COMMENTARY.
Steadfast faith. Moses, while living at home with his parents, had been taught to believe in the true God and the promised Redeemer. When he left home, he went to live at the king’s court, and was surrounded on all sides by pagans. Still he preserved the true faith taught to him as a boy, and remained firm in the worship of the one true God. When he was a man, he preferred to be poor and persecuted, rather than rich and honoured, and unable to help his brethren in the faith. He therefore left the pagan court, and joined his oppressed countrymen.
The blessings of solitude. It was in his solitude that God appeared to Moses. God is to be found, not in the turmoil of the world, but in solitude. There He speaks to our hearts, and there we can speak to Him. He who is always in society, must be distracted, and cannot pray well. All the Saints loved solitude, and sought it out, so that they might be alone with God. St. Bernard praised it in these words: “O blessed solitude! O solitary blessedness!”
Moses a type of Christ. Moses, despising the splendour of Egypt in order to comfort the Jews, is a figure of the Son of God, who came down from heaven, was born in a stable, and laid in a manger, to redeem us from the flames of hell.
Application. O, may you, when you grow up, be as steadfast in faith as Moses was, and never forget or deny that Christian teaching, which you are now receiving in your youth. Pray for steadfastness and perseverance in the holy Catholic faith!
Cannot you sometimes contrive to be alone for a few minutes, imitating in this St. Aloysius, who used to retire into some comer of his father’s house, so as to be able to pray undisturbed?
Chapter XXXI.
THE BURNING BUSH AND CALL OF MOSES.
[Ex. 2, 33 to 4, 31.]
NOW Moses fed the sheep of Jethro, his father-in-law. One day he drove his flock into the desert[1], and came as far as Mount Horeb[2]. There the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire, which issued from the midst of a bush. Moses saw that
