Vigils Reading

A FORESHADOW OF

THE GRACE TO COME

From the treatise on the Holy Spirit by St Basil the Great

◊◊◊

The type manifests things to come by imitating them, foreshadowing

future events in order to make them understood. For example, Adam was a

type of the One who was to come, the rock was a type of Christ, and the water

that flowed from the rock was a type of the life-giving power of the Word, for the

Lord said: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The manna

typified the living bread that came down from heaven and the serpent fixed to

the pole typified the saving Passion consummated upon the Cross, which is why

all who looked at it were saved.

Similarly, the reason the story is told of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt

is that they prefigure those who are saved by baptism. The firstborn of the

Israelites were saved in the same way as are the bodies of the baptized, since

grace was given to those marked by the blood. For the blood of the lamb was a

symbol of the first man who was created and who of necessity still exists in us,

transmitted through succeeding generations until the end of the world.

The sea and the cloud had the immediate effect of producing faith because

of the amazement they aroused, but in relation to the future they were types

foreshadowing the grace to come. Who is wise enough to understand these

things, to understand how the sea is a type of baptism because it separated the

Israelites from Pharaoh just as baptism separates us from the tyranny of the

devil?

In its waters the sea destroyed the enemy and in baptism is slain our

enmity with God. From those waters the people emerged unharmed, and we

emerge from the waters of baptism as though we had died and come to life

again, saved by the grace of him who called us. As for the cloud, that

foreshadowed the gift of the Spirit, who cools the heat of the passions by the

mortification of our body.