The Lord continued, ‘See there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock. And while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock.’ A hole in the rock, so a cave. A cave is a universal symbol of the deepest encounter with God and one’s own self. So, ‘while my glory passes, I will put you in this cave, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.’ This is a kind of paradox here. He’s going to reveal himself, but at the same time, he’s going to cover him in order to protect Moses from an overload of God. ‘And then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.’ (Ex 33:21-23). Gregory of Nyssa uses this as a starting point for his discourse on the journey to God. And Moses has to stay there in that cave. You need to stay there, you need to be stable and allow it to become rooted and part of your life. Obviously, Gregory doesn’t take this story literally; it is an allegory and he reads it in the mystical sense. He describes then how the ascent of the soul to God (our journey), how the ascent of our soul to God is the counterpart of the force of gravity in the material world. In the material world everything falls to the ground, but in the spiritual world everything moves upwards.
( Enlightenment by Laurence Freeman OSB )
