Exodus 15,1-18 sings of watery defeat of pursuing Egyptians. Risen Christ brings greater defeat of forces of evil through his passage from death to life

On Wednesday, 21 November, in the Paul VI Audience Hall, the Holy Father commented on the canticle of Moses that we find in Exodus, chapter 15, which celebrates the Lord's victory over Pharaoh's army after the crossing of the Red Sea. In the Canticle Israel praises the power and love of God who saved his Chosen ones and led them to his holy dwelling. The Church praises Christ who realizes the full and complete Exodus prefigured in the first Exodus at the Red Sea. Christ's liberation is the definitive victory over death and our redemption from the slavery of sin. The Church lives in the firm hope that Christ will fully realize the future promise contained in his work of redemption at the end of time. The Church prays the canticle as she makes her way toward the heavenly Jerusalem awaiting the full accomplishment of her final redemption by Christ. Here is a translation of the Holy Father's commentary on the Canticle of Moses.

1. This hymn of victory (cf. Ex 15,1-18), used at Lauds on Saturday of the first week, transports us to the key moment in the history of salvation: the event of the Exodus, when God saved Israel from a humanly desperate situation. The facts are well known: following the long time of slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews were on their way to the promised land when the army of Pharoah overtook them and nothing would have saved them from annihilation if the Lord had not intervened with his powerful hand. The hymn delights in describing the arrogance of the plans of the armed enemy: "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoils" (Ex 15,9).

What can the greatest army do against divine omnipotence? God commands the sea to make a passage for the assailed people and then to close the passage to the aggressors: "When your wind blew: the sea covered them, they sank like lead in the mighty waters" (Ex 15,10).

These are vigorous images that attempt to describe the greatness of God, while expressing the wonder of a people who can scarcely believe their eyes, and break out with one voice in a glorious hymn of praise: "The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God and I will praise him, the God of my father and I will exalt him" (Ex 15,2).

Exodus from Egypt for communion with God

2. The Canticle does not just sing of the liberation obtained; it also indicates the positive objective, none other than entry into the dwelling place of God to live in communion with him: "You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you redeemed, you guided them by your strength to your holy abode" (Ex 15,13). So understood, the event was not only at the base of the covenant between God and his people, but became the "symbol" of the whole history of salvation. On many other occasions, Israel will survive similar situations, and the Exodus will be repeated regularly. In a special way that event prefigures the great redemption that Christ will bring about with his death and resurrection.

For this reason our canticle resounds in a special way in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil to demonstrate with its intense imagery what has taken place in Christ. In Christ we have been saved not from a human oppressor, but from the slavery to Satan and sin, that has weighed on human destiny from the beginning. With Christ humanity takes up the road again on the path that leads us to the house of the Father.

At the end of time we will sing of our full and complete liberation

3. This liberation, already achieved in mystery and present in Baptism as the seed of life destined to grow, will attain its fullness at the end of time, when Christ will return in glory and "hand over the Kingdom to God the Father" (I Cor 15,24). It is this final, eschatological horizon that the Liturgy of the Hours certainly invites us to look for when it introduces our canticle with a quote from the Apocalypse: "They have conquered the beast ... [They] were singing the canticle of Moses, the servant of God" (Apoc 15,2.3).

At the end of time what the Exodus event prefigured and what Easter accomplished in a definitive way that is still open to the future will be fully realized for all the saved. Indeed, our salvation is real and entire, but it lies between the "already" and the "not yet" of our earthly condition, as the Apostle Paul recalls: "It is in hope that we are saved" (Rom 8,24).

4. "I will sing to the Lord for he is gloriously triumphant" (Ex 15,1). Putting on our lips the words of the ancient hymn, the liturgy of lauds invites us to see our day in the great horizon of the history of salvation. This is the Christian way of perceiving the passage of time. In the accumulation of passing days, there is no fatality that oppresses us, but a plan that goes on unfolding and that we must learn to read with discernment in the events of our time.

The Fathers of the Church were particularly attuned to this perspective. Indeed, originating from the history of salvation meant they loved to read the salient facts of the Old Testament ¾ from the deluge at the time of Noah to the calling of Abraham, from the liberation of the Exodus to the return of the Hebrews after the Babylonian exile ¾ as "prefigurations" of future events, allowing to those facts an "archetypal" value: in them were pre-announced the fundamental characteristics that would be repeated in some way throughout the course of human history.

Prophets remind us that salvation-history events still shape present events

5. As for the prophets, they had already reread the events of the history of salvation, showing how they influenced present reality and pointing to the full realization in the future. Thus, meditating on the mystery of the covenant that God established with Israel, they even began to speak of a "new covenant" (Jer 31,31; cf. Ez 36,26-27), in which the law of God would be written in the heart of the human person. It is easy to see in the prophecy the new covenant sealed in the blood of Christ and realized through the gift of the Spirit. By reciting this hymn of victory on the ancient Exodus, now, with the full light of the Easter exodus, the faithful can live joyously as a pilgrim Church that moves in time towards the heavenly Jerusalem. 

6. We can contemplate with increased wonder what God has wrought for his people: "You will bring them in, and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which your hands have established" (Ex 15,17). The hymn of victory sings the triumph of God, not of man. It is a canticle, not of war, but of love.

Allowing our days to be permeated by the ancient Hebrews' thrill of praise, we will walk on the roads of the world, full of threats, risk, and suffering, but with the certainty of being encompassed by the merciful gaze of God. Nothing can resist the power of his love.