Monday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 31, 2023

Exodus 32, 15-24; 30-34

Moses turned and came down the mountain with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, front and back; tablets that were made by God, having inscriptions on them that were engraved by God himself. Now, when Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “That sounds like a battle in the camp.” But Moses answered, “It does not sound like cries of victory, nor does it sound like cries of defeat; the sounds that I hear are cries of revelry.” As he drew near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. With that, Moses’ wrath flared up, so that he threw the tablets down and broke them on the base of the mountain. Taking the calf they had made, he fused it in the fire and then ground it down to powder, which he scattered on the water and made the children of Israel drink.   Moses asked Aaron, “What did this people ever do to you that you should lead them into so grave a sin?” Aaron replied, “Let not my lord be angry. You know well enough how prone the people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us a god to be our leader; as for the man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Let anyone who has gold jewelry take it off.’ They gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and this calf came out.”   On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a grave sin. I will go up to the Lord, then; perhaps I may be able to make atonement for your sin.” So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Ah, this people has indeed committed a grave sin in making a god of gold for themselves! If you would only forgive their sin! If you will not, then strike me out of the book that you have written.” The Lord answered, “Him only who has sinned against me will I strike out of my book. Now, go and lead the people to the place I have told you. My angel will go before you. When it is time for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”

“This calf came out.”  The Israelites sin with their idolatry very soon after God has parted the Sea for them to cross on their way out of Egypt and then drowned the pursuing Egyptian chariots in the waters.  Secure in the Sinai, Moses entrusts the people to his brother Aaron and goes up a mountain to receive God’s law for them.  But the people are eager to exchange their slavery to the Egyptians with slavery to idols that cannot help them, and Aaron is complicit in their sin.  His cowardly report to Moses that he put gold into a fire and a calf happened to come out of it shows his true character.  It is the character of an authority who admits, “Mistakes were made” when he is caught in his own crimes.  It is the defense of the sinner who faces eternal damnation and wants to appear repentant without actually being repentant.  It warrants a greater condemnation.  Our salvation depends heavily on our forthright admission of guilt and our determination to do penance and to make right the harm we have done.

“You have committed a grave sin. I will go up to the Lord, then; perhaps I may be able to make atonement for your sin.”  We should picture the Lord Jesus in the place of Moses, and speaking to us.  His face is sad, his voice is low with disappointment.  He offers us life and we throw his Sacrifice back at him as though worthless.  But he still pleads for us before his Father, even so: “If you would only forgive their sin! If you will not, then strike me out of the book that you have written.”  He does not try to excuse us or cover up for us.  We need forgiveness which means clearly confessing the fault.  In our Lord’s pleading, he acts as though he were the one who was guilty, as though he were the one confessing his sin.  So great is his love for us, an almost pitiable love towards which we have so little regard.  This “book” is the Book of Life in which are written the names of all those to be brought into heaven.  Jesus refers to this book in Luke 10, 20: “Rejoice in this, that your names are written in heaven.”  The Lord also says, in Revelation 3, 5, regarding the believer who perseveres, “He who shall overcome shall thus be clothed in white garments: and I will not blot out his name out of the Book of Life. And I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.”  But not all people are recorded in this Book: “And all that dwell upon the earth adored [the Antichrist], whose names are not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb which was slain from the beginning of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear” (Revelation 13, 8-9).  Their names were written in the Book but were “blotted out” due to their sin.  In fact, they themselves blotted out their names from this Book.  

“Him only who has sinned against me will I strike out of my book.”  The one who sins and does not repent will be struck out of the Book of Life.

“Now, go and lead the people to the place I have told you. My angel will go before you. When it is time for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”  See what God does here.  He continues to bring the Israelites to the Promised Land. Despite their sin, but he also punishes, in the time of his choosing.  That is, God does not destroy the people though they deserve this: “I see that this people is stiff-necked: Let me alone, that my wrath may be kindled against them, and that I may destroy them” (Exodus 32, 9-10).  Instead, he commands Moses to lead them to the land flowing with milk and honey even as the guilty are punished.

Let us take our repentance very seriously and work to make up for the wrong we have done so that we may hear our names read out from the Book of Life at the judgment at the end of the world.