"Loosed from Pharaoh's bitter yoke Jacob's sons and daughters, Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters." The lines come from that ancient hymn, "Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain," written by John of Damascus (675-749). And sung at Mass this past Sunday, on the eve of my second anniversary of coming into the Church.
Through the arrangement of the Mass, the connections to the Jewish tradition are made evident for all who are open to seeing them. Jesus will persistently allude to the Hebrew scriptures as the forerunner for what he is doing, as when he is clearly drawing on the story of Elijah and Elisha (in Kings 1, 19-20) as he tells the young man, ready to follow him, not to linger with the burial of his father ("let the dead bury their dead," Matthew 8:22).
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