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December 18, 2018O Adonai, ruler of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and gave him the law on Sinai, come! Stretch forth your arm to redeem us!
How will the Lord come to us, he who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and in the cloud on Sinai? When Jesus first appeared on earth, he mysteriously entered into a cloud on Tabor with Moses and Elijah, to set our hearts burning for the divine presence. Peter, James and John could never forget that moment. In the midst of ordinariness, labor, uncertainty, perplexity, obscurity, they experienced something more certain than their own existence. “For we did not follow cleverly designed myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.”
In his second coming, we will ascend not a mountain but heaven itself to meet him in the clouds where we will be with him forever. But in this wonderful middle coming we also experience clouds, for the divine indwelling is like a heaven within complete with interior clouds and stars and a variety of other elements. Most often we are present before God in naked faith, but sometimes a cloud carries us more sensibly into his presence. As Guerric says, “So too there are not lacking clouds which will raise up our spirits to higher things provided our hearts are not too lazy and tied to earth, and so we will be with the Lord if only for half an hour.” These are the clouds that rain the Word of God upon us in liturgy and lectio, divine words that slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit; that judge the secret emotions and thoughts; that uncover us before God. Like Moses, we come early in the morning to ascend the mountain alone. Like him we enter the cloud and stand silently before the Lord, waiting upon his voice. Little by little we learn his language; more and more our conversation is in heaven, the heaven of our interior where the Lord, in revealing himself to us, reveals us to ourselves.
And finally, Guerric reminds us, there is a cloud God daily sets as a means of ascent for us, the cloud that is his chariot, namely, the Eucharist, that sacrifice of love poured out without limits which most powerfully touches and transforms our hearts into his resting place on earth.
Image: The Burning Bush by Sieger Koder
