Fr. Jacob's August 2015 Newsletter Message

To see him is to love him

"To see, see, see him is to love, love, love him," is what the Teddy Bears almost, but didn't quite sing back in 1958.

Yet it is one of the things that the Lord teaches us through the words of Scripture. We might learn from Moses. His desire for God is never satisfied. His story is one who grows closer and closer to the Lord. He speaks with God as a friend yet he desires more. Tell me your name? (Exodus 3:13) Show me your ways (Exodus 33:13)? Show me your glory (Exodus 33:18). Let me see you, he pleads.

Moses is a wonderful tale of what it is like to really love God. His story repays careful study. How he is drawn by the Lord back into his people, out of sin and into relationship. How the Lord empowers him. It begins with obedience, grows into trust and becomes nothing less than a profound friendship and intimacy with God. It is, so to say, as if the horizon of Moses' desire for God just keeps growing larger and larger until he says "Let me see your glory".

Glory, kabod in Hebrew, is the honor of prestige owed to one who is powerful and the visible splendor of one with such power. So the Lord's glory in the Old Testament is both the honor owed to him (to glorify the Lord is to give him honor), and the visible consuming fire of his splendor. This fiery radiance of the glory is always veiled, in the Old Testament, within a cloud. The cloud wrapped splendor descends before the people of Israel in the wilderness and upon Mount Sinai when the Law is granted, it stands at the door of the Tent of Meeting when Moses speaks with God as a friend, fills the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, and the Temple when Isaiah sees the hem of the Lord's robe and Ezekiel movingly sees the glory of the Lord rise up and leave the Temple as the people of Judah are taken into Exile.

Yet though Moses is the Lord's friend, his desire to see the Lord face to face is denied in his lifetime. Instead Moses enters the dark cloud that veils the Lord's radiant glory and the Lord places him in a cleft in the rock - a cleft that Christians often interpret as Christ who is the rock - and Moses sees the glory of the Lord, so to say, from behind as the Lord passes by.

For this desire, to see God is, in the Lord's plan, only fulfilled through Christ. It's only when the Word becomes flesh that the Lord's glory is seen - no longer veiled by a cloud - but instead veiled by flesh that is our flesh. "The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us and we have seen his glory" (John 1:14).

Moses' desire, humanity's desire, for intimacy with the Lord, is fulfilled only in Christ. Scripture promises us that Jesus' will is for us to see his glory,

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. John 17:24

St. Paul reveals that Moses' desire will indeed by fulfilled, "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face."

Yet even now, we who journey through this life, are united to Christ. Giving glory to the Father, through the Son in the gift of the Spirit and are being drawn more and more deeply into his life. Like Moses we are the friends of God and "all of us, with unveiled faces, see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror". "For it is the God who said. 'Let light shine out of darkness', who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

So open anew your hears to glorify the Living God. Like Moses let the Lord draw you out of sin into obedience, trust and friendship, that you may delight in him and nestled in the rock that is Christ, be transformed from glory to glory.

Blessings,

Fr. Jacob