There's a mystery there of the human heart and free choice. So, if God speaks right out, it sort of puts you against the wall. If he speaks in that way, a little space is left for you to live in. And you're sort of allowed to ponder and forgive him. There's another question. Why does God delay his revelation? Why didn't he give it away first? Why didn't Christ come earlier than he did? What's the point of all of that? And a third question is, of course, simply why is there darkness? Why is there light? And all of those questions are evaded. And when we get to the last one, there's this principle that God likes history. He likes to work in history. He likes to reveal himself in history. He's interested in time. He's always interested in some immediate reality. Time is very important to him. And time and history involve darkness and progressive revelation.

[01:08]

God likes to reveal himself over the course of time. God likes us to find him over the course of time. God likes us to develop, to grow in consciousness over the course of time, at least in history. So somehow time and history are written into our being, and that's the way God is interested in us. And beyond that, we're interested in himself, except as we live through it. And then the question answers itself. So the question is asked, and then he tells briefly, the veil of Moses symbolizes that the words of prophecy are here. And what is it that the prophecy is speaking of? It's Christ. It's the Word of God. So this is the theme of his whole sermon.

[02:11]

Now notice, you can give his thesis in about five words, and how many verses does he take to complete it? About 460 lines it takes him to say. Why? Because he's trying to make you experience it. Because this kind of writing is designed to bring you into the experience of the discovery of Christ in the whole of the Old Testament. And remember that there's more than one book. One book is the Old Testament. One book is the Scriptures. The other book is nature. The other book is life. So as you learn to discover Christ in the Scriptures, in the Old Testament, underneath these symbols, you also learn to discover him underneath the symbols of your life, underneath the things that you're living here, the realities of your time. And there we shouldn't say just nature, because we mean everything else that happens to us. The experience of our lives, Christ-ism. I didn't turn the water on. I didn't put up those four sentences. We'll come back to that in a second.

[03:15]

But remember here, we don't really have four sentences for Scripture. We only have two. The unmanifest and the manifest, the hidden and the revealed, the prophetic and the realized. And it's as if Jacob doesn't even make much distinction between where we're at now and how we're going to be. You can say that for him, to know Christ is already in some way to be in time to heaven. So he's only interested in those two places. Christ is there, Christ is in there. To know Christ is in there is to be the guide, to be in the place. This differs from the other verses. Okay, God veiled Moses' face to signify that the prophecies are veiled until his son reveals them.

[04:16]

God veiled the words of prophecy. Why? He doesn't really give a good answer to that. He doesn't really give a final answer. The whole thing bears upon him that sign. So that the world might not become open to where the Son of God is, if they weren't ready for it. But maybe the preparation is the thing itself. Maybe the preparation is the growth itself. It's a process of preparation. You can hear that in questions this morning. We got as far as line 47. The Spirit takes you to the cross. I'm going to go through this quickly, but rather line by line. If you want to stop anywhere, if there's any question that comes up, just let me know. I'll tell you to stop. There are so many things that this opens up. Just try to settle for a moment on each of them that's important. I can't see. I know you're a resident of Israel also. I can't see that the pagans are set up in Egypt. Yeah. And there's a...

[05:19]

That's right. ...the Son. That's right. That's what he said. He says that the pagans, the ancient people, were prone to idolatry. So to speak of a second God might, in some way, lend itself to that. Whether they make an idol of the Son of God, or whether they just mistake what he was. But it seems that in the history of salvation, there's a narrowing down, focusing down on monotheism, on one God, and then on the human history that's in the world. Maybe I've got a concentration on purification, and not the revelation of the universe. First, a sense of the unity of God. The unity of transcendence of God. That's right. That's right. Very good. Because the knowledge, the understanding of the whole Trinity is really very difficult.

[06:25]

I don't mean a kind of abstract understanding. The understanding of the implications of the life of the whole Trinity. I'm not really sure what the liberty of the race would be. The understanding of the world would be. And that's what Paul is fighting for. Through the Spirit, and hidden in symbolic fashion, the prophets brought news to the entire world of the Son in secret. They brought news in secret of paradise. And the veil which is on Moses' face was spread over their words whenever they spoke of the unity of God. And he's going to contend that everything that they said refers to the unity of God. Like Rufus says that the whole of the Old Testament is the gospel. But the whole of the Old Testament is the gospel of Christ. Not only in a general way, but also in a very particular way. Now if you think of Christ as the Word, and the whole of the Scripture is being, as it were, the parts of the Word, then it makes more sense.

[07:27]

That's something the conviction has to grow for that. It's not like you can accept that this time of year. The radiance of Moses wasn't about Christ shining in him. So Christ is the light that's inside Moses. And it was veiled from the Hebrews so they should not be worried. The Father knew that the people were not ready to see the Son. So for whatever reason that they weren't ready, that's the news. Now we can take it the other way. As I said, I'd say, well, they weren't ready. It's a matter of preparation. But the preparation is what's important. In other words, the preparation is itself the growth into Christ in some way or other. It's the preparation that God is interested in. Not just a plan of liberation. All of life, in that sense, is a preparation. A preparation of Christ. Now we need to go to 2 Corinthians. We didn't treat this at any length last time. I think I just mentioned it. But 2 Corinthians 3 and 4.

[08:30]

This is a key passage behind the oath of Jacob's son. St. Paul is battling, arguing with his beloved Corinthians there. He says, well, we don't need letters of recommendation. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything. Our sufficiency is from God. He has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code written in the Spirit. For the written code tells what the Spirit gives life. Remember, the written code was written on stone in the next generation. And that corresponds to the wall of Moses. Now if the dispensation of death carved on letters on stone came in such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses' face, that's what Jacob was talking about. The splendor on Moses' face in Exodus chapter 33. They couldn't bear it, so they had to put a veil over it. Because of its brightness, fading as it was, will not the dispensation of the Spirit that is in Christ be attended with greater splendor? For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation,

[09:31]

the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it. But think about it. The fear of the Old Testament, the blood of the New Testament, the judgment of the Old Testament, the liberation of the ancient and the new testaments. Think how much that would be radical, do with it. Especially in Galatia. Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor had no splendor at all. In other words, the splendor on Moses' face under that covenant was taken away. Because of the splendor that surpasses it. For if what faded away from him had splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor. Glory and... I think it's doxa, I didn't bring the Greek, I think it's doxa, glory and splendor, is a word for glory. It's all about the glory of that, which is extremely important. It's much more important. You may think that glory is kind of an external delimit. And it's just joined up with the decorative. But it's a key thing in Scripture. It's a key thing in salvation. And that's one of the reasons why we

[10:32]

mess it all with a poetic treatment of Scripture. Because beauty and the glory of God aren't interrelated, and they're in the center of Scripture. They're behind it, in the last sentence. This is something the Christian understanding of God. The Christian understanding of Jesus. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold. Not like Moses who put a veil over his face and said to the Israelites, why not see the wind of repentance coming? Well... Whether that was a reason. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the Old Testament, Lebanon, that is the Jews, that same veil remains unlifted. Because only through Christ is it taken away. Only through Christ is the veil taken away. So this is where Jacob is coming from. He's got the treatment of the veil. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read. Now Moses is a synonym for the Torah. For the Scriptures. For the Word of God. For the whole Old Testament. Yes. But the Torah means, especially the first five books, which are probably books of Moses. But when a man turns to the Lord,

[11:34]

that is Jesus, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So you move from the Lord of the Spirit. You move from an external world to the Spirit which is within you. And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord. And that word beholding is ambiguous. It can mean either mirroring or beholding. It can mean either shining forth, reflecting, radiating the glory of the Lord or beholding the glory of the Lord. Are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. So this light is extremely important. This vision. Beholding the glory of the Lord somehow is the glory of the Lord that comes upon you. And then a little later on, you get underpinnings. In their case, the God of this world, the devil, has blinded the mind of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the likeness of God.

[12:36]

For what we preach is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. We don't preach ourselves. We preach something that's interesting. For it is the God who said let light shine out of darkness. That's Genesis. It's the first word of the creation. Let there be light. Who has shone in our lives, the second creation, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. So it's through this vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus which is in our hearts, which is interior, that the veil is removed. And we're aware of the God within us. And see how this is the incarnation. That instead of God's coming to you as it were from outside, even so that the light reflected on Moses' face was as if from the face of God external or the back of God. The presence of God was as if external. He went to meet him on the mountain. He met him in the tent. It was like a face-to-face but not the final face. It was exterior somehow.

[13:39]

Now what's happening here? You see how it corresponds to the incarnation? The light of the glory of God shines out from the center of your own humanity. You see? The incarnation means that God is married to you at the core of your being. He gets into this marriage later on. So the light is formed out from your own very center, from your own heart. So it's at the core and at the source of your life now instead of leaving this place. And yet this opens up for you. It does. So there's a movement from the outside to the inside. And that's the lifting of the veil. See, it's much more than lifting of a veil or something that's still external to you. The lifting of a veil is a new version. It's a reverse, a revolution by which that reality of God is now inside you. That, as it were, the core of what's to be here. It's the source of your life. Jesus speaks of that contemplative marriage that started inside the body. Okay. So that's the key passage.

[14:41]

That's the key passage. There's an alternative priest who said that if you only have one biblical text, you can keep it as long as you want to. That's it. It is the God who said that life is not out of love, it's the assumption in our hearts to give the right amount of knowledge of the glory of God. That's called personal experience, that's how we generalize it. Just from the experience of baptism. The father knew the big one already. The prophets were God's friends and shared his secrets. The whole Old Testament is veiled after the passion of Moses. In him, all the prophetic books are depicted. Within that veil, which lies over the scriptures, there sits resplendent Christ as judge. That surprises you. All the prophets veiled every reference to him in their books. Now, it's amazing how much knowledge he gets out of the Exodus texts in his papers. He doesn't know any of the prophets. Almost everything

[15:43]

that he's referring to later on is during the life of Moses in the book of Exodus. And a couple of other of the books of Moses are close to that. So there's a great deal more that could be done. Jesus is a radiant light in the scriptures. Now, Paul talks about the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. But do you remember John in his prologue, where he says, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. It's amazing. He says he was the light. He said he was the light. Jesus is the light. The Word is the light. So it's called the Word of light. The Logos. The Word of John's glory. The Word is the key to the whole of the scriptures. The Word which is light and becomes a light inside you. The source of your light. So you can see how if the Word which is Christ is light, that Word enlightens the whole of the Word. That is, it enlightens all of the words of the scriptures from within.

[16:44]

Do you see the parallel between that and the incarnation I was talking about before? In other words, the light comes inside us and then you're living from the light which is inside you instead of outside you. Okay? See the parallel with the scriptures. The Word which is Christ, which is Jesus, is both Word and light. It's the one Word which is inside the scriptures, therefore, and illuminates all the individual words of the Bible from inside. They're illuminated from inside because they are all part of that one Word. Do you see how that's in the incarnation? Now it's not that it just happens in the incarnation, or in the resurrection, or when the Spirit is given. But the Word comes apparently from outside and that is discovered to be the core and the source of what it comes into being. There's a word, an edifice of building of the scriptures. Into the body of the scriptures it comes, and then we see that that is an incarnation and that all the time He was there, the very divine light

[17:44]

of those scriptures. That He was the God within the words of the Bible. But you don't know it until Christ has been decided, until He's come, and until I've become the one experience that you know. That's what he's talking about. See, the whole thing is an experience. And they've got a terrific sense of the Christ event, these people, as if it's something that happened. And they don't talk in kind of abstract or character terms. You know, they talk about non-Christian religious situations, which you can't because you're blinded by this light, you're blinded by this explosion of the Christ event that's happened. Blinded and enlightened at the same time. But that's so bright you see that nothing else makes much difference. Jesus is a radiant light in the scriptures. And so a veil is thrown over Him so that He might be hidden from the sight of His spectators. See, that light thing in the veil has a lot to do with history, the dynamism of history, and also our own history. The fact that we gradually move towards the light. If we had all the light at the beginning,

[18:44]

the thing would be short-circuited. If we had all the light at the beginning, our growth somehow would be short-circuited. I suppose it's a little like a plant, isn't it, because it has, as I said yesterday, it starts out as just a few leaves. And through those leaves it receives the light so that it becomes larger and receives more light and then grows more leaves and receives more light and grows more leaves and grows into the light. You can't have all the light at the outset because the light is received as if it were through the very size and growth of the being. And it's in that light that you grow and that's your very life. And if you don't do that then you don't have anything to do with it. That's what you have as a plant. So the reason is kind of deep. Why? It's not something we want to talk about. It's because instead of it we grow through it through light. And the light is our focus. And therefore that means time. The veil of Moses openly cries out to the entire world that the world is stripped of

[19:45]

that which it is worth. Moses is the model of all that is uttered and prophesied. Remember where Jesus says at some point in the Gospel that it was written in Moses written in Moses written in the Bible written in the Torah it was to be written in Moses. Moses was taken so much as a sinner to this church. Especially for the law Torah, the first part of it. That veil was only removed with our Lord in whom all secrets were explained to the entire world. You see he's saying the same thing as the Torah says. He says as we move in the Church of the Lord it's also removed from the history of the information of the time and the world itself. The Son of God came and uncovered Moses' faces and uncovered and no one happened to escape. They knew a lot of things they knew on one level there was. See this is the thing about the different levels of interpretation of Scripture. It will make sense on one level a lot of the things in the world that you're aware of. But there's another sense underneath which is this in Christ's sense

[20:45]

or as they call it the allegorical sense because that's kind of weird. They didn't really know what he was saying. The New Testament entered and gave illumination to the world and the whole world became aware of its words in an unveiled form. Notice two things happen at once. There's an inward movement and an outward movement. You move into the Scripture in a sense because you see what was inside it right upon it and you see it's a reality and you see as it were the deepest reality of the universe of our present. At the same time it moves outward because it says all the people in the world in other words it extends outside the Jewish people. So this business of moving from the old to the new is an inward movement and an outward movement at once. Similar to the Synod on the Mount where it moves to the heart and it moves outward. You don't just love your brother or your family but you love everything and at the same time it goes from the outside to the heart in the sense that it's not only that you can't kill it but you can't even eat it. So it moves

[21:46]

both ways at once. That's what happens at first. Our Lord shone out as sun in the world and all received light. That's the dominance of Christ as the sun at this time. And so when the sun shines everything is with us God. Everything is with us and nothing can escape our love. The whole world all received light. Symbols and figures and parables all were explained and yet you know the symbols and the figures and the parables were not. The veil that was placed on the face of the Scriptures was removed and the world now sees open to the sign of God. He's putting it very enthusiastically very optimistically and he himself is such an enlightened person and he's displaying and he's filled with this light. But you wonder if we could say that to what extent we can say that the whole world can see the sign of God. There's another veil that happens

[22:46]

sometimes. Another veil that comes and hides and people after us and you can say that the whole of the western world is veiled and Christ is veiled and hidden again in the inner world and people what is it that people don't see. Fear is good is ungrateful is terrible. This illumination in which Christ shines out as son a lot of the promised we heard about is happen in baptism which is too bad. See baptism comes and enlightens the whole Word of God in those Scriptures Okay, now a new theme, the bride and the bridegroom. Who is the bride? Well, the bride is the church. The bride is also everybody. The bride is everybody. And if you extend it in a sense, the bride is the whole of creation, and it is the marriage of God with everything that is made. He prepares the creation as a place for him to dwell, and as a person for him to join

[23:49]

to, marry to, and he comes and he marries with him. Having instructed her through prophecy in the symbolic way, in his love he built a great palace for the bride and bridegroom. I was puzzling over what that palace was. A Redditor says, a translator says that it refers to the Acts of Thomas. You're probably not familiar with the Acts of Thomas. I don't know. It's a very Syriac, apocryphal book, a long story about the wanderings and works and adventures of the Apostles. And at a certain point he goes and became hesitant to build a palace for her. If you're interested, the text is here. There's also a sense of a palace though in the scriptures themselves. In a letter to the Hebrews, he says, Moses was a servant in a house, Christ is the son, the owner of the house, and we are the house, so we are the palaces.

[24:51]

You could say either the palace is a church, the palace is the scriptures, or whatever. You have difficulty then because the bride merges with the palace. The palace is the scriptures. It seems like it's the whole of the scriptures. It seems like a revelation, the palace, because it's got the scriptures in it. He depicted the bridegroom in various ways we're aware of now. So everything on the walls of the palace somehow reflects the bridegroom, Christ the Lord. He put in his writings that a man should leave his father and mother and leave to his brother. This is way back in Genesis. One of the books of Moses. The prophet Moses introduced a man to a man and his wife. Since then Christ and his church have spoken. Now that's St. Paul that says that in Ephesians 5. We'll get to that. He gets to it. With the exalted eye of prophecy, Moses saw Christ and now he and his church will be one

[25:54]

in the waters of baptism. Now here if you had a modern day engineer reading this, you'd say, what do you mean, Moses saw Christ? Moses knew about baptism? They tend to be very cautious, very skeptical of that kind of knowledge of the prophet's story. And of course it's impossible for us to say how much Moses saw, what Moses knew. Whether he understood the prophetic content of it or not. Now there's of course the contest for Moses wrote a lot of books about the prophetic issue. My father's not very good at this. He did his fair bit. Most of them. And consequently they find a great unity in the scriptures. They never have to knuckle into those critical questions too much. They're always coming back to the unity. It's a very, what do you call it, synthetic and centripetal trust that they have. They never let it flit away. Yeah.

[26:56]

Oh yeah. And he takes it too. Yeah. Yeah. That's the style, isn't it? Deliberate poetic license and sometimes deliberate exaggeration. In other words, if you had, say, a theologian who, a polemical theologian who had to prove points, runs into this kind of thing, he'd throw it at you. It's waste text. You'd say, what? You're not supposed to put that. The only proof you have, the proof that you have is the beauty of the proof. And that's more than the proof. If the proof of Christ is the glory of God, which is the beauty of God in Christ, and this, in fact, reflects that kind of beauty. Because the other argumentative thing is very dry and hard. Proving one or another point of artistry. You have to do it somehow. It's living like this. How he and his church would be one in the waters of baptism. So it's in the waters of baptism that the marriage takes place.

[28:04]

Ephraim has an article, has a poem, a long poem, on Mary and the Jordan. And how Mary and the Jordan somehow are symbols of one another. The woman, the womb in which Christ is born, and the river in which Christ is baptized, and the baptismal pond in which we are born, baptized. And the mother of the church, the baptismal pond, is a symbol for the church. And her putting on him a baptismal water. Christ puts on the church, and the church puts on Christ. The bridegroom and bride are spiritually perfected as one. Moses brought the two shepherds one. Now, he said one flesh, and here it's spiritually perfected as one, one spirit. And it's also Zachariah, it was also one flesh. That comes out now in the Eucharist, of course. The veil Moses saw Christ in and called him man. He saw the church too and called her woman as a device.

[29:05]

And that works two ways. In one way, it's a symbol which veils the reality underneath. But there's also a truth in this fact that every man has a relationship to Christ, a symbolic relationship to Christ. Every woman has a symbolic relationship to the church. Even though every man is also a person. The deepest love contains love. He painted a picture inside the chamber of God. That almost sounds like a reflection of the temple with the two cherubim inside. He called the man and woman, I'll let you know the truth. It's the one who is Christ and the other the church, both being there. After the wedding feast, now here's something amazing. After the wedding feast, Paul entered in and beheld the veil lying. Now what do you make out of that? After the wedding feast, where they're joined and so on.

[30:09]

Now the wedding feast here, I think, must be the resurrection. Yeah. Yeah, Paul enters in. Now, take it back to the Gospel, though. Where is there such an entering in in the Gospel? Is Paul involved? Paul's not only in the Gospel, okay? There's a place in John, chapter 20, where the two disciples, Peter and the beloved disciple that is for us is John, run to the empty tomb, remember? And they go in. They go in. Then Simon Peter came following her and went into the tomb. He saw the linen clothes lying in the napkin which had been on his head. Not long had the linen clothes been rolled up in a place where it sat. Then the other disciple who reached the tomb first also went in and he saw it and believed. Now, notice, the linen clothes lying in one place, the napkin, that's the veil, that's the face veil. It's the same word. There's a theologian up in Berkeley, this woman, Sandra Schneider,

[31:12]

she's a fierce woman theologian. She wrote a book on this a little while ago. The connection between that and the veil of Moses, okay, it's the same word, kalama. So she's got her own interpretation. But with John, the beloved disciple coming in, seeing the veil taken off, see, the veil of Moses, Christ the second Moses, taken off, and then nothing in there. And so then he saw it and he believed. And so she makes that veil, that empty veil as it were, removed and the empty tomb. The veil itself for her is the sign by which the beloved disciple believes. So then she asks the two questions. Well, what does the veil signify? What did John do? According to her, what the veil signifies, whining for, is that Christ has risen, Christ has gone away, that he's ascended to the Father, he turned to the Father as he said it. And hence, in some way, it proves his glorification to the beloved disciple

[32:17]

who then believes in the glorification of Christ, which he had foretold, in which he had prayed. And then later on are the resurrection appearances. This is an appearance of an absence, which represents the glorification. Now notice how well that holds up, that idea of the glorification, with what we're reading in this book. Because the veil was put over the face in order to conceal the glory, and the veil has been taken away, and the glory shines out, and the disciple believes. You see? Yes. There's a connection, at least insofar as he is the bridegroom, and he identifies himself as the bridegroom. I forget which Gospel that's in.

[33:18]

It might be John. Because there are several times when he calls himself the bridegroom, and John Baptist does. There is a connection. As far as the fasting, I'd say the only connection with John would be in this, that the tomb is empty. There's an emptiness there, which is already a fasting. Because the real fasting is not to have the bridegroom around. See? Because the bride is everywhere. The bride is each of us. The fasting for the bride, on the deepest level, is the absence of the bridegroom. And then the physical fasting, and I'll go further on later. Paul entered in and beheld the rare lion there. He seized and removed it from the fair couple. Thus did he uncover and reveal to the entire world Christ and his church. Now, the passage in St. Paul, of course, is in Ephesians 5. You may be familiar with it. Let's look at it. He's talking to husbands and wives. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord.

[34:20]

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body. And this himself is sacred. He makes Christ the bridegroom of the church very clearly. Something which is unusual in Paul. As the church is subject to Christ, so that wives also be subject to the husband. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. It's a very curious way. The washing of water with the Word. It's as if... Now, notice the connection of water here. And then the fact that Jesus is the Word. Which he says later, which is implicit with all of this. Somehow, the Word descends into the water. And the water of baptism becomes the water of the Word. And it's into Christ that the Word, in the water, that the bride descends. So, this is very close to what Jacob is saying. That he might present the church to himself in splendor,

[35:23]

without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, and she might be holy in that home. For this reason, the rancher leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the priesthood become water. This is a great mystery, sacrament, mystery. That's the Greek word, mysterio. And the same word here, which is sacrament. So, this has taken, usually the best, the foundation passage, the sacrament of man. The sanctity and sacramentality of man. It's a useful way of describing sacrament. It's important. And I mean in reference to Christ and the church. Now, what he means, of course, is that it's a mystery in the sense that Jacob does. It's a great symbol of Christ. Gave himself up for her, for death. That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word. It's a washing with the word, which both cleanses and unites, cleanses and joins at the same time.

[36:24]

You remember in the Gospel of John, when Jesus takes off his clothes, and closes them over his head, and offers them to Mary, he washes repeatedly his head. See, it's got something to do with this. That symbol is not man and earth. It's not as simple as that. It's kind of a service. It's like the word pours himself out. With himself, washes repeatedly his head. The veil on Hosea's face has now been removed. Let everyone come and behold the beauties that never willed. The great mystery of Israel has now come unto the earth. Let the wedding guests rejoice in the bridegroom and bride, Christ and his church so beautiful. He gave himself to her and was born of a destitute widow. Note, it flips back and forth from Mary to the church. It's quite the opposite between the two things. They revel in mixing them up,

[37:31]

and letting them substitute for one another. Because they have this invocation. He came down to the depths and raised up the lowly maid to the height of the veil. One and where he is, there is she with him. That's a reflection of St. John. There are a lot of things here where he doesn't make a distinct quotation, but his words are just sort of coasting the surface of his picture. The great fall of great profundity among the apostles expounded the mystery, which is now spoken clearly. The great beauty that had been veiled has now come out into the open, and all the peoples of the world beheld its luminosity. The betrothed made the daughter of day to enter a new womb. And the testing waters of baptism were labor and give rebirth. The waters of baptism, the baptismal font, asked mother. And that symbolizes the church's name. The church is born in it, and yet it is the church at the same time. He rested in the water and invited her. She went down, clothed herself in him, and ascended. Clothed herself in him.

[38:34]

I get the idea of her putting on the words. Do you remember in Revelation chapter 12, the woman filled with the sun? The sun is the light. The glory of God goes Christ himself. In the Eucharist, she received him. And so Moses wrote that the two should be one in this talisman. The baptismal reference here is close to Romans 6, where he is ascending into heaven. From the water comes the chaste and holy union. The bride and bridegroom are united in spirit and baptism. Notice the sacramentality, the insistence on the concrete. This goes with the poetic treatment. It's very characteristic of the Syrians, that they're interested in concrete, physical things. Bread and wine, water, father, host, wood, stone. And here, especially in these two sacramental things, the water and the Eucharist, the bread and wine, the wood.

[39:36]

Women are not joined to their husbands in the same way as the church is joined to the same bed. It's a continual solicitation of wonder, the beauty and the strangeness of the same time, of which God is time. Wives are separated from their husbands by death, but this bride is joined to her beloved by death. If a modern poet were doing it, how would he do it? He wouldn't fill in his face, he'd just give you the thoughts, as it were, with a couple of words, and leave you to fill in the dots. Whereas the fathers, very often, they put it all out there with you. Sometimes we wouldn't ask. He died on the cross and gave his body to the bride in a purse, and she cucks and eats it every day at his table. So because he's a poet, he loves to carry the imagery through in a bold way. He doesn't just say that she eats his body. He uses a figure of a tree, which is a little tree of water,

[40:39]

and the fruit of the tree of water. He opened up his side and mixed his cup with holy blood, filled his cup with holy blood, gave it to her to drink, but she might forget it in the night. And that's interesting, isn't it? More like cleansing before, we think of cleansing from sin, cleansing from purity, but the cleansing of the world is also a cleansing of adultery as religion. And that's what it is in the Old Testament, idolatry as adultery, it's a purification. It's a purification of the mind, purification of the spirit. She anointed him with oil. Who anointed him? Mary, definitely. She put him on in the water, she consumed him in the bread, the baptism. There you have the three sacraments, whoever. The three sacraments of initiation. She put him on in the water, the baptism. She anointed him with oil, reflecting the oil in the prison. She consumed him in the bread, the refuge. You're curious that

[41:43]

it says that she anointed him with oil. It seems to be the reverse of what it is, but I mean, the only thing I should know is that she anointed him with oil, reflecting the oil in the prison. She drank it in the wine so that the world might know that the two of them were one. She was full of love for his death, and on the planet she was alive. Man and wife were the basis of his mystery. The love between man and woman is really the axis of poetry, in a sense. That's the one language, the Larian language, of poetic love. And Jacob was involved enough to bring it in here. Here it is. Whereas we did his poetry at the end of the Old Testament. The Passover lands, the type of quest. Okay, here we get into a new section where he has the symbols of the Exodus experience. Now notice how he still keeps it in a narrow framework of the life of Moses and the Exodus experience. The Passover night and then the passing through the Red Sea.

[42:44]

The two senses of Passover. The one, remember, the angel passing over the houses of the Jews and not killing the first one. The other being the passing through the sea. Those are two senses of Passover and two successful events in his life. They're very close together. Going out, passing over. Now notice also that the unveiling of Moses and the Exodus, or the Passover, have something in common. See, there's a parallel between them. And the very Passover experience, the very Exodus, the going out is an analogy, is a symbol for this unveiling. It's a symbol for moving from the signs to the reality. So you've got a symbol within a symbol. The Exodus, even though it is all in symbolic terms, is already a symbol about the liberation. It's a liberation symbol. An unveiling symbol.

[43:44]

When I move out of Egypt it's like I'm moving out of the land of idolatry. You can say that there are three phases. One phase is Egypt, which is paganism, before Abraham was called in the Jews' religion. The second phase is when the people are called and Abraham is called after the word and they become Israel. The third phase is when Christ comes. So the first phase is idolatry. The second phase is veiled revelation, veiled word, veiled illumination, veiled light of God. And the third phase is the open light of God. Christ. But we remember that it's not completely unveiled still. From experience we know that Christ is still veiled and full. For us still, because we walk in faith. It's not like the full light is veiled in shame on an upstair bed. So there's a fourth phase after that, which is a complete unveiling. Everything is completely transcribed to that light. The Passover lamb. Okay, now,

[44:46]

the whole of Christian tradition says that this is the symbol for Christ. Including, it's in the New Testament, John the Baptist in the New Testament says, Behold the lamb of God which is here in the symbol of Christ. Jesus is both shepherd and lamb. So this is in Exodus 12, the sacrifice and the Passover celebration. They slaughtered the lamb and sprinkled his blood on their door so that the angel of death might not enter and take their Christian life. Now, if somebody doesn't know about this Passover ceremony, then this is pretty mean. It's easy to find. Depicting the cross on the doors, so you've got the lintel, I guess, above the door. And you've got the side posts. So there's a horizontal and a vertical. Preventing death and anointing. It says, The blood of the lamb

[45:47]

and the anointing of the blood of death as people in ancient times might have thought. Had the slayer of the first one, the destroying angel, not seen there the depiction of God's Son, he would not have passed by that door. Remember, he slew the first one of the Egyptians and spared all of the Jews as long as the blood of the lamb was. Moses has taught you by the blood of the lamb that he sprinkled on the doors that you should moisten your lips with the blood of the Son of Jesus. It passes very quickly to the Eucharist. The blood, of course, which you drink in the wine, the acoustic wine. For the mouth is man's gate which emits both songs and words with praise and abuse. Remember James, he says, Can the same spring give forth good water and ruckus water? Can you praise God and abuse the blood of the same man? This is a surprising religion, non-Judaism. It is the cross or the crucifixion

[46:47]

that guards the gate of the mass of sin. He really insists on it. Dye your tongue, dye your lips, your mind too in the blood of your Lord and He will guard you. Notice the sense that they have of the blood of Christ. There's been a devotional tradition in the past or more recently where the blood has a kind of somber or gloomy aspect to it. It's not so here that it says soak yourself in the blood of Christ. It's kind of bigger to it. It's got a kind of fiery quality to it. A life to it. A total positivity. There isn't any gloom. There isn't any sense that gets into devotionalism. Over fearful, over sentimental. There's a bigger sense which is typically of devotionalism. Seek each day for this guardian in your mouth and turn him with tears

[47:48]

and he will preserve you in his keeping. Locate a crossing of the Red Sea. That's the next step on the journey. Moses struck the sea with a wren shale and provide a passage for the dead of every sea of life that cannot enter. With his rod he tears open the ocean and shows how close he can tear open that passage of the Red Sea. The idea is that you've got to pass through that passage in order to get out of there. And hell not in the sense of a place of damnation but in the place of the shadow of the place of the dead. It's the giving that will take it. Shale. Where there is vultures and dust and rust. When the sun would lead men across to his beginning to his father the Egyptians were drowned and were tied to the Paladins and the Son of God arrived in Egypt. They say that the Coptic Church doesn't like to leave the Egyptians. Pharaoh hardened like Leviathan

[48:49]

modeling the devil. He went up from the sea leading the sheep to the whiffed dead signifying the shepherd who brought his sheep into it. Moses then gloriously depicted the bride of life who sang praise. That's Miriam the sister of Moses. Remember? After the crossing of the Red Sea she rose up on the shore and made a tambourine and she and all the other ladies sing and dance this great human play. And of course it was beautiful. But then the young girl said well you came to Mara next experience. Remember there was bitter water in this place so Moses said take a tree take wood and put it in the river in the sea. And the sweet girl said if you need sweet meat I'll get it for you. The cross made sweet those who were bitter. At every stage of the milepost that Moses crossed throughout his entire journey he depicted the image of God's Son. And now he gives a whole history. Some more important

[49:49]

than others like the rock. He struck the rock and gave praise to him and others. Now the next paragraph is that there are four or five different occurrences of the rock in the Old Testament. And the rock here always gives praise. Remember Moses struck the rock to get the water. And that's his blessing. Paul is a very equal man in spirit. He's given it several times in the Old Testament. He said Moses the rock is Christ even in the Old Testament. He is the rock that was not born of man. Let's him down. The rock that was taken out of the mountain the right hand comes down and crushes the great statue the great idol. In the book of Daniel the reference is in the back of this article. And then it grows up and fills up with water. The rock the stone was completely rejected and refused to accept the stone. The rock that shattered

[50:50]

the many items of the land. Let's keep that down. Moses spoke to the rock and gave him a letter telling him about the rock. Christ the rock became alive. The word which gives forth the spirit the word which gives forth the spirit the word which gives forth wisdom the word which seems like a rock which is held like a stone which gives life like a stone. After striking the rock he had to consider the crucifixion. Moses struck it with his bow. The bronze serpent the bronze serpent is pretty important surprisingly it's an imitating symbol of the crucifixion of the rock. Take the image of the serpent and apply that to the stone. The bronze serpent remember the serpents the snakes were driving the people they were running so that serpent Moses would say take make a bronze serpent stick it up on a pole and everybody that looks like it would be healed. And that's

[51:53]

taken in the New Testament as the sign of Christ the symbol of Christ. Now that seems very trivial until you realize that when John speaks about Christ being lifted up that's what he's saying. The lifting up of Jesus in the Gospel of John corresponds to lifting up of the serpent in the New Testament. If I'd be lifted up from the earth I would grow all things to myself grow all men to myself. See a symbol can do that. That's one of the things that the poetry is for. There's a power in the word in the unit which is able to change death into life. And the poetry of the Scripture does the same thing. It mellows the brutality of death. And we think first of all that's a watering down or that's an infidelity

[52:54]

to the life of the It's a gravity. Not a healing but a transforming gravity of the conscience. The healing of the people of the world. It's hard for us to get to that point. There can be a kind of long love for a person or a wrong satisfaction for a person. I think a person has to have the repulsion for a thirst and overcome it rather than having a kind of relish. You see our figures here so clearly in our sages. But to have the repulsion and to overcome it to move through it and find the triumph in the

[53:54]

power within us. That's the truth. It's amazing how much blood there is in the world. The deliberate sacrifice of the selected people is like a butcher shop with prizes around them. You want to plug your mouth with a piece of bread and eat And then it does have the symbol of the dragon. Okay. The dragon serpent. You can't spend long on that but that's an important symbol. You realize also that the serpent is the serpent of the garden. The serpent produced temptation. The serpent is also a wisdom symbol. So the

[54:55]

evil wisdom which was temptation which seduced the first man is somehow assumed by Christ when he becomes incarnate and then is lifted up into his death, glorification, so that a bronze serpent is lifted up, pritchered, and lifted up into the sun, lifted up into the sky, the sun shining in the bronze. So Christ is lifted up like the sun to the sky. The serpent is lifted up and blown like the sun. It's a you look at that sun and you heal, the Son of Righteousness is healing you. His body gives healing to bodies that have been wounded, all have been bitten by the serpent who slew Adam. He's putting a whole bunch of things together there and you might not even notice it. See it was those serpents that were biting the Israelites at the desert. The bronze serpent healed them. He unites it with the

[55:55]

serpent, the original serpent, which bit Adam who attempted to cause him to sin. The womb of which was cut open to death. Let each look on the cross and hear Him without notice. Remember the thief on the cross. Remember the thief on the cross was dying alongside Jesus and says Lord remember me when you come to me and say today is the day of Christ. He looks at Christ on the cross and sees the risen Christ. and says Lord remember to me and today is the day of

[56:55]

He looks on the cross and sees the risen Christ.

[63:00]

He looks on the cross Lord remember me remember me you come to me and is the day of Christ. on the cross and sees the risen Christ. is the day of

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