Tuesday, 8/11/15
Moses, after having led the people out of Egypt, and after forty
years of putting up with their complaints as rebellions, was not allowed to
lead them into the Promised Land.
“The Lord had told me
that I shall not cross this Jordan. It is the Lord, your God, who will cross
before you.”
It seems unfair that Moses should have been denied a part in
the triumph for which he had given his all.
Perhaps, though, there was a strong religious reason for
denying Moses the right to lead the people through the Jordan, into the
Promised Land.
The religious reason that prevented Moses from leading the
people further is that the Jordan symbolized death; and no one but God can be
with you in your passing through death.
When death was the only way America’s blacks could escaped
from slavery, they would sing, “Show me
that stream called the River Jordan, that’s the old stream what I longs to
cross.”
Chapter Three of the “Book of Joshua” describes the people’s
Jordan crossing. When priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant stepped into the
flooded Jordan, the waters backed up, allowing the Ark to be carried down in to
the depth of the riverbed. The priests left it there. It allowed the people to
pass by up into the Promised Land.
As we pass through the river of death it will be Jesus on
the cross opening the way.
We priests administer the last Sacraments, and then we sit
back. In Korea, at the end of
their war, I watched many young people die of TB. I remember in particular a
girl in early twenties who six year earlier had been ready for Baptism when her
father sold her to an older man as a second wife. With that illegal marriage, we
couldn’t baptize her.
Six years later, riddled with TB, she had been sent home to
die. She sent for me; and when I had baptized her Mary Magdalene, and given her
Communion, she said, “You man go now, Father.”
She died that evening, with no one but Jesus showing her the way.
She died that evening, with no one but Jesus showing her the way.
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