By a Benedictine Monk

From Christian antiquity until the present the land graced by the human presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ has witnessed many pilgrims. All seek to receive a grace or some divine assistance in life. Although they all arrive at the very place where Our Lord was born, crucified and rose from the dead, they only see a material place occupied by real human beings, both good and bad. They must make an act of faith in this Holy Land, sanctified by the blood of Christ, to receive the graces that God wants to grant them.

Both in the Old and the New Testament the Holy Land was a figure of the Heavenly Kingdom. This pilgrimage may be seen as a symbol of our earthly existence seeking the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his commentary of the life of Moses, compares the pilgrimage of our life with the ascent of Moses to the top of Mount Sinai and the forty years journey in the desert seeking the Promised Land.

In the book of Exodus, God invited Moses to the top of Mt. Sinai. This was a frightful place with terrible lightning, thunder, and the thick darkness of a cloud. St. Gregory explains that when the soul first seeks God, he escapes the darkness of sin by embracing the light of faith which leads to a virtuous life that St. John calls “. . .the light shining in the darkness.”

As the soul advances towards God through contemplation, he realizes that in spite of the light of faith, there remains the very thick darkness of mystery. He must go beyond what the five senses offer to his intelligence and even what the intelligence itself thinks it sees. It is precisely in the presence of this reality of the Invisible and the Unknowable that the soul will “see” God, albeit a hidden and invisible God. The light of faith and the darkness of unknowing moves Moses to seek God even more and he asks to see His Majesty. God Himself responds that no man can see Him here below and live, but that He would permit Moses to glimpse His Majesty from behind. He tells Moses to go to a “place” and in that place he would find “the rock” and in the rock he would find a “hollow spot.” In this cave-like space in the rock, God would cover the opening with His hand while He passed by and after taking away His hand, Moses could glimpse at the “back of God.” Moses was transformed by this vision of God that he found in the darkness of faith. When he returned to the camp of the chosen people, rays of light were shining from his face to the point of frightening all that saw him. What his soul contemplated was reflected materially on his face, the reflection of the Majesty of God.

To summarize the explanation given by St. Gregory, the “place” that Moses is to enter is compared to the baptized soul leaving the slavery of sin, like the chosen people left the land of Egypt. The “Rock” upon which he walks is Christ Who is the Way that offers solid footing, and the “hollow space” in the Rock is where we dwell in Christ. It is our habitual union with God by the practice of virtue, the habit of receiving the sacraments and continual prayer. God is pure spirit and He has no front or back, neither does He have a hand with which He covers things. These material elements symbolize the humanity of Christ by which we are able to see God through the veil of faith.

Moses received the commandments and saw the “back of God.” Had he seen the face of God, he would have already reached his destination. Seeing God only from behind, he was obliged to follow the path of God. He was to follow God by practicing the commandments and running in the way of perfection of God’s law. His life was transformed into a ray of light in order to help others follow the way of perfection. He then began his long pilgrimage of forty years through the desert in order to reach the Promised Land.

In the desert, his battle intensified. The pilgrims that he was leading began to bitterly complain of nothing to drink or eat. God provided for them with a stream of water from the rock and bread from heaven called Manna. These pilgrims continued to complain. God permitted poisonous serpents to bite them and they finally asked for God’s mercy. He told Moses to make a brazen snake and nail it to a tall post. If they would look upon this serpent they would be healed from the poison. The water from the rock, the bread from heaven and the brazen serpent that looks poisonous, but instead of inflicting death restores life to those about to die; all of these events represent Our Lord Jesus Christ. All of the battles fought by the chosen people in the desert represent the spiritual battles that every soul must undergo in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are all wayfarers in the dark battleground of this life and we must make the pilgrimage to our heavenly fatherland. Although we flee from the darkness of sin and vice, we are not afraid of the darkness of faith where we can contemplate the beauty of God in the surrounding cloud of darkness and mystery.