Vigils Reading

THE RAYS SHINING

FROM THE THORNS

From a commentary by St Gregory of Nyssa

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Let us, like Moses, live a solitary life, no longer entangled with adversaries

or mediating between them. Let us live among those of like mind who are fed by

us, while all the movements of our soul are led by reason like sheep by their

shepherd. Then, as we are living at peace, the truth will shine upon us and its

radiance will illuminate the eyes of our soul.

Now this truth is God. Once in an ineffable and mysterious vision it

manifested itself to Moses, and it is not without significance for us that the

flame from which the soul of the Prophet was illuminated was kindled from a

thorn-bush.

If truth is God and if it is also light – two of the sublime and sacred

epithets by which the Gospel describes the God who manifested himself to us in

the flesh – it follows that a virtuous life will lead us to a knowledge of that light

which descended to the level of our human nature. It is not from some luminary

set among the stars that it sheds its radiance, which might then be thought to

have a material origin, but from a bush on the earth, although it outshines the

stars of heaven.

This also symbolizes the mystery of the Virgin, from whom came the

divine light that shone upon the world without damaging the bush from which it

emanated or allowing the virgin shoot to wither. This light teaches us what we

must do to stand in the rays of the true light, and that it is impossible with our

feet in shackles to run toward the mountain where the light of truth appears. We

have first to free the feet of our soul from the covering of dead skins in which our

nature was clad in the beginning when it disobeyed God’s will and was left

naked.

To know that which is, we must purify our minds of assumptions

regarding things which are not. In my opinion the definition of truth is an

unerring comprehension of that which is. He who is immutable, who does not

increase or diminish, who is subject to no change for better or worse, but is

perfectly self-sufficient; he who alone is desirable, in whom all else participates

without causing in him any diminution, he indeed is that which truly is, and to

comprehend him is to know the truth.

It is he whom Moses approached and whom today all approach who like

Moses free themselves from their earthly coverings and look toward the light

coming from the bramble bush, at the ray shining on us from the thorns, which

stand for the flesh, for as the Gospel says, that ray is the real light and the truth.

Then such people will also be able to help others find salvation. They will be

capable of destroying the forces of evil and of restoring those enslaved by them

to liberty.