Photo by Aman Dhakal on Unsplash
I love the reading from Hebrews in the Office of Readings today. The author describes the awesome scene in Exodus 19 where Moses approaches Mount Sinai, coming face-to-face with God.
“Now at daybreak on the third day there were peals of thunder on the mountain and lightning flashes, a dense cloud, and a loud trumpet blast, and inside all the people trembled. … The mountain of Sinai was entirely wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended on it in the form of fire.” (Exodus 19:16, 18)
“They were appalled at the order that was given: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.’ The whole scene was so terrible that Moses said, ‘I am afraid’, and was trembling with fright.” (Hebrews 12:20-21)
While the Israelites trembled with fright, what we are approaching in these days is even more awesome: we are preparing to encounter the living God on the mount of Calvary:
“What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and have been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant and a blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel’s.” (Hebrews 12:22-24)
While our encounter is even more awesome than that of Moses on Sinai, we approach these holy days ahead of us knowing that we are “first-born sons”, inheriting eternal life, redeemed forever in Jesus’ Precious Blood.
For me, Lent has been unusual this year. In the midst of PhD fieldwork, most of the Sundays of Lent have been taken up immersed in research in one of my case study parishes. So now, my heart is longing to approach the sacred mountain of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection and enter fully into the mysteries. Wishing all of my readers a holy and blessed Triduum!
