NOTES for Lev 23:1-44

Which comes first: the remembrance of God and His saving acts in human history, or the celebration that marks a particular event? The exodus from Egypt, for example, is the real historical basis of the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Israelites lived in tents as their ancestors had lived during their wanderings in the wilderness. Yet the feast itself exists so that this event may be remembered, experienced anew, and continued—this exodus from death and slavery into life and freedom. The law places particular emphasis on the inseparability of this twofold connection. This is especially relevant in our time, when Christmas or Easter have become occasions for drinking and revelry or, at best, for visiting a cemetery, and when for most people Sunday has lost its connection with Christ’s Resurrection. Yet it turns out that any “day off” can become for us the sacred time of a feast, when we both remember that moment of God’s action which joins eternity and time and encounter the Eternal within time.