Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinai as YHWH had commanded him, taking along the two stone tablets. Having come down in a cloud, YHWH stood with Moses there and proclaimed his name, “YHWH.” Thus YHWH passed before him and cried out, “YHWH, YHWH, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship. Then he said, “If I find favor with you, O Lord, do come along in our company. This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.” (Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9)
After the disastrous beginning at the Garden of Eden, God gradually appears to fade away from human affairs. Noah and his family survive because God mercifully and graciously facilitates mankind passage from an age of wicked excess to a new era, a new beginning.
Those who have read the Old Testament carefully recognize a cycle of sorts. God provides for the people a peaceful and prosperous moment which is followed by the people’s disobedience to His laws. Those laws have allowed them to live peacefully and prosperously but the people insist in disobedience. So, God applies a corrective (i.e. Noah’s Flood) and after some serious suffering the people realize that their loss is self inflicted and mend their ways until peace and prosperity return, only to begin the cycle again.
Those three steps appear over and over in sacred history. It seems to please God to do things in three parts. Time has a past, a present, and a future; matter appears mainly in solid, liquid and gaseous states; atoms are made of protons, electrons, and neutrons; musical notes are on key, sharp or flat; etc. Some of the qualities of God seem to appear in His creation thus revealing Him to those seeking to know Him. God revealed Himself to His people in three mountains: Sinai, Nebo, and Carmel. Moses was the first to have the honor to meet Him and hear His Ineffable Name. In time, the Son of God, the Logos Incarnate (John 1:1-17) appeared atop a different mountain in a much less spectacular manner to gently teach mankind more about the mystery of His being.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: • ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. • ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. • ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. • ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. • ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. • ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. • ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. • ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. • ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:1-11)
Those with a mathematical inclination are likely to observe that there are nine blessings and furthermore, that the square root of nine is three. Now, going back to the way God calls Himself: I am, I who exists, I am the One Who Is, are some possible translations. God is. We are in the process of becoming but He is from eternity to eternity. He was/is/shall be all at once. If God’s reality could be compared to all the beaches of all the seas of all the planets in the universe, then all of mankind would be comparable to less than a grain of sand. And yet God knows all of us from all eternity and loves each one of us. To say nothing of the fact that He wants all of us to love Him.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16-18)
Sometimes we do place a label on things to make them easy to find, to identify things or persons. At home, I have a collection of tags from all the conferences and conventions I have attended in my life. The Roman military governor of Judea, the Roman Proconsul Pontius Pilate, was one of a long line of men who applied labels, even to criminals being executed by the Roman State. The labels the Romans used in those cases were more or less like those wood shingles sometimes used to insulate houses from the elements. Pontius Pilate used one of those to identify each criminal by name, adding a short note on the nature of the crime committed: Dimas the thief was one, Jesus —that good man accused of sedition by the religious authorities of Jerusalem— was the other.
In the case of Jesus the legend was written in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. “Iesu Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum” meaning “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews”. Catholics are familiar with the Latin acronym INRI but those familiar with Hebrew may remember “Yeshua Ha’Nazarei W‘Melech Ha’Yehudim”. The Jewish religious leaders of that time recognized the “coincidental” appearance of the Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton: YHWH. They complained to Governor Pontius Pilate asking to change the phrase. They wanted to avoid the Sacred Name appearing by the head of the man they hated so much. But Pilate’s response was as biblical as forthright: “Quod scripsi, scripsi.” meaning: “What I have written, I have written.” (cf. John 19:17-30) Although the Tetragrammaton has (obviously) four letters, the letter ha (ה H) is repeated twice. The number of characters used is therefore, three. That double letter ha could be a sign pointing at a mysterious representation of the two natures (Divine and Human) of God the Son.
Moses was given a vision of the God of Israel on a mountain. The first followers of Jesus could see and hear God as He revealed Himself as the Merciful God of Israel on yet another mountain at the time of the Sermon on the Mount (“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” in John 14:9) The Church received the Holy Spirit in the Cenacle of Jerusalem in 33 A.D. Now the Church waits for Him to intervene in the affairs of this wayward world at a time that is—according to some visionaries— “even more wicked than before Noah’s Flood.” God is coming to save us from ourselves one more time.
As we advance towards that kingdom that “will have no end” we learn more and more about Our God, the True God Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We pray that the whole world will know Him and learn to worship Him for ever and ever. Amen.
