Holy Ground
7 March, 2010Thoughts on the readings for the Third Sunday of Lent:
Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15
Psalm 103:1-4, 6-8, 11
1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Luke 13:1-9
God comes to Moses on the Holy Mountain, and he reveals himself in his Name, that glorious and terrible Name, the hidden and mysterious Name, the sublime, ineffable Name, "I AM."
God comes to us, a Holy Fire who pours Himself continually on us, but is not spent (Ex 3:2). God is, who is Being itself, and apart from Him is nothing (John 1:3-4). In the profoundest sense we cannot be unless we are in God, we are made to seek Him, "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28)
You have made us for yourself, Lord,
and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
St. Augustine of Hippo
One of the great themes of Lent, expressed in reading after reading, is that the way of the Lord is light and life, and to turn from it leads only to barrenness and dryness (Psalm 1). Today St. Paul takes us to the desert wanderings of Israel, and reminds us that God provides water in the barren places (Ex 17:6)—and that wellspring of Life is Christ himself (1 Cor 10:4).
"Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
John 4:13-14
Our Lenten fasting serves to ask us "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" (Is 55:2) It reminds us, too, that all we have comes from God, and he made it to be good for us. As we walk with Israel in their wandering in the Lenten season, we come at last to the table of the Lord, we come to see at last that in Him all ground is holy ground.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest to lay her young,
at thy altars, O Lord of hosts.
Communion Antiphon, Ps. 84:3