REVELATION IN ORDINARY THINGS


OUR LADY OF MOUNT CAMEL

Exod 3: 1-6,9-12; Ps 103:1-4,6-7; Mt 11:25-27

Nobody Knows the Father except the Son

Moses’ vision of God on Mount Horeb is typical of who God is to us. God is present in everything, yet unknown and unseen. He speaks to us through everything he made, and he remains silent and distinct from them all. The bush Moses saw was burning but yet unconsumed, just as God is present in everything he made and we experience, yet each remains distinct and knowable through which God speaks to us. God is the consuming flame of love, who loves each of his creatures into existence and yet leaves it distinct and natural in its species. We behold these creatures with our senses, flaming with the fire of love God enkindles in them, yet we fail to see God through them. The existence of each thing is an expression of God’s love for it and for us, men. God loves every one of his creatures into existence. Thus, existence is the flame of the love of God in which he envelopes everything he made. Everything in existence speaks of God’s love for us. The evidence that God made all things in his infinite love is in his judgment of all that he made in his wisdom to be good. We are not limiting ourselves to living things or inanimate things, but also to events and the states of events; God made all in his wisdom and with infinite love for us.

We may not easily comprehend the submission above as the revelation of truth, but Moses did not find the revelation God made to him easy to understand. The vision was given to him in the wilderness with its spiritual underpinning. God would always put us in a condition that would help us to comprehend his revelation. In other words, God customises his revelation to our situation and condition. “There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the shape of a flame of fire, coming from the middle of a bush. Moses looked; there was the bush blazing but it was not being burnt up. ‘I must go and look at this strange sight,’ Moses said and see why the bush is not burnt.’” God would usually reveal himself in such a way as not to disrupt the natural order of things, but would enhance the well-functioning of nature, which is also part of his self-manifestation to us. The revelation of God to Moses supports this understanding. Just as the well-functioning of the natural order indicates his presence, the disruption of the natural order of things indicates God’s absence or our disobedience to God’s will, for God is never absent from anywhere or anything, but only that his will is not obeyed or observed. The revelation was to manifest the divine will concerning the situation of the children of Israel in Egypt. “The cry of the sons of Israel has come to me, and I have witnessed the way in which the Egyptians oppress them, so come, I send you to Pharaoh to bring the sons of Israel, my people, out of Egypt.”

God was never absent from Egypt and in the situation of the Israelites therein. As we noted earlier, he permits or allows something given his mercy and justice. God’s eternal Wisdom guides all events, and they are all governed by his infinite love. According to the Lord, no one understands these things unless the Father reveals them to him. The Father reveals them only to the humble of heart. “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and not one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” The revelation is daily, in all things, through the Holy Spirit he has given us. We celebrate our Lady of Mount Carmel in honour of Blessed Virgin Mary’s maternal solicitude for our salvation. Her gift of the brown scapular is to help us be aware of God’s presence with us daily. Wearing her scapula is a way to allow God to draw our attention to the heavenly presence in the ordinary things and events of our daily lives. We should unite our souls with hers to praise God always for salvation. “My soul, give thanks to the Lord all my being, bless his holy name.”

Let us pray: May the venerable intercession of the glorious Virgin Mary come to our aid, we pray, O Lord, so that, fortified by her protection, we may reach the mountain which is Christ. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.       

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