Wednesday in the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 19, 2023

Exodus 3, 1-6; 9-12

Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, “I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” God said, “Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father,” he continued, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. The cry of the children of Israel has reached me, and I have truly noted that the Egyptians are oppressing them. Come, now! I will send you to Pharaoh to lead my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”  But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He answered, “I will be with you; and this shall be your proof that it is I who have sent you: when you bring my people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this very mountain.”

The First Reading for today’s Mass is taken from the Book of Exodus and the appearance of the Lord God to Moses.  This appearance tells us much about who and what God is.

“There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush . . . When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush.”

The author of the Book of Genesis, in writing of God’s appearances to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, often introduces an “angel of the Lord” to make clear that these men did not see God as he is, in his glory, for no man shall see God and live (cf. Exodus 33, 20).  They may hear his voice, however, and that is how the author of Exodus can write that an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses, but it was the Lord himself who spoke to him.

From this Reading we learn that the Lord God appeared to Moses “in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed.”  The Hebrew word indicates a thorn bush and so we should not think of this bush as a small hedge or shrub but as more of a small tree with widely spread branches.  Two facts about this tree amazed Moses: that it was burning but not consumed; and that the fire did not spread.  Through these, God reveals his passionate, unending love.  We can understand the burning bush, then, as the human person (the bush) fully and passionately loved by God (the fire).  Despite the ferocity of the fire, the bush is not consumed: God does not overwhelm a person with his love so that he cannot bear it, and yet his love is so powerful that it is compared to a fire.  Of course, rightly thinking, a fire should make us think of God’s love and how much more powerful it is than a fire, for eventually a fire will burn itself out but the love of God never diminishes or ceases.  

The Lord Jesus reveals how consumed he is for love of us when he bursts out with, “I am come to cast fire on the earth. And how I wish that it be kindled? And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized. And how am I straitened until it be accomplished?” (Luke 12, 49-50).  The Lord came down from heaven out of his love to save us and as the days drew nearer on which his sacrificial Death was to be accomplished, he hardly seemed able to constrain himself for it.  The restlessness of a bride and groom before their wedding hardly begins to describe his feelings.  He was burning up with love.

His love for us is relentless.  As it is written in the Song of Songs 8, 6, “love is strong as death”.  The Hebrew word means “fierce” and “mighty” as well as “strong”.  To emphasize this, the Letter to the Hebrews 12, 29 teaches, “Our God is a consuming fire.”   The fire that Moses saw did not consume: it was enough for the Israelites to know of the presence, power, and love of God.  But in the fullness of time God is revealed as a “consuming” fire who transforms all who allow him to touch them and who burns away all dross — everything that keeps us from fully returning his love.  We are thus also called to be consuming fires: so consumed with the love of God that we can say, with St. Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ: and to die is gain” (Philippians 1, 21).