Register Summary

Pope John Paul II said Christians must learn to see their daily lives in the big picture of God's plan for the universe.

Speaking to pilgrims at his general audience Nov. 21, the Pope explained that the “Christian way” to interpret the passing of time was “to place our day on the large horizon of the history of salvation.” Even as the days mount up one on top of the other, he said, we should not be oppressed by their weight but should examine them carefully for signs of God's unfolding plan.

About 7,000 pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI Audience Hall to listen to the Pope, who continued a series of talks on the Liturgy of the Hours. He focused on a canticle from the book of Exodus, a hymn of victory that celebrates how God saved the Israelites by parting the Red Sea.

The Pope called the exodus from Egypt “a symbol of the whole history of salvation” that prefigures Christ's liberation of humanity from sin and death.

“The hymn of victory does not express the triumph of man, but the triumph of God. It is not a song of war; it is a song of love,” he said, adding that the joy expressed in the ancient hymn should pervade the daily lives of modern believers, too.

This hymn of victory (Exodus 15:1-18), which is proposed for Morning Prayer on Saturday of the first week of the Liturgy of the Hours, takes us back to a key moment in salvation history: the Exodus event, when Israel was saved by God in a situation that was humanly speaking, hopeless.

The facts are well known. Following their long captivity in Egypt, the Hebrews, who were already on the way to the Promised Land, were overtaken by Pharaoh's army. If the Lord had not intervened with his powerful hand, nothing would have saved them from annihilation.

The hymn spends time describing the arrogance of the plans of the armed enemy: “I will pursue and overtake them; I will divide the spoils” (Exodus 15:9).

But what can the greatest army do against divine omnipotence? God commands the sea to open a passage for the assailed people and close the way to the aggressors: “When your wind blew, the sea covered them; like lead they sank in the mighty waters” (Exodus 15:10).

These are strong images. They attempt to describe the greatness of God, while expressing the wonder of a people who can scarcely believe their eyes. With one voice, they break out in a moving song: “My strength and my courage is the Lord, and he has been my savior. He is my God, I praise him; the God of my father, I extol him” (Exodus 15:2).

Hints of Resurrection

The canticle does not just speak of the deliverance obtained. It also indicates its positive objective, which is none other than entering into the dwelling of God to live in communion with him: “In your mercy you led the people you redeemed; in your strength you guided them to your holy dwelling” (Exodus 15:13).

The Prophets spoke of a ‘new covenant,’ in which the law of God would be written in the very heart of man.

Understood this way, this event was not only at the root of the covenant between God and his people, but it became something like the “symbol” of the whole history of salvation. Israel would go on to experience similar situations on many other occasions, and always the Exodus would be immediately reenacted. In a special way, that event prefigures the great deliverance that Christ will bring about through his death and resurrection.

Because of this, our hymn resounds in a special way in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. By the intensity of its images, it illustrates what was accomplished in Christ. In him we were saved — not from a human oppressor, but from that slavery to Satan and sin which has weighed on humanity's destiny from the beginning. With Christ, humanity resumes its journey on the path that leads us back to the Father's house.

In Joyful Hope

This deliverance is already realized in mystery and is present in baptism as a seed of life that is destined to grow. It will attain its fullness at the end of time, when Christ returns in glory and “hands over the kingdom to his God and Father” (1 Corinthians 15:24).

It is precisely this final eschato-logical panorama that the Liturgy of the Hours invites us to look at when it introduces our hymn with a quotation from the Book of Revelation: “Those who had won the victory over the beast … sang the song of Moses, the servant of God” (Revelation 15:2,3).

At the end of time, what the event of the Exodus prefigures and what Christ's Passover accomplished in a way that is definitive, yet open to the future, will be fully realized for all those who are saved. Our salvation is, in fact, real and profound, but it is between the “already” and the “not yet” of the earthly condition, as the apostle Paul reminds us: “For in hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24).

Seeing the Big Picture

“I will sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously triumphant” (Exodus 15:1). By placing these words of the ancient hymn on our lips, the liturgy of Morning Prayer invites us to place our day within the wide horizon of salvation history. This is the Christian way of perceiving the passage of time. The accumulation of day upon day is not a fate that oppresses us, but a plan that goes on unfolding and that our eyes must learn to read like a watermark.

The Fathers of the Church were particularly sensitive to this salvation history perspective. They loved to read the highlights of the Old Testament — from the great flood of Noah's time to the calling of Abraham, from the deliverance of the Exodus to the return of the Hebrews after the Babylonian exile — as “prefigurations” of future events. They recognized those developments as having the value of an “archetype.” In them, the basic characteristics that would repeat themselves in some way throughout the course of human history were announced ahead of time.

A Song for the Journey

As for the rest, the prophets had already reread the events of the history of salvation, showing their always current meaning and pointing to their complete fulfillment in the future. This is how, while meditating on the mystery of the covenant established by God with Israel, they came to speak of a “new covenant” (Jeremiah 31:31; see Ezekiel 36:26-27), in which the law of God would be written in the very heart of man.

It is not difficult to see in this prophecy the new covenant that was established in the blood of Christ and brought about through the gift of the Spirit. By reciting this hymn of victory of the old Exodus in the light of the paschal Exodus, the faithful can experience the joy of knowing themselves members of a Church that is on a pilgrimage through time toward the heavenly Jerusalem.

It's All About Love

This is, therefore, a matter of contemplating with ever-renewed wonder all that God has planned for his people: “And you brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your inheritance — the place where you made your seat, O Lord, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands established” (Exodus 15:17). The hymn of victory does not express the triumph of man, but the triumph of God. It is not a song of war. It is a song of love.

Allowing our days to be pervaded by this wave of praise of the ancient Hebrews, we walk the streets of the world — which are not lacking in danger, risks, and suffering — with the certainty of being enfolded by God's merciful gaze. Nothing can resist the power of his love.

(Register and Zenit translation)