The New Moses
March 8, 2023
Fr. John Riccardo
These past ten days I’ve been blessed to be on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. For the better part of the past week we’ve been in Jerusalem, and very early each morning a few of us head over to Holy Sepulchre to start the day in prayer at the place built atop Calvary and Jesus’ tomb. It’s virtually impossible to put into words what these mornings are like.
My favorite place to pray in Holy Sepulchre is what’s known as “Adam’s Chapel,” the traditional site of Adam’s grave. It’s directly below Calvary. “Sin entered the world through one man,” Paul writes, “and Death through Sin, and so Death spread to all men” (Rom 5:12). “Adam’s Chapel” is the grave of that “one man” — the one man through whom Death, the lordship of Death, came.
The Office of Readings on Monday happened to be from Exodus 14, the story of the Israelites trapped at the Red Sea. I was praying with this passage as I sat on the floor in “Adam’s Chapel.” The Israelites, miraculously freed by God after hundreds of years of slavery to the Egyptians, find themselves trapped at the Red Sea, with the world’s most powerful army coming after them. It turns out, though, that God had arranged all of this. The Lord had set a trap, luring Pharaoh and his charioteers in, thinking they could recapture the Israelites and bring them back as slaves. The Egyptians fell for the trap.
Of course, the Israelites didn’t know it was a trap, and so they cried out in terror and complained against God and Moses. Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you,” he continued, “you have only to stand still” (Ex 14:13-14).
Then the Lord told Moses, “Lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the sons of Israel may go on dry ground through the sea. And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots and his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD” (Ex 14:15-18).
With that, the Israelites marched through the sea, with the water like a wall on their right and their left, safely reaching the other side. The Egyptians followed in hot pursuit. The trap was set, however, and taking the bait, they ended up drowning when the waters of the sea returned to normal. The Egyptian soldiers were utterly defeated and the Israelites were free. And they danced, Exodus 15 tells us, singing and praising the God who rescues His people from slavery.
The Exodus is a type, an image (a real image, to be sure) of all that God has done for us in Jesus. Pharaoh is a type of Satan; the slavery in Egypt is a type of our race’s slavery to Sin and Death, which entered the world through that “one man,” at whose grave I was praying; the Red Sea is a type both of baptism and of death; Moses is a type of Jesus. And so on.
What hit me this past Monday as I was praying is the location of “Adam’s Chapel.” It’s directly below Calvary. In other words, just above Adam’s tomb, or perhaps we could say, just above the place where the kingdom of Death entered the world, God set another trap, the ultimate trap, the trap that would lure in not some earthly king but Satan himself. Like Pharaoh, who prefigured him, Satan also took the bait.
Jesus, the new Moses, stretched out His hands, not over a body of water, but over the kingdom of Death, over the very grave of the one man through whom Death had entered so long ago. And just as the Red Sea was torn in two, the kingdom of Death was split asunder, forever losing its tyranny on our race; and the strong man who deceived our first parents in Eden and held our race captive ever since, was bound by the stronger One (cf. Mark 3:27).
Moses told the people that they only had to stand still, God would fight for them. Beneath the cross of Jesus, as He was stretching out His hands, descendants of those same children of Israel were also standing still: Mary, John, Mary Magdalene, and others. They are a type of all of us.
On Calvary, just as at the Red Sea, God was fighting.
For us.
And He won. Gloriously won! And we are set free.
Are we dancing?
As we continue these Lenten days, let us fervently pray that the Holy Spirit will give us an ever greater understanding of what Jesus has accomplished for us. Let us pray He will help us know how to appropriately and generously respond. And let us pray for the joyful courage to tell those who still live in slavery to the powers of Sin, Death, fear, anxiety, despair and more, that God — out of love — has fought for them.
Follow the ACTS XXIX journey to the Holy Land.
Watch the video series here: ACTS XXIX in the Holy Land