Divine Patterns in The Life of Moses

now I'm going to talk to you I'm going to talk to you about a book by St Gregor of Nissa it's called the life of Moses uh and there's I I I checked it out there's a few copies of it of it back there if you have never read this book you really have to read this book um the theme of the conference is encountering God and I have to be honest when I was exploring Orthodoxy when I was a and just trying to figure figuring things out when I read St Gregory's book I mean coming from a Protestant background having all the Bible stories just you know really deeply in my memory reading reading St Gregory's book is just was like constant lightning bols I was just reading the book and just couldn't believe it he was just connecting everything together and making everything just make so much sense you know um and so what I was hoping to do and I've never I've never done this before is that as I continued my life as I continued as I converted as I explored iconography as I explored other writers um I would just always come back in in the back of my mind I would I realized that I had this program running in the back of my mind and it was basically St Gregory's book um and it just informs yesterday I told you about talked about patterns and stories and and this book what St Gregory does is the pattern is there in the in the scripture but what St Gregory does is the way he speaks about things and the the analogies that he threads together he just shows it to you um so what I'm going to try to do today is I'm going to try to take you on that Journey I'm going to try to trace the basic pattern in St Gregory's book now his book is extremely expansive he talks about a lot of things I could never you can't I couldn't capture it all here but I'm going to trace a a basic pattern about of what's in there and hopefully it will help people understand first of all what I what I'm talking about when I talk about these patterns and then as everybody here has we all have the experience of the Liturgy the experience of scripture hopefully will it will it will spark some some of your intuitions to to to kind of start to see those connections I mean everybody has already seen them but hopefully will it will be a part of um to help you to to to get through that experience um so the idea is that in in St Gregory's book or in the scripture and everything they they he traces a pattern of the world basically a pattern of of the cosmos and when I when I talk about a pattern or a map of the world we're not talking about the kind of map that you get on Google Maps or you know like a physical map but it's a map of of meanings that that are threaded together um and really what it is it's it's it's a map of our our own Journey it's a map of of our Ascent up the uh the the the latter of divine Ascent because the story in St Gregory's book the basic structure of his story is he traces the the the life of Moses as he ascends up the mountain and this Ascent up the mountain is basically the same as what we're seeing in this icon of of the ascent um of the Holy ladder and so going up the mountain is the gradual is this gradual Ascent towards Divinity but at the same time it's our participation in the church if you look at the icon that's up now you can see that you can see that the beginning of the ladder is is the church and then through the church and up the ladder we move up towards this Divine encounter which we which we find at the top of the ladder um and so in St Gregory what he does is he he connects all these things together so the base of the mountain that Moses is going to ascend what he does is he gives us this these images of what the base of the mountain looks like or what it looks like before we begin the journey before we enter onto the journey and the images that he uses are all these images of Flesh these images of all the things that are out inside our nature all these things that are added to our nature the things that are foreign to us and the basic image that he threads through is these image of the garments of skin when Adam and Eve fell in the garden what God gave them as they were chased away from the garden were these garments of skin around them these garments of dead animal skins and that's like the that's the basic image that St Gregory uses as the bottom of the uh of the mountain so here's this is going to be our mountain people it's going to be very simple I I'm not an artist today I'm just a just a speaker and so the bottom of the mountain told you is the garments of skin but it's also we could we could say that it's the narx okay so it's the place where the church ends and the world begins so the bottom of the mountain is what Gregory calls quote the feet of the soul and that that it's the passionate and repetitive parts of our soul it's where our appetites our our passions are located in our in the human soul and so the top of the mountain is is the place where we encounter God so it's it's the intellect it's the higher part of the Soul where we're capable of grasping the nature of things but at the same time because the bottom of the soul the bottom of the mountain is the narx then the top the top of the mountain also appears as the sanctuary and as we talked about yesterday Beyond The Sanctuary in the highest place of our being that's where we encounter this Divine Tabernacle that's where that's where Moses received the pattern of the Divine Tabernacle and the Divine Tabernacle as St Gregory told us that's Christ himself okay it's it's it's it's Christ as the universal origin and container of all things so that's the basic pattern I'm already giving you like the just the basic pattern that St Gregory traces in the book uh and what it does is it joins if you look at the elements already there it joins the the personal to the communal so it's a body but it's a community as the church and then ultimately it's all it leads us up to what is the most to the highest to the to the spiritual and to the uncreated and so what I'm as you see what I'm starting to do and this is what I'm going to be doing is that I'm going to use St Gregory's words and I'm actually going to create a visual map of what he is BR of the journey that he's bringing us on and and and at the end you'll see why I'm doing that now the first say the first important thing as we do this as we look at the elements that St Gregory brings together and this is a rule I think for all our interpretations of symbols in the Bible or in the Liturgy is that symbols are not moral things that is the elements that we find in the Liturgy or the elements that we find in the Bible they're neither they're not necessarily good or bad the things in themselves so they're places of meaning you could say okay so what's important on this map of meaning isn't so much where the thing is on the map but which direction is it pointing to so if you think back at that at that ladder Divine Ascent it doesn't matter how high you are on the ladder if you're falling down you're falling down if you're at the bottom of the ladder but you're going up you're much in a much better place than that person at the top who's falling down and so every thing in this map of meaning is has a dual a dual possibility we could say it could have a light side or a dark side so because we're talking about a trip I'm going to start with the actual movement of the trip um and in the movement of the mountain there's two possibilities right he can go up or it can come down and in St Gregor's description of this it's actually it's very it's really interesting because he shows us this duality how the same thing can have a light and a dark side and so the way he does is he talks about Aaron's about Moses's brother Aaron okay so I hope everybody knows the story of Moses because I'm not going to go through too much of the details of the actual story but Aaron was Moses's brother and God chose Aaron to be Moses's helper so the way St Gregory interprets that is he says that Aaron is Ain is an is analogical to our guardian angel that angel that God places with us to counsel us to entice us into making that Ascent up the Divine ladder up the mountain and he and the angel does this through reasonable thoughts and through encouragement but if you know the story of Moses you know that Aaron is also the one who made the golden calf right and who brought the brought Israel to engage in Lous and idolatry so how do we reconcile those two things so well Gregory tells us a secret he tells us that quote there's a Doctrine which derives its trustworthiness from the tradition of the fathers which says that after our nature fell into sin God did not disregard our fall and withhold his Providence no on the one hand he appointed an angel with an incorporeal nature to help in the life of each person and on the other hand he also appointed a corruptor who by an evil and Mal officient de demon afflicts the life of man and contrives against our nature okay so what are we talking about I think most people here would know what he's referring to and and what he's referring to is this and I think I mean the faster that we just reconcile ourselves with the fact that this is what he's talking about the best because the imagery might seem silly on it first reading but if but it's only silly if we're materialists who think that angels are you know fleshy people with wings and Devils have spiky Tails but once we get rid of the materialist blindfold that often entraps us and we experience this every day of Our Lives I mean anybody who has fought a passion or else given into a passion then suddenly wakes up and think like why did I do that you know where does that come from I mean everybody knows that we have this fight in us all the time but if you're struggling with this image if you find it too difficult to to to accept I mean I've already showed you this image in iconic form at the beginning it's this one look at what's happening on that image on one side there are the Angels encouraging and on the other side there are the demons bringing down all right so the brother who is our counselor or we could we could call him that little voice in our head our conscious whatever you want to call it can become a vehicle for the angel or the demon depending on which side the person decides to go right which way we decide to move so now we've got this notion of movement so we can start the trip we can start the trip St Moses start St Gregory starts at the beginning of Moses's Journey he starts at the birth of Moses and as most of you know when Moses was born there was a a law Pharaoh made a law because there were too many Israelite children and the law was that all the male children were to be killed and so St Gregory interprets this and he tells us for the material and passionate disposition to which human nature is carried when it falls is the female form of life whose birth is favored by the Tyrant the austerity and intensity of virtue is the male birth which is hostile to the Tyrant and suspected of insurrection against his rule so am I in trouble yes all right we've got materiality and pack related to the female form and austerity and virtue related to the male okay so right away our modern our modern minds are bothered with this and I can understand that I totally get it but we just hold that thought okay just hold it just a little bit okay because if you really read that quote I'm going to make you read it again if you really read that quote you'll see that hiding in that quote is actually also the dark side of the masculine okay and that's the Tyrant okay so don't worry everything will balance out you'll see St Gregory balances everything out in fact St Gregory starts by telling us that Moses all right that Moses had two mothers okay and because in order to protect Moses from the Pharaoh he's placed in a basket we know the story placed in a basket on the Nile and found by an Egyptian princess so St Gregory tells us the daughter of the king being childless and Barren I think she's rightly perceived as profane philosophy arranged to be called his mother by adopting the youngster for truly Barren is profane education so the adoptive mother of Moses is knowledge of the world it profane natural philosophy today we would say science technology all that type of knowledge and St Gregory warns us that it can sometimes impede our spiritual journey and this is the foreign princess but Moses's birth mother who continued to care for him while he was being raised by the Egyptian well Gregory tells us that it's the church and it's teaching so already now we start to see right at the beginning we start to see the other side of the feminine which appears so the feminine is the periphery in the sense of the womb okay that which surrounds us but at the risk of going into cliches but sometimes cliches are useful it is both the womb and the tomb if you will and so St Gregory uses the image of a fruitful w womb in his natural mother compared to a quote womb of barren wisdom so what it is it's both the church which contains us but also the outer World which is our dissipation okay so two things which surround us so that's why it it is the periphery it's both the church which contains us and the outer World which is our dissipation so if we if we continue with this idea of periphery and we've already talked about the foreign princess and so what Gregory develops is is this idea of the foreign is this idea of the foreign as this outside thing so Gregory develops this whole idea that the subjugation of the Israelites to the Egyptians in the book of Exodus is an image of the subjugation of the human person to what is added or exterior to our nature we could be the tyranny of our flesh our desires but it could also be these foreign foreign knowledge foreign education all these things which are on the outside which um which can trap us so when Moses grows up we know this this story as well he suddenly feels this attachment to Hebrews to his own people who were slaves in Egypt and one day Moses kills an Egyptian who he sees abusing an Israelite quote Moses teaches us by his own example to take our stand with virtue as with a Kinsman and to kill virtue's adversary the victory of True Religion is the death and destruction of idolatry so slavery to foreign elements idolatry being the best example of them can appear like we've seen as tyranny as the pharaoh who imposes himself on on us but it can also appear as seduction and so in the story of Moses we have these stories of foreign women women from other nations who seduce the Israelite men and bring idolatry with them so even after fighting and escaping the foreign tyrants they fall back through seduction quote it was only to be expected that some among them would be filled with lust for unlawful intercourse with foreigners unquote so the foreign women are idolatry the slavery to our passions okay so am I in trouble again all right they are the be and profane philosophy but you see mg Gregor is not done with us because there's a trick in this story and the trick is that Mo Moses had a foreign wife and Moses married a foreign woman so here again we start to see the two sides of the symbolism start to manifest itself quote the foreign wife will follow him for there are certain things derived from profane education which should not be rejected when we propose to give birth to Virtue indeed moral and natural philosophy may become at certain times a comrade friend a companion of life to a higher way provided that The Offspring of this Union introduced nothing of a foreign defilement and what's really important as Christians to understand in our own symbolism is that Moses's wife is the one who circumcises Moses's son okay remember remember that circumcision is the cutting off of the garments of skin according to Moses so the forest skin is removed as this Mark of the Foreigner quote since his son had not been circumcised so as to cut off completely everything hurtful and impure his wife appeased the Angel when she presented her Offspring as pure by completely removing that Mark by which the Foreigner was known but what Gregory does is he beautifully weaves in the image of circumcision with the notion of baptism okay so if the foreign is removed by the foreign wife so too in baptism death is removed by death okay so down there we could say between the foreign tyranny of the Pharaoh and and the mountain of the Divine Ascent there is that water which is also death and one must go through the waters in order to begin the journey so of course St Gregory for St Gregory this is the crossing of the Red Sea that's what the crossing of the Red Sea means it's our baptism that commences our journey onto this Divine Ascent so Moses split the waters and crossed the Red Sea pursued by the Egyptians on whom the water closed quote after we have drowned the whole Egyptian person that is every form of evil in the saving baptism we emerge alone dragging along nothing foreign in our subsequent life unquote and the garments of skin this outer fleshy part is called dead and Earthly and they're related to our animal aspect because that's what they are they're dead animal skins added to our nature so for example when Moses comes back down from the mountain after his Ascent St Gregory makes a huge deal to the fact that animals were not allowed to even touch the base of the mountain he says quote that none of the irrational animals was allowed to appear on the mountain signifies in my opinion that the contemplation of the intelligibles in the contemplation of the intelligibles we surpass the knowledge which originates with the senses unquote that sounds platonic but we're not done and the this removal of the garments of skin they appear the strongest when Moses ascends to encounter the burning bush I mean if you remember the story God what does God ask Moses to do before he comes to the burning bush God asked him to remove his sandals and St Gregory relates this removal of the sandals to the removal of the garments of skin quote sandal feet cannot Ascend that height where the light of Truth is seen But the dead and Earthly covering of skins which was placed around our nature at the beginning must be removed from the feet of the soul but even this removal finds a surprising duality in St Gregory CU When St Gregory describes the burning bush he insists on the fact that the burning bush was a thorn bush and he says it few times for you to really notice that it's not just a bush it's a thorn bush now why why would he insist on the fact that it's a thorn bush quote Moses on that on that occasion attained to this knowledge of true being so now does everyone who like him divest himself of the Earthly coverings and look to the light shining from the Bramble Bush that is to the radiance which shines upon on us through this thorny flesh which as the gospel says uh the TR is the and which is as the gospel says the True Light and the truth itself so so think about that quote for a minute right in the Book of Genesis one of the consequences of the fall of Adam and Eve is that creation is going to produce thorns and that's the it's the hostility of creation appears in the image of thorns and the garments of skin which God gives to Adam are meant to protect them from the consequence of that fall and the image of which is those thorns on the bushes but here just as Moses removes that outer fleshy covering of s of skin which is the consequence of the Fall where does he see the light he sees the light coming through the thorn bush and as as St Gregory says himself coming through the thorny flesh so St Gregory always preserves those two things all the removals will come back and you'll see it's an amazing thing to watch and this question of the periphery of the bottom of the mountain right comes to its limit which is chaos complete chaos and Gregory uses this image of clay as this chaos so what he does is he connects the slavery of the Israelites in the foreign land to what they're doing in the foreign land and what are they doing they're forced to make by a foreigner to make bricks out of clay quote for this demon who does men harm and corrupts them is intensely concerned that his subjects not look to heaven but that they stoop to Earth and make bricks with themselves within themselves out of the clay and we have to understand this clay as this half formed thing as this mud and St Gregory relates it to the frogs that come out during the the the plagues as this ambiguous creature that is both in land and on land and in water and doesn't have its place so it's really this chaos that exists on the border of everything on the border of what of what exists and so when we think about the different if we think about the different elements I look at them up on the screen if we think about the different elements of periphery that I've mentioned it only takes a moment to realize that that's just how we we experience the world right the feminine as the womb right this house that contains us and the world around it's the Foreigner that we encounter coming from the other side of the border the passions which make us idolators and dissipate us to the outside and the animal which is the body without the flesh flesh without reason and finally clay that ambiguity and confusion that comes when order or the center no longer hold and all of these example they're how we personally experience this periphery so we need to be clear that when Moses ascends the mountain it is really described as a divesting right as a removal of those sandals as the purification from the attachment to peripheral things and there's also a rific where the mass of the people stay down at the bottom of the mountain and as he moves up there's this rific father Steven mentioned that yesterday the 70 go up with Moses but by the time Moses reaches the very top where he encounters God and receives the the law he is alone and so from the quantity up to the one and so it's somewhat like the high priest who is the only one who can reach all the way into the holy of holies and so this Echoes the actual shape of a mountain it's the actual shape of the mountain which is large at the base and just moves up to a narrower and narrower Summit okay so when we have this image of a mountain in the Bible as this place of epiphany as this place of encountering God it's not arbitrary the the fact of mountains is the very experience going up a mountain and reaching the top and all of a sudden you see the entire world around you it's the best image of what it means to enter that unity in which which is that connection to what unites everything together and so the movement up the mountain is the movement up this pattern of meaning which I di mentioned and St Gregory makes a big deal about that and this movement is is up both we could say the epistemological and ontological hierarchy of beings and St Gregory formulates it in a very particular way he explains that Moses's Ascent up the mountain is Moses's discovery of the true knowledge of being so by removing the sandals and seeing the light in the Bramble Bush he's moving away from dependent beings so when I say dependent beings what I mean is everything everything that's created is dependent on God but when we see those things as isolated in themselves and we don't see them as being connected to God then that's when they become dangerous that's when they become uh St Gregory calls them a type of falsehood so as Moses is moving up he's moving towards being itself from which dependent beings find their find their meaning and coherence and again that's an analogous to the movement up from the multiplicity of the base up to the unity of the summit the bottom of the mountain is assimilated with darkness and as Moses goes up he encounters light and music the source of visual and auditory meaning but to enter the Divine chamber the sanctuary Moses must encounter God in higher Darkness as father Steven mentioned yesterday so quote what does it mean that Moses entered the darkness and then saw God in it what is now recounted seems somehow to be contradictory to the first theophany for then the Divine was beheld in light but now he is seen in darkness let us not think that this is at variance with the sequence of things we have contemplated spiritually scripture teaches us by this that religious knowledge comes at first to those who perceive it as light therefore it is perceived to be contrary to religion is Darkness down there oop sorry I don't have that map up there anymore and the escape from the darkness comes about when one participates in the light but as the Mind progresses and through an even even greater and more perfect diligence comes to apprehend reality as it approaches more nearly to contemplation it sees more clearly what of divine nature is is uncontemplated unquote and then as I explained yesterday even beyond that Divine Darkness what does Moses encounter he encounters the pattern of the Tabernacle now the pattern of the Tabernacle is extremely fascinating because in its description we could take that pattern of the Tabernacle and we could stretch it out to Encompass everything else that we've already seen okay I imagine this is the mountain now so in moving out of the world so to speak Moses regains the world so for example in its most hidden place the Tabernacle is equivalent to that lonely place where Moses encountered God and the minora that seventh Branch Candlestick which is in the holy of holies St Gregory makes equivalent to those rays of light of the spirit and also to the pillars of the church and he talks about the pill sorry he talks about the pillars of the Tabernacle which are the pillars of the church quote all who themselves support the church and become lights through their own works are called pillars and lights and so the Saints of course but also all of us us who participate in the life of the church we become pillars and lights of the church you are the light of the world says the Lord to the Apostle unquote so this light that he sees in the pattern of the Tabernacle is the very light that Moses encountered as he was ascending the mountain and finally the biggest mystery of all is that on the edge of the Tabernacle the outer cover of that Tabernacle is made of animal skins animal skins which are dyed red and so the beauty is that just like in the biring bush those dead skins which were removed in the ascent are found again though transformed and what were the enslaving passions are now The Passion of Christ and there's even water down there if you notice as the people entered into the Tabernacle they had to wash themselves before the entrance quote even if one sees skin skin died red and hair woven the sequence of contemplation is not broken in this way for the prophetic eye attaining to a vision of divine things will see the saving passion there predetermined it is signified in both the elements mentioned the redness pointing to blood and the hair to death and St Gregory tells us that quote hair on the body has no feeling hence it is rightly a symbol of death unquote all right we're starting to get the full whole image here one of the things that is encountered by Moses is the in the Heavenly Tabernacle is the pattern of priesthood which is given to Moses and so this makes this whole pattern this whole Mountain analogical to the ecclesiastical hierarchy which is later elaborated in dionan theology but what's fascinating is that in that section where he talks about attaining priesthood and gaining the pattern of priesthood in the in the in the Divine Tabernacle he also traces now the dark side of the ascent I told you everything has two sides and so there's a dark side to the ascent he speaks of a false Ascent up the mountain it's the ascent of Pride which can bring men to gain the priesthood for themselves in order to bolster their own passion and so the passion of lenti justness and of idolatry which we we we picture as wallowing in the mire at the bottom of the mountain now Finds Its pair in this mock Ascent which is accomplished in Pride so everything even the ascent has a light and a dark side now okay I've only I've only brushed the surface of what St Gregory deals with um and I I encourage all of you to explore this book on your own and discover the wealth that it that it offers but if we look at the map here I think we have enough elements to get a sense of what this is about so please look at it carefully okay we have the feminine which is Mother education and the church or else it is profane knowledge and the world The Foreigner who is the tyranny of idolatry but is also the profane knowledge and can become our wife and friend as we move forward we have animality which are our passions and should be removed but they can also be transfigured we have this process of purification water fire baptism circumcision we have the masculine which is Moses in Moses is the virtual individual but can also be the tyrant in the Pharaoh and we see the brother Angel who is a counsler for good or or evil depending which way we're going we have the true Ascent towards Divinity in the priesthood and the false Ascent which is the fruit of Pride and finally we have the darkness which is encountered at the bottom and at the top of the mountain with light and music in the middle and above it all there is the Divine Tabernacle which is Christ and which even beyond the unknowability of divinity paradoxically resolves all those dualities gathers all things into himself unites all opposites and is simply all in all now try to keep this basic pattern in your memory okay it shouldn't be so difficult because in theory the elements here are intuitive right they should make sense to us on a very basic level okay is everybody got it now watch do you see the pattern there is light the outside of the circle there is Darkness the inner Darkness within and there is the Divine Tabernacle not made with hands there is the mountain and there in the circle are the sandals removed in order to attain the vision there is the ascent and The Descent of the mountain and I didn't tell you the positive Descent of the mountain but it also has a positive cuz when we descend the mountain we can be descending it because we're falling but we can be descending it bringing the law down to the people we can be descending bringing the vision of God to the world do you see the pattern there's a Divine Darkness there are the there are the Rays of light all the pillars of the church and there is the outer Darkness at the bottom now the older versions of this icon didn't didn't use the the king Cosmos they actually use the foreigners so they would put all the different tribes and all the different foreigners represented inside and usually in the middle there was a dog-headed man who represented that final monster that final chaos that frog on the edge of what being is now if you take this and you flip it around and you think of the Tower of Babel what do you have you have the same structure making taking clay making bricks and building this false Ascent of a tower up to reach to God and what's the result of that the creation of foreigners all right do you see the pattern I'm going to keep asking that there's the Divine Darkness the Rays of light and in this icon it's not so much as much the bottom The Descent of of the mountain is the descent into the mountain so it's it's a it's a slight change but it's the same thing the cavern becomes this womb this Tomb at the same time and so there's the mother and there's the tomb on which Christ is laid there are the animals next to Christ which represent those garments of skin there are the two foreigners The Helpful Foreigner who come to serve Christ and the harmful Foreigner who comes to tempt Joseph and down there just to make sure there's the water got to have the water down there I'm going to show you one last one but I I could I have I could have 25 here I'm going to show you one last one all right can you see the [Music] pattern there's the Divine Darkness there's the light there's there there's the Tabernacle the Angels Ascend on one side the demons descend on the other the Saints are the pillars they are the lights of the church and in this one particular one there's an amazing vision of the womb on one side which is Paradise and the church and the thecus and on the other side there is the grave you you see that you see that circle with a strange Brown that are those are the Dead coming out of their tombs and what's bringing them out of their tombs music of course and so I would just encourage you to just think when when you go to liturgy and and you see it's everywhere I mean this is just this is just like a hint I mean I had to I I when I first wrote this it was like two hours long okay soing just cut cut cut I was cutting everything but it's just an amazing thing read read St Gregory and read the scriptures with this vision and it's just it just it just astounds us every time it astounds me until today and I get knocked over all the time just by how amazing our God is and how amazing his creation is so thank you

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 67,516

Keywords: climacus conference, Gregory of Nyssa, moses, jonathan pageau, Catholic, orthodox, symbolism, religious symbolism, orthodoxy, mythology, stories, jordan peterson, jordan b. peterson, iconography, divine patterns in the life of moses, st. gregory of nyssa, jonathan pageau life of moses, interpretation, symbols, art, icons, christian symbolism, religion, jordan peterson logos, symbolism in art, bible, christianity

Id: -drIcL5bkpk

Length: 42min 25sec (2545 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2017