The future “liberator” of the Jewish people from Egypt is a “liberated” himself, one who has experienced the condition of a slave and faced the danger of death even from birth. Moses is first “liberated” by Pharaoh’s daughter from the waters, as we read in the First Reading of today (Exodus 2:1-15).
Solidarity
Even before feeling invested with the mission of liberator of the enslaved people, Moses feels in solidarity with his suffering brothers, as he grows in the courts of Pharaoh. The law of solidarity among all men is in force even more after the coming of Christ. We need to look around and get out of our selfishness, show some solidarity with those who are suffering, and then seek a way to liberate them.
Strategy
In the mission of liberating those who are persecuted and marginalized, we sometimes need to adopt some clever or shrewd strategies. Very often slyness is attributed to be evil, but it is not always negative. In fact, in this case, it is thanks to the cunning of Moses’ sister and mother that the project of death is not fulfilled in the life of Moses. Indeed, ironically, Pharaoh will pay Moses’ mother to breastfeed and grow him. This is the beginning of the liberation strategy of the Israelites from Egypt; a mission which the liberated Moses would later fulfill. We need to know when to apply astuteness in our dealings with the world and the enemies of the Gospel. Jesus hints at this when he says: “…the sons of this world are shrewder in their generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Again, he calls us to be “as wise (shrewd) as serpent and gentle as a dove” (Matt 10:16).
Nonviolence
Pharaoh’s daughter, in open contrast to the father’s decisions, while recognizing the child (Moses) as a Jew, did not fail to have compassion on him, welcoming him as a son. The logic of love wins over that of power. Moses then encounters the condition in which the Jewish people live, i.e., exploitation, forced labor, humiliation, etc. This generates anger in him, and he does not seek dialogue, but immediately switches to potent ways, entering a spiral of violence that forces him to flee and take refuge in a distant country. Violence is not the right response to violence, even if humanly speaking it would be the logical consequence of an injustice, but this is not God’s logic. The consequences of instinctive and violent actions of Moses are flight, fear, marginalization, and losing everything. The teaching that comes to us from this is that the true savior that the people of Israel await cannot be violent, one who imposes himself with his own strength, a heroic leader, but must be a person like everyone else, with his own “weakness” and fragility, however with a single characteristic: to be an instrument, through which God will manifest himself as the protagonist of the salvation of the whole world. And we find this in Jesus who becomes the nonviolent liberator of humanity. Jesus, like Moses, first shows solidarity with the sufferings of his people, becoming wounded himself by the sins of mankind. Just like the Israelites have in Moses a “liberated liberator,” humanity has in Jesus a “wounded healer” and one who liberates us from sin and eternal death.
