Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Attaining the spiritual attitude of a child after having grown up in our world requires grace.  Our heavenly Father is, even now, Fathering us into eternal life.  This new birth already started at our Baptism, and will be completed at our death.  Dying to this world is part of being born again, but it doesn’t mean that we are to become cold and callous – stoic.  The Love of God mysteriously breaks down our attachment to this world while at the same time making us care more than ever for each other and for God.  The wise of this world recognize so much vanity but fail to recognize the revelation of the Father.  Worldly wisdom is like a hard leather shoe, worn by the mind as it journeys towards meaning.  This shoe on the one hand protects the mind from vain pursuits, but on the other hand makes it lose sensitivity to grace.  We have to remove our shoes in the presence of God – becoming vulnerable and childlike again – because we cannot ultimately protect our minds from the apparent vanity of death.  Faith gives us immediate access to the Father.  The time we spend with Him each day, barefoot and childlike, refreshes our soul with that life which is beyond death.  The more we are filled with that life, the less we need to wear shoes or protect our mind with vain wisdom – the less we have to consider daily death and loss as anything other than detachment from what is passing away.

EPIPHANIUS THE LATIN:

And he revealed these things to children. To which children? Not those who are children in age but to those who are children in respect to sin and wickedness. To them Jesus revealed how to seek the blessings of paradise and the things to come in the kingdom of heaven, because thus it was well pleasing before God that “they should come from the east and the west and that they should lie down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but that the sons of this worldly kingdom should be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”¹

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA:

The one who sees the Son, who has the image of the Father in himself, sees the Father himself.… These things are to be understood in a manner befitting to God. He said, “Everything has been handed down to me” so that he might not seem to be a member of a different species or inferior to the Father. Jesus added this in order to show that his nature is ineffable and inconceivable, like the Father’s. For only the divine nature of the Trinity comprehends itself. Only the Father knows his own Son, the fruit of his own substance. Only the divine Son recognizes the One by whom he has been begotten. Only the Holy Spirit knows the deep things of God, the thought of the Father and the Son.²

PRUDENTIUS:

God moved amid the branches set with spines,
And tresses of the flames swayed harmlessly,
That he might shadow forth his Son’s descent
Into our thorny members sin infests
With teeming briers and fills with bitter woes.
For tainted at its root that noxious shrub
Had sprouted from its baneful sap a crop
Of evil shoots beset with many thorns.³

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA:

When the almighty Lord of the universe began to legislate through the Word and decided to make his power visible to Moses, he sent Moses a divine vision with the appearance of light, in the burning bush. Now a bramble bush is full of thorns. So too when the Word was concluding his legislation and his stay among men as their Lord, again he permitted himself to be crowned with thorns as a mystic symbol. Returning to the place from which he had descended, the Word renewed that by which he had first come, appearing first in the bush of thorns and later being surrounded with thorns that he might show that all was the work of the same one power. He is one, and his Father is one, the eternal beginning and end.⁴

EPHREM THE SYRIAN:

The bush which was unsuitable even as an image of dead gods was able to depict within itself the mystery of the living God. Moses, this is a sign to you: as you saw God dwelling in the midst of fire, by fire must you serve the God who dwells in the fire.⁵

ORIGEN:

When Moses had seen the bush burning and not being consumed he was astonished at the sight and said, “I will cross over and see this sight.” He certainly also did not mean that he was about to cross over some earthly space, or to ascend mountains or to descend the steep sides of valleys. The vision was near him, in his countenance and in his eyes. But he says, “I will cross over,” that he might show that he, reminded forcefully by the heavenly vision, ought to ascend to a higher life and cross over to better things than those in which he was.⁶

GREGORY THE GREAT:

When Moses sought the glory of contemplation on high, he said, “I will pass over and see this vision.” For unless he had withdrawn the footsteps of his heart from love of the world, he would never have been able to understand heavenly things.⁷

AMBROSE:

Why should we despair that God should speak in men, who spoke in the thorn bush? God did not despise the bush. Would that he might also give light to my thorns. Perhaps some may wonder that there is some light even in our thorns. Some of our thorns will not burn. There will be some whose shoes shall be put off their feet at the sound of my voice, that the steps of the mind may be freed from bodily hindrances.⁸

AMBROSE:

For it is said to Moses when he was desiring to draw nearer: “Put off your shoes from your feet,” how much more must we free the feet of our soul from the bonds of the body and clear our steps from all connection with this world.⁹

EVAGRIUS:

If Moses, when he attempted to draw near the burning bush, was prohibited until he should remove the shoes from his feet, how should you not free yourself of every thought that is colored by passion seeing that you wish to see One who is beyond every thought and perception?¹⁰

AUGUSTINE:

What are the shoes? Well, what are the shoes we wear? Leather from dead animals. The hides of dead animals are what we protect our feet with. So what are we being ordered to do? To give up dead works. This is symbolically what he instructs Moses to do in his honor, when the Lord says to him, “Take off your shoes. For the place you are standing in is holy ground.” There’s no holier ground than the church of God, is there? So as we stand in it let us take off our shoes, let us give up dead works.¹¹

1. INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS 26.  Simonetti, M. (Ed.). (2001). Matthew 1–13 (p. 230). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
2. FRAGMENT 148.  Simonetti, M. (Ed.). (2001). Matthew 1–13 (pp. 231–232). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
3. THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 49–70. Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 10). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
4. CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 2.8.75.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (pp. 11–12). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
5. COMMENTARY ON EXODUS 3:2.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 12). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
6. HOMILIES ON GENESIS 12.2.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 12). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
7. MORAL INTERPRETATION OF JOB 15.57.68.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (pp. 12–13). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
8. CONCERNING VIRGINS 1.1.2.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 13). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
9. CONCERNING REPENTANCE 2.11.107.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 13). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
10. CHAPTERS ON PRAYER 4.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 14). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
11. SERMON 101.7.  Lienhard, J. T., & Rombs, R. J. (Eds.). (2001). Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (p. 14). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.