“And it came to pass – when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount – that Moses knew not that the skin of his face sent forth beams while He talked with him.” (Exodus 34:29-30)
This is the best translation I can find of these verses from the Jewish Publication Society of 1917: The skin of his face sent forth beams.
It’s a great translation because it leaves open an ambiguity in the Hebrew. Were these beams of light, or of something else?
Famously, St. Jerome in the Vulgate rendered the word for “beams” with extreme literalness as “horns”: “And when Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord.” (Douay-Rheims) That’s why Michelangelo’s Moses displays horns.
But other venerable translators rendered otherwise, as for instance the Septuagint: “Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified.” Moses’s skin was radiant with unreflected light, anticipating, then, how he would appear at the Transfiguration.
It’s not a silly mistake to suppose that Moses grew horns. In the ancient world, including throughout the Hebrew Bible, horns were an image of power and honor. And yet, that the Hebrew locates the beams explicitly in the skin of Moses’s face tips the scales decisively, to my mind.
Horns, after all, must grow out from the skull, at the top of the head, not from the skin on the face. Try to imagine Michelangelo’s statue with horns growing out from all over Moses’s face.
But I say all this by way of preface. Assume that Moses’s face indeed radiated powerful beams of light. Such was the effect of his being in the presence of God.
The question then arises for us: Should Catholics expect that attendance at Mass, where God becomes truly present, will have a similar effect on them?
At a Mass, we “are not come to a mountain that might be touched, and a burning fire” (Hebrews 12:18), but to something even greater.
Let’s make the question more focused. The Easter Triduum, which we have just celebrated, comprises the holiest days and the greatest liturgies of the year. Did your presence and mine at these liturgies leave an impression of holiness upon us?
What I have in mind is a generalized effect which is independent of our will, our actions, our emotions, or our merit. I am thinking of an effect that operates not unlike a physical cause. The effect I have in mind would come not from our “participation” at these liturgies – that is, what we sing or say, or our standing or kneeling. The reception of Our Lord in Holy Communion, of course, implies a wellspring of countless graces.
But I am not interested, here, in that effect, but in something else. I mean, rather, this logic: you are in the presence of holy things, and, as a result, you are made holy.
Plato thought that punishment worked like that. To punish someone justly, he said, is to impose the formal character of justice on his soul, regardless of whether the sufferer wills to be made just or not. This is why punishment is medicinal, he thought. Someone treated justly will become more just as a result.
We clearly believe that nature works like that. We go out into the wilderness for a few days, hiking and camping, in part because we believe that we are made better, through being “in nature,” because we are made more like the purity and wildness we find there.
We think that children are like that, too. We spend time with children, in part, because we think that from being in their presence, we become more youthful, more full of life, and more innocent. They “leave an impression” upon us.
We use clothing to bear witness to an effect like that: we place a white garment on a newly baptized infant to signify the holy effect of Baptism. People used to dress up to go to church, yes, to show respect, but also to display what they believed the sacred liturgy made of them.
Some friends are walking along a crowded street in Rome, laughing, posing, eating gelato, and trying on clothing in shops. Then they walk into a dark but beautiful church – say, Santa Maria sopra Minerva. When they come out to the streets again, they feel that they have been made different – maybe only for a short time. But the holy place has changed them, nonetheless. They sense that they have been made more sober, clear-sighted, and (in some way) holy.
An effect like that which I am thinking of, in other religions, is called “purification.” Followers are said to be made pure by participating in mysteries, and they wear white clothes to show it. Surely Catholicism captures and raises this phenomenon to a higher level rather than discards it.
In short, I am asking whether the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil is proclaiming a literal truth:
This is the night
that even now, throughout the world,
sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices
and from the gloom of sin,
leading them to grace
and joining them to his holy ones. . . .
The sanctifying power of this night
dispels wickedness, washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.
What the Exsultet proclaims seems true of any Mass or any visit to the Blessed Sacrament: the presence itself of the Thrice-Holy God serves to make us holy.
Surely a main intuition of “traditionalism” is that we should show that this is so, in our churches, liturgies, and comportment. The command, “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16), speaks as much to our witness and self-understanding as to our acts of will.
