Tag Archives: bridge-builder

Moses = Burning Bushes and Building Bridges

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Moses encounters the Logos, the Word of God, at the Burning Bush in the icon of Our Lady of the Burning Bush in the upper right corner of the icon; see the detail from a contemporary icon as well.


Moses was the lynchpin between God and Israel; as the Serbian proverb goes, he was the neck that turned the head (connecting the head—God—to the body, which was Israel). His encounter at the bush, as he was tending Jethro’s flocks, becomes an image of the Incarnation as the bush that burned but was not consumed is a foreshadowing of the Virgin who gave birth to God without loss of her virginity.

According to Wikipedia (so it MUST be true!), the Hebrew word in the story that is translated into English as bush is seneh(סנה‎) which refers in particular to brambles; seneh is a biblical dis legomenon, only appearing in two places, both of which describe the burning bush. The use of seneh may be a deliberate pun on Sinai (סיני‎), a feature common in Hebrew texts. (That the burning bush is a bramble bush also associates it with the bramble bush which is an important part of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.)

At the bush, Moses is commissioned to act as God’s mouthpiece, telling Pharaoh to “Let my people go” and telling the people of Israel what God wants from them. He is commissioned to build a bridge between God and the world—both the fallen world (Egypt) and the world being redeemed and healed (Israel). This role as the bridge builder between God and the world is essentially the role of a priest; one Latin word for priest is pontifex, which is literally “bridge builder.”

Even before Aaron is ordained as priest, Moses offers sacrifices to God on behalf of Israel. Moses builds the bridge between eternity and the world by his words and by sacrifice. In the Middle Ages, it was an especially meritorious act to leave money in your will to build a public bridge that did not charge a toll across a river. Building a toll free bridge was a priestly act, uniting two sides of the river as a priest unites worlds in the liturgical sacrifice and preaching. (Without a bridge, people might have to travel several miles—hours—out of their way to find a place to cross the river. A toll bridge, built by someone who wanted to make a profit on their construction investment, limited river crossing to the well-to-do; a toll free bridge was an image of Christ’s sacrifice freely available to all.)

Moses built a bridge between God and Israel. Israel, the priestly people commissioned at Mt. Sinai, built a bridge between God and the world. The Word-made-flesh, who spoke to Moses at the bush, built the ultimate bridge that brought together everything he was not with everything that he is. The Church, the Body of the Word-made-flesh, continues that ministry of bridge building.

Protection of the Mother of God (Part 2)

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A medieval bas relief in Venice of the Mother of God protecting the faithful gathered under her veil.

An archway atop a small pedestrian bridge in Venice depicts the Mother of God protecting the faithful with her veil.

Western Christian depictions of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God are often called “the Virgin of Mercy” and are sometimes associated with Christ’s remarks that He “longed to gather your children [the people of Jerusalem] together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings….” (Matthew 23:37) The Mother of God is shown with the faithful of many social ranks and classes gathered on their knees beneath her outstretched cloak. As she is the bridge that unites earth to heaven, having nurtured Christ in her womb and giving birth to God-made-man, her image is frequently seen near bridges. (The Latin word for “priest” (pontifex) comes from the Latin for bridge-builder because priests also act as bridges between Heaven and earth, divinity and humanity.

Probably the oldest Western version of this image is a small panel by Duccio of c. 1280, with three Franciscan friars under the cloak, in Siena. The Franciscans seem to have been devoted to the idea of the Virgin’s protecting veil and were important in spreading this form of iconography, which remains important in much of Latin America.

The image of Our Lady in Walsingham was not the Virgin of Mercy with her protecting veil but the shrine of Walsingham did celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mercy as its patronal feast day. The popularity of the Walsingham shrine led many to call England “the dowry of the Virgin” and thus celebrate the Virgin of the Dowry on the same day as well.

The importance of the Virgin’s mercy and protection underlines the communal nature of Christianity and the dependence of the faithful on each other–as well as on particular saints–in times of adversity. In the gospel, it is rare that a sick person is healed because of their own faith; usually the sick are healed because their friends had the faith to approach Christ and ask that He heal the sick or cast out the demon(s) from the possessed. It is the faith of their friends which heals and saves those most in need.