Exodus 32 - Prayers of Mediation

Exodus 32 is of course one of the most famous chapters in this book. It is full of intense emotion and suspenseful action. The people fall back into idolatry; Aaron aids them in their sin; Moses comes down to find this abomination; God is furious; the Commandments are destroyed; Moses shatters the golden calf; God wants them all killed; Moses pleads on the people's behalf; many are killed anyway; Moses asks pardon on behalf of the people. It is clear that the worship of the golden calf, the specific event described in Chapter 32, is no light matter. It is a heinous violation so offensive to God that He nearly calls for the extermination of His people. In fact, upon first reading this chapter, I found a lot of its content hard to take. Why was God's fury so great? Why does He want everyone (save Moses) killed? And then, after Moses successfully pleads for God's mercy, why does He sanction the killing of 23,000 of the guilty? These are perplexing questions. It may be enough to say that simply reading a synopsis of this troubling event as captured in Exodus does not do enough to allow us to see the utter grievousness of the situation. The people forgot God. And what makes it worse, they forgot Him after He had saved them from the Egyptians, rescued them from slavery, kept them alive in the desert with manna, and gave them water from a rock to drink. But what's more, this allows us to see the sheer power of a mediator's prayers. Moses throws himself before the Lord and pleads for God's mercy so that the people may be spared. And God listens. This is the essential lesson of Exodus 32. Think of how much each of us has probably offended God every time we forget Him. God has given us His only Son (our Manna, our Water from the Rock), and we constantly slip into an idolatry of materialism and worldliness, utterly neglecting our Lord. Who mediates for us? Well of course Jesus Christ is the Great Mediator, and Mary and the saints especially pray for us, but there are men and women here on earth who pray for us incessantly, night and day, every day. Those who have devoted their entire lives to praying for mankind. Monks, nuns, friars, ascetics, hermits, postulants, and any religious who have and are praying that we may be saved, that God will not enact His rigid Justice, that He will act only with sparing Mercy. We must honor these men and women and think of them often and pray for them. (Sadly, some Christians and non-Christians think that the people who devote themselves to the religious life are a waste on society, that they contribute nothing. How little then is understood of their purpose!) God reveals to us in Exodus 32 that He listens to prayer, that He will relent on behalf of an earnest plea for mercy. Moses fell prostrate before God and devoted himself to prayer so that the general people would be saved; and, again, in monasteries, abbeys, cloisters, friaries, and priories across the world, men and women are lying prostrate before God in quiet prayer and contemplation so that we may be saved. The thought of it is awe-inspiring and humbling.