Ex 19, 16-20 The LORD summoned Moses

(Ex 19, 16-20) The LORD summoned Moses

[16] On the morning of the third day there were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. [17] But Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stationed themselves at the foot of the mountain. [18] Mount Sinai was all wrapped in smoke, for the LORD came down upon it in fire. The smoke rose from it as though from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. [19] The trumpet blast grew louder and louder, while Moses was speaking and God answering him with thunder. [20] When the LORD came down to the top of Mount Sinai, he summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up to him.

(CCC 2085) The one and true God first reveals his glory to Israel (Cf. Ex 19:16-25; 24:15-18). The revelation of the vocation and truth of man is linked to the revelation of God. Man's vocation is to make God manifest by acting in conformity with his creation "in the image and likeness of God": There will never be another God, Trypho, and there has been no other since the world began… than he who made and ordered the universe. We do not think that our God is different from yours. He is the same who brought your fathers out of Egypt "by his powerful hand and his outstretched arm." We do not place our hope in some other god, for there is none, but in the same God as you do: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (St. Justin, Dial. cum Tryphone Judaeo 11, 1: PG 6, 497).