A passage opens …
I have thought a few times in the relationship we have established in the church of history revealed in Scripture and contemporary history. I am very impressed by the history of the book of Exodus. A people, for four hundred years, is a slave to Pharaoh and moans the pains of slavery.
I imagine how the slaves felt. I imagine each morning someone get out of bed-if they slept in beds-and think, « There I will make bricks again. » Every day the Hebrews, subdued by Pharaoh’s power, made bricks, kneaded the mud, with straw, with water and made the big buildings.
This story to be a history of the past. But we can see that these Pharaoh slaves are not that far from us. Each morning, men get up and think, « Here I will do bricks again !!! ». That is, here I go again to work. Here I go to the day care to take the children. Here I go to traffic until I get to work. Here I will eat the bread that the devil kneaded.
Life reported in Scripture is not very different from what we live in today… The life of the Scriptures speaks of the concrete life of men: their sufferings, their work, their joys, their celebrations, their anguish. And as we read the Scriptures, a sea of consolation opens to us, as the Hebrews saw the Red Sea opened in front of him.
It is curious what God says when he called Moses: « I heard the anguish of my people in Egypt. » God heard the anguish of the people… and was not indifferent. Also the Scripture says: « From Egypt I called my son. » And in reality, at the beginning of his life, also Jesus Christ and the sacred family descend to the Egypt fled from the massacre of the innocent carried out by King Herod.
What does this have to do with today’s life? We are not in Egypt, nor do we have pharaohs…
And truth! But it is also true that we do the experience of slavery and we all have a pharaoh that subjugates us. All… all… all… we all have anguish…
For four hundred years, the Hebrews had no fundamental thing for man to realize: hope! It is not so much freedom, but hope! Because we can even be bad and live under a pharaoh, without freedom, but if we have within us hope of one day we get out of this situation, then the future begins to give some meaning to the present suffering.
I believe that after four hundred years, the Hebrews had no memory of what would be to live freedom and no longer expect that they could ever live it…
Hearing that voice that came from the burning bush, Moses heard that God was not absent from the suffering of the people… God heard anguish and wants to intervene and will free the people… The jubilee we will certainly celebrate a light, hope, to the sufferings of the present time… It seems that everything is lost, but we know that next week comes Easter. May the dead rise… and if the dead are risen !!! Good Easter!
