord's last supper, the passover meal of the Old Covenant is converted into the Easter meal of the New Covenant: into the sacrifice on the cross at Golgotha and those joyous meals between Easter and Ascension when the disciples recognized the Lord in the breaking of bread... Jesus' solitary prayer life We saw that Christ took part in the public and prescribed worship services of his people, i.e., in what one usually calls "liturgy." He brought the liturgy into the most intimate relationship with his sacrificial offering and so for the first time gave it its full and true meaning that of thankful homage of creation to its Creator. This is precisely how he transformed the liturgy of the Old Covenant into that of the New. But Jesus did not merely participate in public and prescribed worship services. Perhaps even more often the Gospels tell of solitary prayer in the still of the night, on open mountain tops, in the wilderness far from people.  Jesus' public ministry was preceded by forty days and forty nights of prayer. Before he chose and commissioned his twelve apostles, he withdrew into the isolation of the mountains. By his hour on the Mount of Olives, he prepared himself for his road to Golgotha. A few short words tell us what he implored of his Father during this most difficult hour of his life, words that are given to us as guiding stars for our own hours on the Mount of Olives. "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine." Like lightning, these words for an instant illumine for us the innermost spiritual life of Jesus, the unfathomable mystery of his God-man existence and his dialogue with the Father. Surely, this dialogue was life-long and uninterrupted.  Christ prayed interiorly not only when he had withdrawn from the crowd, but also when he was among people. And once he allowed us to look extensively and deeply at this secret dialogue. It was not long before the hour of the Mount of Olives; in fact, it was immediately before they set out to go there at the end of the last supper, which we recognize as the actual hour of the birth "Having loved his own..., he loved them to the end." He knew that this was their last time together, and he wanted to give them as much as he in any way could. He had to restrain himself from saying more. But he surely knew that they could not bear any more, in fact, that they could not even grasp this little bit. The Spirit of Truth had to come first to open their eyes for it. And after he had said and done everything that he could say and do, he lifted his eyes to heaven and spoke to the Father in their presence. We call these words Jesus' great high priestly prayer, for this talking alone with God also had its antecedent in the Old Covenant. Once a year on the greatest and most holy day of the year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest stepped into the Holy of Holies before the face of the Lord "to pray for himself and his household and the whole congregation of Israel." He sprinkled the throne of grace with the blood of a young bull and a goat, which he had previously to slaughter, and in this way absolved himself and his house "of the impurities of the sons of Israel and of their transgressions and for all their sins." No person was to be in the tent (i.e., in the holy place that lay in front of the Holy of Holies) when the high priest stepped into God's presence in this awesomely sacred place, this place where no one but he entered and he himself only at this hour. And even now he had to burn incense "so that a cloud of smoke...would veil the judgment throne...and he not die." This solitary dialogue took place in deepest mystery. Day of Atonement - Most Solemn Day of Prayer The Day of Atonement is the Old Testament antecedent of Good Friday. The ram that is slaughtered for the sins of the people represents the spotless Lamb of God (so did, no doubt, that other chosen by lot and burdened with the sins of the people that was driven into the wilderness). And the high priest descended from Aaron foreshadows the eternal high priest.  Just as Christ anticipated his sacrificial death during the last supper, so he also anticipated the high priestly prayer. He did not have to bring for himself an offering for sin because he was without sin. He did not have to await the hour prescribed by the Law and nor to seek out the Holy of Holies in the temple.  He stands, always and everywhere, before the face of God; his own soul is the Holy of Holies. It is not only God's dwelling, but is also essentially and indissolubly united to God.  He does not have to conceal himself from God by a protective cloud of incense. He gazes upon the uncovered face of the Eternal One and has nothing to fear. Looking at the Father will not kill him. And he unlocks the mystery of the high priest's realm.  All who belong to him may hear how, in the Holy of Holies of his heart, he speaks to his Father; they are to experience what is going on and are to learn to speak to the Father in their own hearts.(24) [Excerpt from The Collected Works of Edith Stein, translated by Waltraut Stein, © 1992 ICS Publications. See online collection at Kolbe Foundation] Article, Blessed by the Cross, by Jeanne Kun is excerpted from the book, Even Unto Death: Wisdom from Modern Martyrs, edited by Jeanne Kun, The Word Among Us Press, © 2002. All rights reserved. Used with permission.  Jeanne Kun is President of Bethany Association and a senior woman leader in the Word of Life Community, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.  Blessed by the Cross The Heroic Life of Edith Stein in Nazi Germany   A Biographical reflection by Jeanne Kun A young woman in search of the truth “I keep having to think of Queen Esther who was taken from among her people precisely that she might represent them before the king,” Sister Teresa Benedicta wrote to an Ursuline religious sister late in 1938. “I am a very poor and powerless little Esther, but the King who chose me is infinitely great and merciful. That is such a great comfort.”  Edith Stein was born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau, Germany (present-day Wroclaw, Poland), on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, in 1891. As a teenager she abandoned Judaism and became a self-proclaimed atheist.  She attended the university in Breslau and, later, in Göttingen, where she sought intellectual truth in the study of philosophy and became a protégé of the famed philosopher Edmund Husserl. She earned her doctorate of philosophy in 1916, but her search for truth remained unfulfilled.  The following year Edith was impressed by the calm faith that sustained a Christian friend at the death of her husband. “It was my first encounter with the cross and the divine power that it bestows on those who carry it,”  Edith later wrote. “For the first time, I was seeing with my very eyes the church, born from its Redeemer’s sufferings, triumphant over the sting of death. That was the moment my unbelief collapsed and Christ shone forth—in the mystery of the cross.”  Taking up the cross of Christ Edith chose her religious name, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, anticipating that she would share in the Lord’s sufferings. “By the cross I understood the destiny of God’s people which, even at that time, began to announce itself,” she later explained to a friend. “I thought that those who recognized it as the cross of Christ had to take it upon themselves in the name of all.” As the situation worsened for Jews in Germany, Sister Teresa Benedicta knew she was not safe in the Cologne monastery and also believed that her presence there put all the nuns in danger. On the night of December 31, 1938, she crossed into the Netherlands where she was received at the Carmel monastery in Echt. Her sister Rosa, who had also become a Catholic, later followed her and served as a lay portress at the monastery. However, the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in 1940 and Jews, even those who were converts to Christianity, were no longer safe there either. A martyr through the silent working of divine grace Sister Teresa Benedicta and Rosa were arrested on August 2, 1942, as part of Hitler’s orders to deport and liquidate all non-Aryan Catholics. This was in retaliation for a pastoral letter issued by the Dutch bishops that protested Nazi policies. As the two were taken from the convent, Sr. Teresa was heard to say to her sister: “Come, Rosa, let us go for our people.” Their lives ended a week later in the gas chamber at Auschwitz.  Like Queen Esther, Edith Stein identified with her fellow Jews in their grave danger and interceded for them. When she was formally declared blessed in 1987 by the Catholic Church, a selection from the Old Testament’s Book of Esther was read at her beatification ceremony.  When she was formally declared a saint on October 11, 1998, Pope John Paul II noted: “A young woman in the search of the truth has become a saint and martyr through the silent working of divine grace: Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who from heaven repeats to us today all the words that marked her life: ‘Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’. . .  Now alongside Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux, another Teresa takes her place among the hosts of saints who do honor to the Carmelite Order.” Life in a Jewish Family From the writings of Edith Stein The highest of all the Jewish festivals is the Day of Atonement, the day on which the High Priest used to enter the Holy of Holies to offer the sacrifice of atonement for himself and for the people; afterwards, the “scapegoat” upon whose head, symbolically, the sins of all the people had been laid was driven out into the desert.  All of this ritual has come to an end. But even at present the day is observed with prayer and fasting, and whoever preserves but a trace of Judaism goes to the “Temple” on this day.  Although I did not in any way scorn the delicacies served on the other holidays, I was especially attracted to the ritual of this particular holy day when one refrained from taking any food or drink for twenty-four hours or more, and I loved it more than any of the others. . .  For me the day had an additional significance: I was born on the Day of Atonement, and my mother always considered it my real birthday, although celebrations and gifts were always forthcoming on October 12. (She herself celebrated her birthday according to the Jewish calendar, on the Feast of Tabernacles; but she no longer insisted on this custom for her children.) She laid great stress on my being born on the Day of Atonement, and I believe this contributed more than anything else to her youngest’s being especially dear to her. [Excerpt from Edith Stein’s autobiography, Life in a Jewish Family, written in 1933, translated by Josephine Koeppel, 1986]	.
	.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

MEDITATION IS HEARING GOD

Hearing God in Meditation
.
by Sam Williamson

“God speaks time and again—in various ways—but nobody notices” (Job 33:14).
 Most people I know have an innate desire to hear God; actually, more than a desire, an intense longing. We want to connect with the divine, to somehow see the face of God, to touch and be touched. It’s inborn, an inherent ingredient of our humanity.
Scripture says God is always speaking, but we miss it. We don’t notice his voice because we don’t recognize it. Oh, sometimes he breaks in through writing on the wall or through a speaking beast of burden, but mostly he speaks in a still, small voice.
We miss his voice because it is drowned out in the sea of other voices. The cacophony of sounds, like an orchestra tuning, obscures that still small voice. Stomachs growl their hunger, bosses bark their orders, and that insult from twenty years ago still shouts its condemnation.
How do we learn to discern God’s voice? In meditation. Christian meditation trains our ears to distinguish God’s voice—that one instrument—amidst the orchestra of others. And once we learn to recognize God’s voice, we begin to hear it “time and again, in various ways.”
To hear God’s voice, we need to learn to meditate. Unless, like Balaam, you have a talking ass.
Christian meditation
You and I are already meditation experts. We practice it all the time in everyday matters. With our first child still fresh in the womb, our mind imagines the new bedroom. We picture fresh paint, where the crib fits best, the changing table and rocker.
We envision our future life—nursing, teaching soccer, and Christmas mornings—and it changes us today. We take a truth—our wife’s bulging belly—and consider with our mind and heart. We let the thoughts of our mind mix with the meditations of our heart. And something inside is stirred.
Christian meditation is like that. Unlike eastern meditation—which empties its mind—we fill our mind with a truth, examine it, let it examine us, and in that meditative mix, God speaks.

Theophan the Recluse (a household name to be sure) said, “To [meditate] is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever present all seeing, within you.”
How does this work in day-to-day life?
A common Christian prayer time involves scripture study and worship (sprinkled liberally with confession, thanksgiving, intercession, and a Christian book or two).
Our study tends to be information gathering (which is good) while our worship is an expression of our spirit and heart (which is also good). Sometimes the move from study to worship feels like shifting from first to fourth gear. We need to link scripture study with worship.
Meditation is that bridge.
Here is what I do. I usually read an Old Testament passage, a Gospel, and a New Testament letter. (Right now I’m reading 2 Kings, Mark, and 1 Corinthians.) As I read the passage (and slow is better than fast), I wait—I remain alert—for a quickening in my heart.
I’m not sure how else to describe it, maybe a stirring in my spirit or just a sense of God. The two on the road to Emmaus said, “Were not our hearts burning within us.” That works.
When stirring begins, I stop reading and meditate on the verses. I ask myself questions like,

What does this truth say about God? Why would God even say it?
What would my life look like if I believed it were true?
Why did this passage make me curious? What
stirred that curiosity?
How does my culture twist, distort, or reject this? How has culture affected me?
Why don’t I really believe this; or, to what degree do I doubt it?
How does this truth—if it’s really true—make me love God more?
What do I need to change in my thinking or actions to align myself with its truth?

I begin by analyzing the idea presented; but after a time, I move from analyzing the text to gazing at God. I move from word-ful thinking to word-less admiration. Jordan Aumann wrote, “Contemplation signifies knowledge accompanied by delight that arouses admiration and captivates the soul” (slightly edited).What next?
It doesn’t happen the same way every day, and certainly not with the same intensity. Some days I’m stirred by verses in the first passage, and I skip the other passages. Other days I finish all the passages, I ask myself which stirred me the most, and I return to that. And gaze.
The safest—and smartest—place to learn to discern God’s voice is in scriptural meditation. But once we begin to recognize his voice, we hear it all over the place, in a movie, on a billboard, through a friend, from a stranger on a bus. And we meditate with similar questions.
But we don’t stop there. Once we hear God speak, we share it. The best way to know something is to express it; with your spouse, friend, colleague, or with that stranger on the bus. We began with our mind, we descend into our hearts, and with our mind again we articulate with words the wordless vision of God.

PRAYER, THE LANGUAGE OF HOPE

Prayer Is the Language of Hope  by Christoph Schonborn Just before her conversion, Blessed Edith Stein went into the cathedral in Frankfurt and saw a simple woman come in from the market, kneel down, and pray. By Edith Stein's own testimony, the sight of this woman made a decisive impression upon her on her journey toward the faith: a simple woman, kneeling and praying in the cathedral. Something inexpressible, very simple, so ordinary, and yet so full of mystery: this intimate contact with the invisible God. Not a self-absorbed meditation, but quiet relaxation in the presence of a mysterious Other. What Edith Stein sensed in this humble praying woman would soon become a certainty for her: God exists, and in prayer we turn toward him.  Longing to pray Think of the impression the silent prayer of Jesus made on his disciples, prayer that often went on for hours, all night long, in fact! What was it about this secret place, this long turning in silence to him whom our Lord calls "Abba"? "He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples'" (Luke 11: 1).  Teach us to pray. The disciple yearns to enter this place of silent intimacy, this vigilant prostration before the presence of the Invisible One. He feels such a great reverence for the mystery of the prayer of Jesus that he does not dare to interrupt, to "burst in" on our Lord with his question. He waits till Jesus himself comes out of his prayer. Only then does the disciple make bold to ask, to implore: "Teach us to pray!"  Does it not move us when we come into church and find someone silently praying there? Does this sight awaken in us the longing to pray? Do we hear at this moment the murmuring of the spring that summons us to the living water? As the martyr Ignatius of Antioch writes: “Living water murmurs within me, saying inwardly: ‘Come to the Father!’” (1) The longing for prayer is the lure within us of the Holy Spirit, who draws us to the Father, Yes, this longing is already prayer, is already the prayer of the Spirit within us, “with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26).  Is the ground of prayer dried up today? There is, of course, a question we have to consider carefully: Is the ground of prayer dried up today? Isn't the hidden "murmuring" of the wellspring of the Holy Spirit drowned out by the noise of our times? Can prayer prosper when, as Neil Postman writes in his disturbing book,Amusing Ourselves to Death, the average American spends fifteen years of his life in front of the television? …There is no doubt that there is much in today's society that is detrimental to prayer. And yet we are permitted to hope that no secularization can entirely drown out the call of God in the hearts of men. …For prayer is the expression of a longing, which has not been “produced” byus but has been placed in the hearts of men by God. It is an expression of the “fecisti nos ad Te” of Saint Augustine (Thou madest us for thyself). …He who prays hopes. For someone who cannot hope to be heard cannot ask. After all we only ask other human beings for something when we have the hope that our petition has a chance of being granted. "Prayer," says Saint Thomas, “is the spokesman of hope”(2)  For what do we pray and hope? By our prayer we can gauge the state of our prayer. For what do we pray? For what do we hope? The reason why prayer and hope are so closely related is that both realize that what we pray and hope for does not lie within our own powers but can only be given to us. But what are we permitted to hope for? And what should we pray for? In his long quaestio on prayer (the longest in the whole Summa), Saint Thomas says:  Since prayer is a kind of spokesman for our desires with God, we only ask for something in prayer rightly if we desire it rightly. In the Lord’s Prayer not only do we ask for all that we may rightly desire, we also ask for them in the order in which we are supposed to desire them. This prayer, then, not only teaches us to ask, it also shapes all our affections (sit informative totius nostri affectus). (3) A wonderful statement: The Our Father shapes our whole affective life into its right proportions; it places in us desires and yearnings and therefore the right priorities in our praying.  Is it really reasonable for our primary hope, and therefore our greatest longing, to be: “ThyKingdom come, Thy will be done”? We have a concern for our “daily bread” (think how many of our people are worrying about their jobs or have already lost them!). We want to get on well with one another (“Forgive us our trespasses ...”). Above all, we beg for protection from evil and temptation, from anguish and despair (“Lead us not into temptation,” “Deliver us from evil”). All of these petitions develop out of the problems of our life. They force their way to the front of our attention and harass our hearts. They are usual1y, therefore, our first and most pressing petitions. Prayer is the language of hope The fact that we turn to God with these petitions shows that we expect, that we hope for, help from him in all these needs. As Cardinal Ratzinger has said, prayer is “hope in action,” for “prayer is the language of hope.”(4) “The despairing man no longer prays, because he no longer hopes. The man who is sure of himself and his own strength does not pray, because he relies only on himself.  The man who prays hopes for a good and for a strength that go beyond his own powers.”(5) If we really pray for what we ask for in the four petitions of the second part of the Our Father, then we are already hoping, and that hope goes beyond the thing we ask for, it is directed toward thePerson of whom we ask it: “Hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done....” These petitions become the articulation of an ever greater trust, which dares to call God “Our Father”.  Saint Thomas [Aquinas] says that the Our Father is "informativa totius nostri affectus": it shapes all our desires and feelings. And indeed, time and again, we hear of people being healed in the very roots of their lives through the Our Father. I am thinking, for example, of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's friend Dimitri Panin,(6) or of Tatiana Gorischeva, who received the grace of conversion through reciting the Our Father.  When our affectus is shaped by the Our Father, our desires and yearnings are sound and in conformity to the action of God, and then our prayer will be more and more efficacious, because it really will be in harmony with God's plan, really will be cooperating with God's providence. Then our praying will be in harmony with the "sighs" of the Spirit, who "intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Romans 8:27). In the Compendium theologiae, Saint Thomas says: "The Our Father is the prayer through which our hope in God is raised up to the highest degree."(7) Just as faith is certain, because it believes God, so hope does not disappoint (cf. Romans 5:5), because, full of trust, it expects from God what he promises. It is from God alone that hope derives its triumphant certainty: "In te, Domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum" (In thee, O Lord, have I trusted, let me never be confounded).  [Excerpted from Loving the Church, by Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna, Austria; translated by John Saward, © 1998, Ignatius Press, San Francisco. Used with permission.].  Notes:  (1) Epistula ad Romanus 7, 2. (2) STh 2a2ae 17, 4, obj. 3. (3) STh 2a2ae 83, 9. 3. (4) Auf Christus schauen: Einubung un Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1989), 68f. (5) ibid., 69. (6) See The Notebooks of Sologdin  (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). (7) Compendium theologiae 2, 3.	.
	.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 

MOSES

MOSES

Since he was the adopted son of Pharoah's daughter, Moses could walk the lines of the Hebrew slaves. Arrogant, he could interfere in other people's affairs. So he killed an Egyptian overseer and hid the body. But he was confronted by a Hebrew shortly after and he realised the police wold soon be after him. His arrogance tumbled down, he threw his dignity to the four winds and took to his heels to the land of the Beduin. So the high prince got himself fixed as a sheep grazer, had to eat humble pie and take down his pretension. God does not work through arrogant people, keeping himself away from those who are full of themselves. Now that Moses had hit rock bottom he was ready to be God's instrument. So he led the flocks up to the mountains. The quiet hills allow for a lot of meditation or at least undisturbed thinking. The sheep dd their grazing and Moses mulled over his fortunes and present situation. He had escaped from the bondage, was happily married to one of Jethro's daughters, and was settling down to a peaceful future. His compatriots were far below groaning on the plains. But even though he was out of earshot, he somehow could not shut out the sound of their cries. Nothing he did could distract him from the echo of those cries. They were sounding from inside him; his inner being was like a sounding board. That is what the Bible writer means when he makes God say ro Moses, "The cries of your fellow countrymen reach my ears.

Moses began realising that there was a psychic dissonance, a dichotomy within himself . Here he was enjoying the peace of the hillside with little to do, happily married and sharing the wealth of his father-in-law. And there were his compatriots suffering under the lash of slave labour.
Moses realised that he a fugitive from himself. Something was burning within him, and the fire would not go out. That is the deepest meaning of the unquenchable burning bush. The burning bush was within him. He saw that he was not being honest with himself, this self that for which he should have the utmost respect. That explains the holy ground for which Moses had to remove his sandals - the holy ground of the true self. A person who runs away from what he honestly thinks is his duty is unfaithful to himself. Thus Moses realised that if he had to be true to his deepest self he had to give up his escapist way of life and go down and liberate his people. He did go down and told Pharoah, his adoptive grandfather, "Let my people go." And he did get them out eventually. He proved that his most intimate inspiration did not cheat on him, that could be true to himself and come out a winner.
Lent is a time when we can listen to what out most honest self is trying to tell us. Like Jesus, left for 40 days and nights to himself, and Moses on the quiet mountain slopes, let each one of us give him/herself some free time everyday, to move freely within ourselves and listen to what the inner honest self has to say. You may well hear complaints for the way you have been neglecting yourself, or distracting yourself from important issues of life, or care and concern for others, shutting out the call of the Spirit or the cries of those who are hurting.
Looking for God's plan? Seeking his will? Where will you find it? In Holy Scripture,,,teaching of the Church? Yes, but it can be pretty general. Take a decision in your particular circumstances, a decision that only you can take. Keeping yourself open to the Word of God, do what you sincerely think is the most HONEST. No one is infallible. Find the Holy Spirit in the depth of your heart (Vatican Council).

JESUS, THE NEW MOSES

Jesus: The New Moses

Jesus, the messiah of the Jewish prophecies, is closely foreshadowed by many Old-Testament Jewish figures, but the one that most resembles him is Moses. Moses had several roles that correspond to Jesus’: priest, mediator, miracle worker, lawgiver, and deliverer. In each of these roles are several instances where an act of Moses prefigures one of Jesus. 

            The most obvious link between Jesus and Moses was that they both were mediators of a covenant between God and his children. This is also seen with Adam, Noah, Abraham and David, under different signs like the Passover, rainbow, circumcision, and the Eucharist.

             One of Moses’ most traditional roles was that of a priest. One of the things that come to mind when thinking of Moses as a priest is the Passover. Moses and the Israelites, in celebrating the first Passover, killed one lamb for every household and sprinkled its blood on the doorposts of the house. This was meant to remind the Angel of Death to “pass over” the house and spare the firstborn inside. Jesus, on the other hand, was both the priest and the lamb for his sacrifice. He saved not only the firstborn but the world.  This similarity in roles can be seen in the Old Testament, in Ex. 24:8:  Then Moses took the blood in the bowls and threw it on the people. He said, “This is the blood that seals the covenant which the Lord made with you when he gave all these commands.”   Moses’ act is only a foreshadowing of what Jesus did at the last supper in the Gospels; Mat. 26:28: “Drink this, all of you” he said; “this is my blood, which seals God’s covenant, my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  This covenant was brought in full when Jesus was crucified.

             Even the mere fact that both Jesus and Moses performed miracles links them together. One miracle, in particular, shows the relationship between Jesus and Moses: the water from the rock. It prefigures the water from the side of Christ after his crucifixion, as well as his giving of life, or “water”, to those who followed him. 1 Cor. 10:3-4 says: All ate the same spiritual bread and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them; and that rock was Christ himself.  This is foreshadowed by Ex. 17:6:  “Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” Moses did so in the presence of the leaders of Israel.

Moses, like Jesus, also acted as a leader and savior. This role can be seen in the entire book of Exodus, which narrates the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt.  Like Jesus, Moses protected and led his people. After they worshipped the golden calf, Moses asked God to spare them (Ex. 32:31-32). God did, but at a price: Moses would not be allowed to see God’s face again afterwards (Ex. 33:7-11). This was, for Moses, just a small price to pay to save his people. As we know already, Jesus’ death was needed to save mankind.

            There were many Old Testament figures that foreshadowed Jesus, but Moses prefigured Him most closely. Moses even prophesied that the Messiah would be like himself! Deut. 18:18 says:  I will send them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will tell him what to say, and he will tell the people everything I command.

THANKFULNESS AND GRATITUDE

Thankfulness and Gratitude
 Thankfulness is a prominent Bible theme. First Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Did you catch that? Give thanks in all circumstances. Thankfulness should be a way of life for us, naturally flowing from our hearts and mouths.

Digging into the Scriptures a little more deeply, we understand why we should be thankful and also how to have gratitude in different circumstances.

Psalm 136:6 says, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.” Here we have two reasons to be thankful: God’s constant goodness and His steadfast love. When we recognize the nature of our depravity and understand that, apart from God, there is only death (John 10:10; Romans 7:5), our natural response is to be grateful for the life He gives. 

Psalm 30 gives praise to God for His deliverance. David writes, “I will exalt you, O Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. O Lord my God, I called to you for help and you healed me. O Lord, you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit. . . . You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever” (Psalm 30:1-12). Here David gives thanks to God following an obviously difficult circumstance. This psalm of thanksgiving not only praises God in the moment but remembers God’s past faithfulness. It is a statement of God’s character, which is so wonderful that praise is the only appropriate response. 

We also have examples of being thankful in the midst of hard circumstances. Psalm 28, for example, depicts David’s distress. It is a cry to God for mercy, protection, and justice. After David cries out to God, he writes, “Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song” (Psalm 28:6-7). In the midst of hardship, David remembers who God is and, as a result of knowing and trusting God, gives thanks. Job had a similar attitude of praise, even in the face of death: “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:21).

There are examples of believers’ thankfulness in the New Testament as well. Paul was heavily persecuted, yet he wrote, “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him” (2 Corinthians 2:14). The writer of Hebrews says, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). Peter gives a reason to be thankful for “grief and all kinds of trials,” saying that, through the hardships, our faith “may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:6-7).

The people of God are thankful people, for they realize how much they have been given. One of the characteristics of the last days is a lack of thanksgiving, according to 2 Timothy 3:2. Wicked people will be “ungrateful.”

We should be thankful because God is worthy of our thanksgiving. It is only right to credit Him for “every good and perfect gift” He gives (James 1:17). When we are thankful, our focus moves off selfish desires and off the pain of current circumstances. Expressing thankfulness helps us remember that God is in control. Thankfulness, then, is not only appropriate; it is actually healthy and beneficial to us. It reminds us of the bigger picture, that we belong to God, and that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3). Truly, we have an abundant life (John 10:10), and gratefulness is fitting.

Recommended Resources: Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy by Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Logos Bible Software.

DID JESUS MARRY

Did Jesus Marry?

Some of Jesus’ teachings and habits  -  his prohibition of divorce, his rejection of showy fasting, his voluntary celibacy  -  did not square with the beliefs and practices of the major Jewish religious groups of his day. Had Jesus married, he would quite comfortably have floated on the cultural mainstream. As a working adolescent, he would easily have found a bride to his taste and earned the acclamation of the neighbours. And Jesus was surely not unaware of the tradition that expected every Jewish male to sire a legitimate son by the time he was 18 years of age. As an itinerant preacher, he enjoyed himself at wedding celebrations. Some of his parables were about the bridegroom, weddings guests, and bridesmaids  -  all painted in bright positive colours. Jesus saw sexuality and marriage as blessings given to humanity by a gracious Creator concerned with man’s happiness. Yet it is historically certain that Jesus chose to remain celibate, thereby going against what would have been unthinkable in his time.

Family Circumstances

It is worth noting that the New Testament is quite vocal about Jesus’ familial circumstances. The story of his conception and birth brings into play a lot of family ties and lines running up and down the family tree. Apart from his mother and her paradoxical marriage to Joseph the craftsman (“tekton” in Greek), a lot of gospel coverage is given to “his brothers and sisters.” Indeed, from the various statements of Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and Acts, we learn about Mary, the mother of Jesus, about his thought-to-be father, Joseph, about his four brothers named James, Joses, Jude, and Simon, and about his unnamed sisters.

The second century Jewish-Christian writer, Hegesippus, mentions Clophas, an uncle of Jesus, and Symeon, a cousin. The gospel story also pulls in a lot of characters with family connections, who figure in Jesus’ public ministry: Mary Magdalene, Joana, the wife of Chuza, steward of Herod, Susanna, Mary, the mother of James the Less and Joses, Salome, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, and, last but not least, Martha and Mary, the lady friends !  With so many familial characters thrown around him, like flowers in a garland, what prevented the gospels from popping in the name of a wife, if any? The loquacity of the New Testament about the one raises the question regarding the silence about the other; the answer to which is quite simply, there wasn’t any other! If Jesus had married, the gospel writer would have hurried to throw in the last piece and completed the family snapshot with grace and ease! But the total silence about a wife and children of Jesus, named or unnamed, has an obvious explanation: none existed.

Family Opposition and Loyalty

Jesus’ mother, brothers and sisters survived into the period of his public ministry, though not without tension between them and him  -  they thought him crazy (John 7, 5); or that Jesus refused to meet with them (Mark 3, 31 – 35). If Jesus had a wife, where was she in all this? Did she resist the family opposition, like a loyal wife, or ditch him to go over to their side? His Resurrection, however, demolished the family opposition; otherwise how explain that his brother, James, became a prominent leader of the Jerusalem church, with other family members following on?  How is it that the gospel says that some of his disciples left their wives and children to follow him, while never speaking of that precise sacrifice in his own case? The answer, quite simply, is that he had made an earlier and more radical sacrifice. If marriage is not the building of community in God, it is nothing. This is the ultimate reality of which marriage is one of the perceptible signs. Jesus Christ engaged the heart of reality; he could do without the sign.

LEAVES FALL

While the leaves fall

As autumn takes hold, the mood, the traditions, even the weather of the month of November often turn our thoughts to those whom we have lost. But death need not mean the loss of meaning – love and loss are forever inextricably linked November winds carry echoes of loss. It is the month of All Saints,

All Souls and commemoration of the war dead when memories

that bless and burn come back to haunt us.

We sense anew the absence of the loves of our lives. But by now we have learned that love and loss go together. If you love, you are sure to suffer; if you do not love, you will suffer even more.

Most of us, in fact, in the fine resiliency of the human soul, are willing to try loving, again and again, though we understand how

vulnerable that makes us to loss. But we cannot live without love and loss. They are written into our DNA; into the very nature

of life itself.

One way or another, loss forever shadows the light of our lives. And the more we love people and things, and the more attached we are to our dreams and hopes, the more deeply we will feel their loss. Each of us has our own story of loves and losses, of coping with the raw joys and hurting edges they score into

our soul.

The impact of loss is often unpredictable, and can be utterly poignant. It can suddenly ambush you, that aching sense of someone’s absence brought on by a spring morning, a summer pathway, an autumn sky, an empty chair, the first Christmas carol you must listen to alone.

Long after she had died, the sight of some scribbled comments by my mother, tucked away in the pages of the book I was rereading,

twisted my heart in a way impossible to describe.

Loving someone wraps invisible blankets of blessing around both people. The most beautiful and essential parts of us are entwined

with those of the other. These invisible realities are often below consciousness. I remember a mother in my last parish telling me that she suddenly woke up one night with the shocking

realisation that her son had just died.

This awareness came to her, I felt, not as any kind of sad news from the outside, so to speak: it came from within, a sense of the

absence of an invisible bonding that was central to the throbbing substance of both their lives. It was not the arrival of something new that had come into her head; it was the death of something essential that had left her heart.

Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen reflected on the inescapable presence of loss. “There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of life. It seems that there is no such thing as clear-cut pure joy; even in the happiest times we sense a tinge of loss… But this intimate experience of loss can point beyond the limits of our existence.”

When our hearts are broken from bitter mourning, there is little comfort in Nouwen’s words. Our mourning is not turned into

dancing overnight. We can discern no hidden grace in grief and loss. We are like a seed buried in the darkness, alone and waiting.

It is only when the time is right, when the heart is ready, that loss, like a midwife, brings something very special and undreamt of into the emptiness of our lives. The moment of a new and slowly emerging reality will only come when we trust the possibility of such a resurrection, and open ourselves to it.

Our life, we discover, has not lost its meaning. Something in our soul forever senses possibility. In “Love without Frontiers”,

Preston-born poet Phoebe Hesketh wrote:

A love without frontiers that sees without

eyes, Is present in absence and never denies The unexplored country beyond.

Loss is like a teacher. Its value lies in the space it makes for something new to grow. “Loss makes vital clearance in the soul,” wrote John O’Donohue. “Loss is the sister of discovery; it is vital to openness; though it certainly brings much pain.”

Where the loss is caused by the death of a dearly loved friend or relation, that sense of loss may now begin to open the slow door to another way of being with that person.

Unrestricted by time and place, a new intimacy becomes possible. Jesus was so conscious of that mysterious transition – the need to

leave us so as to possess us more intimately.

The felt sting of death lessens; the reality of the love does not. No matter what subsequently happens, where love was once true,

it will never be replaced. Part of you will always be a presence around the other, and from their unseen places, they will most certainly be minding us with the purest love.

This is the message of the angel of grief.

We do not have to become stuck forever in the sands of sorrow. We step free beyond it. There is a wider and firmer space in which

to move with the rhythm of life. It does not mean that we turn away from the person or place that we no longer experience as we once did. Nor does it mean that a new love replaces the old one. True love is not like that.

In “The Unfilled Gap” (Letters and Papers

from Prison), theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the dynamic of space between those who have truly loved: “Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love, and it would be wrong to try to find anything, since leaving the gap unfilled preserves the bond between us. It is nonsense to say that

God fills the gap. He does not fill it but keeps it empty, so that communion with another may be kept alive even at the cost of pain.”

There is a nourishing paradox in the way another peerless theologian, Karl Rahner, reflects on the unfilled gap. “There is no such thing in either the world or the heart as a vacuum,” he said. “And wherever space is really left by death, by renunciation, by parting, by apparent emptiness, provided that the emptiness

is not filled by the world, or activity, or noise, or the deadly grief of the world – there is God.”

Those who have loved and lost, and grown through it all, have already tasted death and resurrection. They have followed their passion, they have risked for love; they have been devastated by loss. And because they loved and trusted life once, the final death will never be a fearful stranger.