Commentaria in Exodum
For this reason, formerly, so many thousands of Saints went into the wilderness. So Paul the first Hermit in the wilderness 79 years, Onuphrius 70, lived unknown, but in death were known, when from earthly solitude they were translated to heavenly celebrity. Arsenius used to say: “He could not dwell at once with God and with men.” St. Antony, called by the Emperor Constantine, would not go, saying: “If I come to the Emperor, I shall be Antony; if not, Abbot Antony.” The same said to his disciples: “It is not expedient for the servants of Christ to frequent the houses of seculars: for as fishes drawn out of water are wont to languish and die, so a monk, outside the monastery giving himself to chatter, is brought to tepidity of heart, and becomes slower in spiritual exercises.”
Svatopluk, king of Bohemia, conquered by the Emperor Arnulf, fled into the wilderness, and lived unknown with the hermits. Dying, he called them, and said: “I am the king of the Bohemians, who conquered in battle fled to you; and having tried the royal life and the private, I die: no fortune of a kingdom is to be preferred to the tranquillity of the desert. Here secure sleep makes the roots of herbs sweet: there cares and dangers make no food, no drink not bitter. What of life God gave me among you I have passed happily: whatever of it was spent in the kingdom was death more truly than life.” So Aeneas Silvius, Bohemian History, chap. 13.
So also the Emperor Charles V used to say that, having resigned the empire, he had received more pleasure in one day in his monastic solitude than from all his victories and triumphs, in which beyond others he was fortunate.
Hear St. Jerome in the wilderness: “Wherever,” he says, “I saw hollows of valleys, rugged mountains, steep rocks, there was my place of prayer: and, as the Lord himself is my witness, after many tears, after eyes clinging to heaven, sometimes I seemed to myself to be among the troops of angels, and joyful and glad I sang: After thee we will run in the odour of thy ointments.” So he himself to Eustochium On Virginity.
He therefore who desires to enjoy God and the angels, let him say in his cell: “Lo, I have gone far off flying away, and I abode in the wilderness;” there he will hear God speaking to him: “I will lead him into the wilderness, and I will speak to his heart.” Rightly therefore St. Jerome to the monk Rusticus: “As long as,” he says, “you are in your country, hold your little cell as paradise, gather various apples of Scripture, use these delights.” And St. Bernard: “The cell,” he says, “is an earthly heaven.” Finally St. Jerome to Heliodorus: “O desert,” he says, “blooming with the flowers of Christ! O solitude in which are born the stones of which in the Apocalypse the city of the great King is built! O wilderness rejoicing in familiarity with God!”
AND CAME TO THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD, HOREB.—It is called here the “mountain of God” by prolepsis: for not then, but afterwards, was this mountain called the “mountain of God” from the glory of God revealed there (as the Chaldee renders), and the law given there, Exodus 19.
HOREB.—This is Mount Sinai: which is called Horeb from dryness or solitude. The same is called Sina from the abundance of bushes; for sene in Hebrew signifies bush. Adrichomius and others note however that Horeb is properly a part, or eminent ridge, of Mount Sinai. Note: Eight wonders were done on Sinai. First, God here appeared to Moses in the bush. Secondly, Moses striking the rock there gave water from it to the people, as is plain chap. 17, verse 6. Thirdly, Moses praying there and lifting up his hands obtained that Josue should conquer Amalech, chap. 17, verse 10. Fourthly, there the law was given by God, Exodus 19. Fifthly, there Moses lived forty days without food, conversing with God, and received the tables of the law. Sixthly, there the Hebrews adored the golden calf; and therefore Moses broke the tables of the law, and slew many of the people. Seventhly, there Elias saw God in the whistling of a gentle air, 3 Kings chap. 19. Eighthly, on this mountain the body of Blessed Catherine was buried by angels. Finally on Sinai was built that noble ascetery, or monastery, in which religious men marvellously exercised themselves in all labours of penance, prayer and all virtues, in which Blessed John Climacus profited, who there, as another Moses, received from God by praying and meditating the tables of the divine law, namely the institutions of monastic life and of religious perfection, which he also left to posterity in writing in that notable book called Climax, or the Ladder of Paradise.
2. AND THE LORD APPEARED TO HIM.—This apparition was made to Moses when he had dwelt in Madian 40 years, in the 80th year of his life, as is plain Acts chap. 7, verse 30. For immediately after this vision he was sent by God into Egypt to Pharao for the liberation of the Hebrews: and this happened in that year.
St. Gregory, book 23 Moral. chap. 20, or according to another edition 12, gives an illustrious mystical reason of this matter, namely that God willed for 40 years to draw Moses away from the restless tumults of earthly desires, and as it were to make him sleep; that so he might deserve to perceive the inward voice of God. “Whence also holy men,” he says, “who by necessity of office are compelled to serve exterior ministries, always zealously take refuge in the secret places of the heart.”
THE LORD.—In Hebrew, the angel of the Lord; so also the Septuagint and Chaldee. You will ask, who was this? Theodoret thinks it was the Son of God: for this angel, verse 14, calls himself God; he was therefore both angel and God; he was therefore the Son of God: for he alone is angel, that is messenger and legate sent by the Father; whence Isaias 9 he is called “the angel of great counsel.”
But I say that this was a true angel: it is proved, first, because simply here he is called an angel; secondly, because Acts 7:30 St. Stephen asserts him to have been an angel; thirdly, because it is the common opinion of Theologians with St. Dionysius, chap. 4 of the Celestial Hierarchy, that all apparitions of God in the Old Testament were made by angels; whence also that most celebrated apparition of Exodus chap. 19, in which the law was given, was made by angels.
You will say: How then does this angel call himself God? I answer: Because, although in service he was an angel, yet in inspiration, representation and authority he was God; for he sustained and represented the person of God by whom he was sent, and who inspired him with what he should say, and spoke through him.
Moreover this angel bore the person and place of the second person of the Most Holy Trinity: for what he says verse 8, “I am come down to deliver them,” the people of the Hebrews namely, allegorically signified the Son of God one day to descend to us and to our flesh, to deliver us from sins: as also that angel who led the way in the desert for the Hebrews into Chanaan, bore the person of Christ, who leads us from earth into heaven. Hence many Fathers also hold that in all the apparitions of the Old Testament the Son was represented, not the Father, not the Holy Ghost. So St. Justin, Against Trypho; Tertullian, book 2 Against Marcion; Hilary, book 4 On the Trinity; Ambrose, book 1 On the Faith; Chrysostom on chap. 7 of Acts.
That this angel was St. Michael is probable: for Michael was formerly the guardian of the Synagogue, as now of the Church; and this Angel appeared to Moses not as a private man but as future leader of the people and prince of the Synagogue, and instructed him as such, and sent him to Pharao: whence the same appeared to Josue leading the people into the promised land; for being asked who he was, Josue 5:14, he answered: “I am the prince of the host of the Lord,” who is none other than Michael. Michael therefore from the midst of the bush with a brighter flame betrayed himself to the eyes, voice and ears of Moses: for no certain form of an angel here, for example human, did Moses see, as the sequel sufficiently shows.
Moses gives the reason, Deut. 4, lest the Hebrews, prone to idols, should be able to fashion for themselves an idol of him. He appeared therefore only in fire and bush, for the reason that neither of them nor from them can a statue or idol be formed, says Anastasius in the Questions on Holy Scripture, question 20. Wherefore that phantasm which Philo here imagines does not seem true, when he says: “From the midst of the bush there shone forth a certain most beautiful form, like to nothing visible, plainly a divine image, shining with most clear light, so that Moses might suspect it to be an image of God; let us call it an angel.” God therefore here showed Moses no other appearance of himself but fire; and in it alone, whether as in his throne or rather as in a symbol and hieroglyph by which he might be represented and shadowed forth, he appeared.
IN A FLAME OF FIRE OUT OF THE MIDST OF A BUSH.—This was not the appearance or likeness of fire, but true fire; otherwise Moses would have been deceived, thinking it true fire. And what miracle, I ask, would it have been, if a feigned or masked fire had not burned the bush? it would rather have been a miracle if it had burned it.