https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Wf0ZKvkkFis
So like I said at the beginning, I’m going to be speaking of St. Gregory of Nica tomorrow, as we explore his amazing book, The Life of Moses. But I want to bring him already into the conversation today, because he gives us the key to some of the questions, some of these things that I’ve been bringing up about patterns. So in his book, St. Gregory at some point, it’s the culminating point of his book, he describes the ascent of Moses unto the Sinai to receive the law given to him by God, and also to receive the pattern of the tabernacle. So first, Gregory says, Moses leans behind the base of the mountain, and is separated from all those too weak for the ascent. Then as he rises higher in his ascent, he hears the sound of trumpets. Thereupon he slips into the inner sanctuary of divine knowledge. And he does not remain there, but he passes on to the tabernacle not made with hands. For truly this is the limit that reaches, that someone reaches who is elevated through such ascent. So God shows Moses a pattern of the tabernacle, which he’s going to have built as the center of Israelite worship. And in his interpretation of this event, St. Gregory does some amazing things. He speaks in somewhat hushed tones of that spiritual pattern that was encountered by Moses as quote, an archetype so that he might reproduce in a handmade structure that marvel not made with hands, unquote. And St. Gregory almost hesitates, and you can feel it in the text, but then he goes on. Quote, we say that Moses was instructed by a type in the mystery of the tabernacle which encompasses the universe. That tabernacle would be Christ, who is the power and the wisdom of God, who in his own nature was not made with hands, yet capable of being made when it became necessary for this tabernacle to be erected among us. Thus the same tabernacle is in a way both unfashioned and fashioned, uncreated in pre-existence, but created in having received this material composition. And worried that we might be offended to see God himself compared to the tabernacle, St. Gregory tells us to not be afraid. Quote, for the power which encompasses the universe, in which lives the fullness of divinity, the common protector of all, who encompasses everything within himself, is rightly called tabernacle. Unquote. So here we have this amazing description of a pattern, encountered beyond the inner sanctuary of divine knowledge by Moses. It’s an architectural pattern which is Christ and contains the universe within itself. Now think about that for a second. Moses is ascending a mountain, but St. Gregory talks of an inner sanctuary of divine knowledge. That is he’s using this general notion of place. A sanctuary is a holy place. The inner sanctuary is the inner holy place, which is equivalent to the holy of holies of the tabernacle itself. The place where the high priest could enter and where the divine glory, the presence of God descended on the Ark of the Covenant. So the top of this mountain that Moses is ascending is put in comparison, it’s made analogical to the sanctuary. And we know later in our tradition that the human heart, the person’s heart will play the same analogical function as that holy of holies, where the human must enter to find illumination. So then moving beyond the holy of holies we encounter the invisible pattern of that very sanctuary which was surpassed. So St. Gregory then goes to describe the different aspects of the tabernacle. How the different aspects represent different aspects of Christ, but also Christ’s church. And so what ends up happening to us as we look at this is we see these patterns within patterns. So the structure of Israel’s tabernacle, which was going to be built and be the center of Israel’s worship, is also the mountain which Moses ascended. It’s also the person and the life of Christ and then becomes the structure of the church itself and all its members. And at the same time it’s an image of our own experience as we approach God, our own experience as we enter our own heart to find illumination. So it’s something like the vision of the prophet Daniel, I don’t know if you know this vision, where he looked at the divine chariot which was carrying the presence of God and he saw wheels within wheels within wheels. So these patterns that lock together and create like a mesh that makes us understand what things are referring to. So what I said might still sound a bit obscure to everybody, so hopefully I’m going to bring it more into a more applicable way. And to be honest it is way far beyond my capacity to resume this universal pattern. I’m not Moses and I’m not St. Gregory and I have definitely not entered into the divine darkness. But I think like most people, like most of us here, I mean we have these intimations, we have these moments, these glimpses of some of the smaller aspects or some of the smaller patterns which embed themselves to the larger one which constitutes this infinite tabernacle. So hopefully what I can do with you today is maybe provoke some intimation or give a little glimpse. And I think the only fruitful way to do this in our context is to do it the way the fathers did it and it’s the way St. Gregory did it and it’s to show how everything, how this whole pattern, how all the patterns of meanings point to Christ. And I think that that is the surest way for any of us to encounter God in stories. And so we come back to a familiar territory because for Christians the traditional vision of the Old Testament is that all the stories point to Christ. All the Old Testament stories contain prototypes of Christ. St. Irenaeus tells us that quote, If anyone therefore reads the Scriptures with attention, he will find in them an account of Christ. For Christ is the treasure which was hid in the field. The treasure hidden in the Scriptures is Christ since he was pointed out by means of types and parables. And so from a theological and even an epistemological point of view that makes total sense, right, all the instances of meaning extend from and point to the origin of meaning, the origin of everything which is the divine logos, that pattern not made with hands, who entered through his incarnation into the cosmic story. So to become not only the origin of the story but its very center. And in practice anybody who reads the narrative parts of the Old Testament simply as stories, rather than attempting to decompose them into competing mini narratives of religious and political struggle like a lot of the scholars want to do, I mean if you pay attention to those stories you can’t help but notice that each story is like an extreme facet of something. You know these stories in the Old Testament are like these sharp slivers that come together into a smooth whole and brought together in Christ.