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The Community at Prayer
Reflection by Father Paul M. Baca
March 7, 2010, 3rd Sunday in Lent
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    Considering the importance of the part that Moses played in the history of the Jews, I find his call quite interesting. Certainly he was not a person of importance, but a mere shepherd who had escaped the vengeance of Pharoah. I have often wondered how he saw his life from the day Pharoah's daughter found him floating in that basket on the Nile, through the time he lived in royal settings in the palaces of Pharoah. He never forgot where he came from and who he was so that in defending one of his countrymen from the oppressive cruelty of Pharoah, he fell from the good graces of Pharoah and had to flee into the desert. It is there that he became the shepherd and it was in tending the sheep that he received the call from Almighty God to lead his people out of slavery into freedom.

   So often we have heard and continue to hear that God calls each and every one of us to do our part to create a world where everyone can be happy and live with dignity in freedom. For the most part, we are so busy living our life on a daily basis, that we rarely think of ourselves as being called to do our part in God's plan. Today it is not difficult to think of Moses in the desert with all the violence taking place in the Middle East. We are made aware of the millions upon millions of poor innocent people uprooted from their homes to become refugees outside of their own land. Then, too, we read of the thousands upon thousands who have been caught in the crossfire, losing their lives along with their homes and their land. As we see so many people living in such horrible circumstances all over the world, we can appreciate the yearnings of the Jews to be freed from the slavery they were enduring in Egypt.

   As I reflect on all this, I try to imagine God's plan for the human family and why things go so terribly wrong. Certainly God did not want any of his creatures to live the horrible lives that so many people are condemned to live throughout the world. I so often ask myself, Would life be much more pleasant and enjoyable for everyone if everyone could live with dignity? I try to imagine a world without violence and war. I try to imagine a world without hunger, but the realities of the world around me overpower my imagination.

   Moses was able with great difficulty to lead the Jews out of the slavery they endured in Egypt, but how much did he accomplish? As we read the Jewish scriptures, we find them as a nation being beset by foreign powers and suffering in many ways; eventually even their whole country was divided into a northern and southern kingdom by the intrigue of members of the royal family.

   St. Paul in his first Letter to the Corinthians sums it up for them and for us:

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were all under the cloud
and all passed through the sea,
and all of them were baptized into Moses
in the cloud and in the sea.
All ate the same spiritual food,
and all drank the same spiritual drink,
for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them,
and the rock was the Christ.
Yet God was not pleased with most of them,
for they were struck down in the desert.

These things happened as examples for us,
so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.
Do not grumble as some of them did,
and suffered death by the destroyer.
These things happened to them as an example,
and they have been written down as a warning to us,
upon whom the end of the ages has come.
Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure
should take care not to fall.

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