When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him....
----------------------- Leighton Meester, You are My Yahweh on Sinai --------
Leighton,
You are like thunder and your voice like thick clouds
and your beauty like gentle rains
cleansing my skin, your lips are the thinning air
dizzying my mind. Like the refulgent sun or the luminous moon
as the clouds part nightly (and I pray at your feet)
is your hair – so lustrous
my love for you is concrete like two stone tablets
cut by my people but carried, strenuously, by me
just to be with you, and know what things please you most
to know exactly how you want me to order my life...
and I would journey afar
just to be near you – and I would wait (even just for a whisper)
40 days without food and 40 nights without drink
With no other NAME on my tongue
than yours
and I wouldn't sleep
My love for you is Sinai
a holy mountain, a place for sins refrain
transformation
no sandals on my feet
worshipping, singing, crying, laughing, jumping
full of elation
a declaration of independence
from all things I once knew
and your eyes ...
are weightier than your fingers composing.
...a tablet in my left and right arms...
your glance imbues life to my entire being
radiating from my heart within
deep
I know things will never be the same
My desire burning for you makes me so happy
that it scares those around me
I can barely contain myself
even if they put
My face behind a veil
beaming
--------------
The Radiant Face of Moses (Exodus 34:29-35)
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the LORD's presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.
Therasius, if you will exhibit the same manner of life as his, and then you shall receive him back again no longer in that corporeal beauty which he had when he departed, but in lustre of another kind, and splendour outshining the rays of the sun. For this body, even if it reaches a very high standard of beauty is nevertheless perishable; but the bodies of those who have been well pleasing to God, will be invested with such glory as these eyes cannot even look upon. And God has furnished us with certain tokens, and obscure indications of these things both in the Old and in the New Dispensation. For in the former the face of Moses shone with such glory as to be intolerable to the eyes of the Israelites, and in the New the face of Christ shone far more brilliantly than his. For tell me if any one had promised to make your husband king of all the earth, and then had commanded you to withdraw for twenty years on his account, and had promised after that to restore him to you with the diadem and the purple, and to place you again in the same rank with him, would you not have meekly endured the separation with due self-control? Would you not have been well pleased with the gift, and deemed it a thing worth praying for? Well then submit to this now, not for the sake of a kingdom on earth, but of a kingdom in Heaven; not to receive him back clad in a vesture of gold but robed in immortality and glory such as is fitting for them to have who dwell in Heaven.
-(St. John Chrysostom) - Letter to a Young Widow
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