13 August 2019
Tuesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
If only St. Ignatius were still here, if only he could be your spiritual director. Or St. Peter Faber, maybe, whom Ignatius himself called the best at directing retreatants through his Spiritual Exercises. Or St. Paul for that matter. Or Jesus Christ himself? And why not Elijah and Moses while we are at it? Instead you are stuck with someone else for a spiritual director, or maybe with no director at all.
In the mysterious designs of God’s providence, God gives us certain people to help us along the way. These people can only help us so far. Moses, for example, freed the Israelites from slavery, led them across the Red Sea into the desert, made a covenant with God on their behalf, interceded with God to save them after they went astray after the golden calves, gave them the law, including the ten commandments, fed them manna in the desert, and led them to the border of the promised land. But he led them no further. As he was finally approaching the promised land, Moses said to the people “I am now one hundred and twenty years old and am no longer able to go out and come in; besides, the Lord has said to me, ‘Do not cross this Jordan’” (Dt 31:2). Moses had to obey God’s will, which was a personal matter. As a result, the entire people of Israel was left without him. Can you imagine? The great man they had relied upon–gone.
Moses would have disagreed with my last sentence, because he knew that it was not Moses that the people relied upon. It was God himself. That is the real lesson of the Exodus. That is the real draw of the promised land. That is the real source of freedom. We must let go of every person, no matter how great, and learn to hold fast to God alone. May God bless us with that grace.