The Tree of Life: The Heart (Physiologically)

I have said many times before that the tree of life refers to the heart; specifically, it refers to the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. That is on a spiritual level, but the heart can be seen as the tree of life even on a physiological level. In the Old Testament, blood was considered the life of the creature, and it was against the law to drink the blood. If blood is considered to be life, then the organ which moves that life throughout the body could be considered the tree of life.

If one considers the circulatory system, its center is the heart with large tubular vessels called arteries and veins leading away from it getting smaller and smaller ending with the tiny capillaries. Looking at this system by itself, it has something of the look of a tree with its trunk, branches and leaves. Speaking to a M.D. recently, he said that there are many similarities between our circulatory system and the life system within trees. Trees have the xylem and the phloem vessels which go throughout its length and breadth transporting a watery substance, with one end at the roots and the other at the leaves. The inner working of a tree is similar to the inner working of the human body, especially the circulatory system. So even at the physical level it is not that strange to call the heart, that organ at the center of our primary life system, the tree of life.

That reminds me that the inside of a placenta with its network of arteries and veins also looks like a tree and is called the tree of life (at least our wonderful Jewish midwife calls it that). My guess is that she calls it that because it is that network of blood vessels which gives the necessary life support to the developing infant. That tree of nutrition, hydration, oxygenation, and purification is a necessary condition for the life of the unborn baby. I haven’t figured out entirely how this tree of life relates to the tree of life, but I suspect there is an interesting connection. I’ll have to save that thought for later.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Desire: Divine Union

There are two main themes that run throughout the Old Testament and are fulfilled in the New: the quest for a child (a son, to be specific) and the quest for the Promised Land. These two quests are distinct but are often intertwined. They are the desires for land and a home together with the desires for children, a family, and fruitfulness. Another quest that is related to the quest for a child is the quest for a bride; sometimes it goes hand-in-hand with the quest for a son and other times they are completely separate.

Abraham’s quest was primarily for a son and secondarily for the land; the wife quest was only present in his life insofar as he “lost” his wife twice when he told two other guys she was his sister (she was his half sister). Isaac began with a quest for a wife, and he ended with a quest for a son. He was forty when he married Rebekah, but she was barren. He prayed for her to be fruitful, but almost twenty years went by before she conceived. When Isaac was sixty, Rebekah gave birth to twins: Esau and Jacob.

Jacob gets the blessing from Isaac and then flees for his life from his irate brother Esau. His quest begins with seeking a wife, and he ends up with two: Leah and Rachel. Rachel is barren and Leah has four sons one after the other. In the baby race, Rachel gives Jacob her maid who conceives two sons. Then Leah gives Jacob her maid who also has two sons. Leah herself has two more sons, and finally Rachel conceives Joseph and much later, Benjamin. Although Jacob had so many sons, his quest for a son was for his first-love and “true” wife, Rachel, to have a baby. She did have one only after a very long time of being barren. Jacob treated Joseph in some ways as his only son, and that is why his ten older half-brothers hated him so and devised a plan to kill him. Jacob eventually makes his way back to the Promised Land. Hence, Jacob had all three quests in his life, and after the Joseph story in Egypt, Jacob and his entire family leaves the Promised Land again and sets up camp down in Egypt.

400 years later, Moses had a mini quest for a wife and an even smaller one for a son; his main quest was for the Promised Land. He, of course, led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to make it to the Promised Land. Moses got close enough to see the Promised Land in the distance, but he himself did not bring the people in, Joshua did.

There are many other instances of the people of God seeking one or a combination of these three quests. There was Manoah and his wife who were barren, and God gave them Samson. Elkanah and Hannah were barren, and God eventually sent them the great priest and prophet, Samuel. In the New Testament we have Elizabeth and Zechariah who were of old age and barren, and God sent them John the Baptist. These three were all primarily seeking a son. Another instance of someone seeking a wife is Tobias, son of Tobit, who was given Sarah, and God protected Tobias from the demon who had killed all of Sarah’s previous husbands. Almost all of the faithful people of God were seeking to continue to live in the Promised Land, live in the Promised Land in freedom, or they were seeking to get back to it. The quest for the land is perhaps the most universal and constant.

How does this relate to the first man and woman? I say that God gave the woman to the man as wife, but He put them through a test saying be fruitful and multiply but do not have relations. They were to live as brother and sister like Joseph and Mary did, but they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they had relations and conceived Cain. So Adam was on a quest first of all for a child, and to get that child, he sought a wife in a way that God had forbidden him. In this respect, he was seeking both a son and a wife. He was seeking to preserve his life, and in so doing, he received emptiness, nakedness and death.

Did Adam and Eve have a quest for the land? It is commonly understood that they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. I say that the Garden of Eden as the Garden of Delight refers more to the man and the woman themselves. God gave planted many “trees” in their garden/bodies, especially the tree of life/the heart and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil/the generative powers. As God’s garden of delight, they were united to God. The Garden of Eden is a symbol of the Promised Land which is a symbol of heaven. Heaven is union with God. After they fell and lost sanctifying grace, the life of God in their souls, they lost that union with God, and so, in that sense, they were kicked out of the garden. They were created as temples of the Holy Spirit, and they ended up as empty vessels of clay. From that point forward, all humanity seeks that original unity with God our first parents had. That union with God that we all seek, whether we know we are seeking for that or not, that union with Him is symbolized in the quest for the land. In the land we have a home, and that home is for God.

All of our desires as humans can be reduced down, at the core, to this desire for union with God. Everyone, deep down, wants an unending, complete and total communion with the divine being. That is how God created us when He made us in His image and likeness, and that is what we are all looking for. Most of us think something else will make us happy, such as money, pleasure or power, but that is a fleeting shallow happiness. The quest for a spouse is tied up with this desire for union with God. God is meant to be our primary spouse, and in heaven we will all be married to Him forever; we will no longer have a human spouse. The quest for a son is tied up with these other two quests. True love is meant to be fruitful, and in our love for God, we want to bear fruit. Mary loved God so much and trusted in Him completely, and she bore the Son of God. You and I bear fruit for God when we love, trust and obey Him with the good deeds that flow out of our heart.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Our Rescued Soul: Psalm 124

In today’s Mass (December 28), the responsorial came from Psalm 124 with the refrain: “Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare.” This short psalm ends with this sentence: “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124: 8).

The one snare that really matters in life is the snare of sin. On our own, we have no hope, and there is no escape from its insidious grip. With God, we have hope. During this Christmas season we celebrate and remember that God became one of us, and He did so to set us free from sin and unite us to Himself to have abundant life. When we give ourselves fully to Jesus and open wide our heart, He pours His life into us to make us more like Himself.

Jesus’ message isn’t just about salvation. Of course, nothing really matters without salvation, but God wants so much more than merely to save us. He makes us a new creation, fills us with His life, and makes us partakers of the divine nature as Saint Peter said: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God doesn’t just save us from the power of the evil one, He saves us to make us His spouse. We leave the evil one, the false, hateful spouse to be united to the one true Spouse of our soul. Jesus doesn’t want His bride to be stained and corrupted with sin, He wants His bride to be pure and holy and madly in love with Him. God certainly wants to set us free from our bondage, and He wants even more to set us truly free; true freedom is doing what we were made to do. We are made to be God’s house, His temple, and His bride, and we will only be fulfilled and at peace when our help is in Him and He reigns in our hearts.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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The Meaning of Life

I left off on Tuesday in my post on The Three Passovers introducing the idea of the importance of the first-born. The three Passovers, Isaac’s sacrifice, the Passover, and Jesus’ sacrifice, all deal with the first-born. Isaac is the first-born, and he offers himself up as a sacrifice; he was passed over with a ram taking his place. Israel is God’s first-born, and they were passed over by the blood of the lamb on their doorposts and by eating the lamb. Jesus is the Father’s only-begotten Son: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Jesus, as pre-eminent first-born, sacrifices Himself in order for you and me to be passed over. We are united to Him in baptism and Holy Communion wherein we put His blood on our doorpost and eat the Lamb, respectively.

In the first two Passovers, the first-born was passed over; in the final one, the first-born is the sacrifice. Is there another first-born that was passed over in Jesus’ saving actions? -Perhaps it is you and me: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:14-16). Paul speaks of the Church as the Israel of God; therefore, since Israel is God’s first-born, and we are now the New Israel, we and all members of the Church are God’s first-born. So we are first-born who are passed over by the angel of death, and our Passover Lamb is Jesus at the Last Supper and on the Cross.

The question that arises in my mind is why is the first-born so important, and why does it hold such a pivotal place in these highly important events in Salvation History? As usual, I think the answer lies in the events at the beginning. The course the man and the woman set the human race upon is the answer to much of human history and to the questions we have today. According to my theory, the direct result of the Fall was the conception of Cain. They wanted him and were trying to get him; hence, his name means gotten. He was the first-born of the human race. He was a murderer and a son of the evil one. The first-born son of man belonged, in a certain respect, to satan, and Cain gave himself over to his ways and so slaughtered his righteous brother.

Cain imitated his fathers in killing his brother: humanity is like a brother to the angels, and satan wants to destroy us and has destroyed many of us; Adam’s fall resulted in the spiritual death of the human race. Both satan and Adam murdered their brothers so to speak, and Cain only imitated what they did. In one sense it is amazing just how bad the very first person born of man was, yet in another sense, Cain was merely a chip off the old block. Either way you look at it, humanity’s fruitfulness started off with a horrible beginning. And his name was Cain for he was gotten. He was gotten.

So why did the first-born need to be sacrificed or passed over? A clue resides in the three main sacrifices of the Old Testament: bulls, sheep and goats. Bulls needed to be sacrificed because people were worshipping bulls and the bull-god, Apis. The Golden Calf was part of this worship where people were seeking fertility and prosperity and so the men and women would imitated what bulls would do to female cattle. Seeking life, they had an orgy. The result, they hoped, would be a conception: thus, the golden calf. Here, too, they were seeking a child, and they sought this child in a way contrary to their dignity, to God’s plan, and to trusting in God. After the golden calf, bulls needed to be sacrificed as a financial penance and so that the people would no longer worship them.

After the Golden Calf, the people went after another false god symbolized by goats. It was another fertility cult, and the people were again seeking life and a child in their own way and by their own terms. “So they shall no more slay their sacrifices for satyrs, after whom they play the harlot” (Leviticus 17:7). The satyrs are the goat gods who are obsessed with continually having sex, and those who worship these false gods would imitate them. Since the people were involved with this evil practice, God had them sacrifice goats. Again, it was a financial difficulty to sacrifice one’s livestock, and one’s gods did not look kindly on being killed. It was a God-given help to avoid this near occasion of sin.

Sacrificing bulls and goats was mandated because they were worshipped. Sheep were never worshipped, so why would God have us sacrifice them? A sheep is the sacrifice of the Passover, and Jesus is the Lamb of God. They are the most important animal sacrifice, but why does God mandate this sacrifice? Was their any sin associated with sheep or lambs? I think there was. Sheep symbolize humanity. We are like sheep; we are incredibly stupid. So sheep need to be sacrificed because they symbolize us; we worshipped ourselves. When did we do this? We do it every time we sin, but we do it especially when we seek humans over God.

The man and the woman sought a child over and against God’s command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God wanted them to have a child, but He wanted to give it to them virginally as He did with Mary. They sought a child, and they got him, and they named him gotten (Cain). So here the theme of the first-born and sheep come together. The Passovers all have to do with sheep and with first-borns because our first parents worshiped, as it were, their first-born son and even disobeyed God to get him. Their souls were sold to satan in order to get Gotten; that is why he and all of the human family needs to be bought back or redeemed from the prince of this world.

We all deserve death and are in bondage to sin and satan, and we are like lambs, so the solution is for a lamb to take our place that we may be passed over and live. That is why sheep were sacrificed in the Old Testament, but those “sacrifices are offered which cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper” (Hebrews 9:9). These Old Testament laws were good, but they were the symbol, not the reality. “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices which are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near” (Hebrews 10:1). Those sacrifices do not make perfect; however, Jesus’ sacrifice is capable of such a feat.

“For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body hast thou prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,’’ as it is written of me in the roll of the book” (Hebrews 10:4-7). We are given a body in order to have something to sacrifice, and with our bodily sacrifices we are praying with the body. We are given a will in order that we can sacrifice that, too, and by saying “Thy will be done,” we are praying the most important prayer. Prayer and sacrifice, the prayer of the heart and of prayer of the body, when they are combined are the most powerful. When we completely trust God and seek to do whatever He asks of us, especially what He asks us to do with our bodies, then we are far along the path to unity with Him. It is in this full faithfulness that we have abundant life and belong to Him, and that is the meaning of life.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Merry Christmas

As the last hour of Christmas Eve passes away, I wish everyone a blessed and joyous Christmas. In certain respects, this is the most important event in human history; in other respects, Jesus' passion, death and resurrection are much more important. These two events open the doors for our salvation if only we accept the graces offered by God and respond with the obedience of faith. Let's open wide our hearts today and make it an inviting home for our most-humble and little God, the All-Powerful Creator of all things.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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God Himself Will Provide the Lamb

There is an interesting dialogue going on in the comments of my post of 12/19/07, The Heart of a Son. I want to direct you there for I have written a decent amount in those comments.

I decided to include my latest response to a question here as a post since my response was so long. Here it is:

In the comments, CCS said, “Tom B./Jeff Cavin’s question is whether Abraham could have known that he wouldn’t go through with killing Isaac. Hebrews 11:17-19 doesn’t seem to make sense if you read it with the perspective of Abraham knowing he wouldn’t be going through with it.”

I agree, for I do not think that Abraham knew that he would not have to go through with it. He wouldn’t and couldn’t know that. I do think he could have thought that or wondered whether it was a possibility; although, I do not think it was that likely that he thought that.

CCS, you said, “God could have come up with additional choices for Himself. John the Baptist said that God could raise children of Abraham from stones. He could have let Abraham kill Isaac and have Isaac remain dead and yet still produce heirs. Why not?” Of course God could have done as you say, in a certain sense. Because God had said that it was through Isaac that Abraham’s descendants should come, for God to let Isaac die never to rise again would have been the breaking of His word. God, in that sense, had to make sure Isaac lived to father children.

It had to be Isaac and no one else to give Abraham descendants. Abraham’s fall was seeking a son on his own strength with Hagar. Abraham had Ishmael with her, but God told him to send Ishmael away. Genesis 21:8-12 says: “And the child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.’ And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Be not displeased because of the lad and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendants be named’.”

God promised Abraham a son, and that son was Isaac. He promised that it was this son who would give Abraham many descendants. Paul talks at length about the importance of it being Isaac who gives Abraham children: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise” (Galatians 4:22-23).

An enormous amount of the Abraham story revolves around this point of his two sons.
“But what does the scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’ So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman” (Galatians 4: 30). Everyone knows that Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Everyone seems to know that except God.

“He [God] said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you’” (Genesis 22:2). In God’s eyes, Isaac is Abraham’s only son. He is the son God promised to give Abraham when he was seventy-five and then finally did give him when he was 100. Abraham slipped up when he was eighty-five fathering Ishmael, and it is because Abraham fails this test of waiting for God to provide him the promised son that Abraham needs to be tested once again. It is because Abraham has two sons, which indicates that he did not trust in God fully, that God has to re-test him by asking him to sacrifice his only remaining son. God could have certainly given Abraham descendants through Ishmael, and He did, but Ishmael was not considered to be his son. Isaac is the only way.

CCS, you also said, “Abraham could have meant that, after he kills his son, he will come back bringing with him his son’s dead body.” From the quote from Genesis in the previous paragraph, Isaac was going to be a burnt offering. Burnt offerings are entirely consumed by fire; that is why Isaac was carrying all the wood; the wood is needed to have a burnt offering.

I still only see two good options of what God could do here: raise Isaac from the dead (and even ash heap), or stop Abraham before he sacrifices his son. The letter to the Hebrews indicates that it was the former, so I would go with that. That still does not entirely rule out the possibility that it crossed Abraham’s mind that God would stop him beforehand. Abraham did have three days to think it all over. Either way, Abraham was prepared and ready and willing to offer up the son of the promise; and he did offer him up; God only stopped him at the last moment. Here Abraham passes the test, and God swears an oath to bless Abraham:

“By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:16-18). All the world will be blessed because of Abraham and Isaac’s faithfulness when Jesus comes to fulfill the self offering, when God provides the lamb.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Three Passovers

Most everyone is familiar with the Passover which is explained in Exodus 12; it was the last and most powerful plague that was the impetus for the Egyptians freeing their Israelite slaves. The plague attacked all the Egyptian firstborn; for the Israelite firstborn to be passed over, they had to slaughter an unblemished year-old male lamb, put its blood on their doorpost using a hyssop branch, and eat the lamb.

The Last Supper is a re-presentation of the Passover; Jesus is re-making and fulfilling this ancient and liberating sacrifice and meal. A very important difference in the Last Supper is that Jesus did not finish the Passover as usual; there were four cups of wine in the Passover, but Jesus stopped after the third. He finished the Passover as He was crucified on the cross and drank the vinegar (cheap wine) from the sponge on the hyssop branch: “After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the scripture), ‘I thirst.’ A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished’; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:28-30). What Jesus finished is the re-making of the Passover.

The Last Supper and the Crucifixion are of one piece “For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed” (1Cor.5:7). Jesus takes on the role that the lamb plays in the Passover. He is sacrificed, and we are passed over. As the Israelites had to sprinkle the lamb’s blood on the doorpost and eat the lamb to be passed over, so we need to be baptized and receive Holy Communion. Baptism is the lamb’s blood on the doorpost because the “doorway” into our “house” is our eyes and face; therefore, the doorpost is our forehead. The water of baptism is the blood of Christ since we are baptized into Jesus’ death. Through these two essential sacraments, we are given the grace to be passed over by the angel of death.

The one Passover that is usually forgotten is Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac back in Genesis 22. I talked about this momentous event a few days ago on 12/19/07, and it is this event and the faithfulness of both Abraham and Isaac that brings about God’s saving actions with his ancestors, the Israelites. The foundation for the Passover is Isaac’s self offering for it is the only time God explicitly swears an oath. The Crucifixion is mostly a re-presentation and fulfillment of Isaac’s sacrifice, and the Last Supper is mostly a re-presentation and fulfillment of the Passover. Thus, there is a parallel structure of events that forms one piece, one reality:
A Isaac’s Sacrifice
B Passover
B’ Last Supper
A’ Jesus’ Sacrifice

One of the common themes here in these three Passovers is the first-born son. In the Passover, not only were the first born Egyptians killed and the first-born Israelites passed over, all of Israel was passed over for they are God’s first-born son: “And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me’; if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay your first-born son’” (Exodus 4:22-23).

The other common theme in all of these is the symbolism of baptism and the Eucharist. Even after the Passover, the Israelites had not completed their escape from their enemies. The Egyptians pursued Israel and had them trapped up against the Red Sea with no where to escape. God opened up a way of escape through the water which gave new life to Israel and destroyed their enemies in the process. Once they were out in the wilderness, they grew hungry, and God provided food from heaven. After leaving Egypt, the Israelites again were saved through the water and fed by the heavenly bread. A further structure could look like this:
A Isaac’s Sacrifice
B Passover
C Through the Red Sea
C' Manna in the Wilderness
B’ Last Supper
A’ Jesus’ Sacrifice

One thing we can learn from all this is the immense importance of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. If we receive baptism and Holy Communion, we are given the grace to pick up our cross and follow Jesus; we are given the new heart, the new tree of life, so that we can lay down our life in our everyday activity, so that we can be a person for others, so that we can love God with all our heart, mind and soul; we are given the grace to lay down our life for our friends and to be crucified alongside our Savior Jesus.

We, the baptized, are making our journey through the desert of this life on our way to the Promised Land, heaven. To make our way well, we need our daily bread which is daily prayer and Holy Communion. Many of the Israelites who ate the manna died along the way and did not make it to the Promised Land because of their faithless hearts. Likewise, just receiving the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist does not guarantee anything. We still have to step out in faith and follow our Lord wherever He leads and do whatever He asks. We still need to give ourselves entirely to Him. Thankfully, He provides even the grace to do that.

What I would like to examine next is the significance of the first-born in these key events and how it might possibly relate to the Fall of Adam and Eve.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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Rivers of Living Water

In the prophet Isaiah there is a passage which talks about seeking water and God giving it. This is a metaphor for having God’s life in our hearts. Here is the passage: “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together; that men may see and know, may consider and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it” (Isaiah 41:17-20).

This seeking and granting of water is fulfilled in Jesus. “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, ‘If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ ’ Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:37-39). After Jesus has been crucified/glorified, blood and water flow out of His heart; we receive the same heart at baptism and Eucharist so that out of our heart flows rivers of living waters. God makes the desert a pool of water with trees; God makes our dead heart a heart that loves, trusts and obeys Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Guardian Angel: Protector of the Heart

In an earlier entry I talked about how the Garden of Eden actually refers to the man and the woman, for they are God’s garden of delight (which is what eden means). God gives us many gifts and abilities, but He gives us two in particular; He refers to these abilities as trees: one is the tree of life, and the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life is the heart, and it is symbolized by the river that separates into four rivers.

The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The tree of life is the tree of life because when we love, trust and obey God, we have life. After the Fall, God sends an angel to protect the tree of life. I state that the angel is not given to keep us from the tree of life but to keep our hearts protected from disobedience and doubt. The woman was made from the man’s rib, and so she was made to encourage the man to stay faithful to God. She did the exact opposite of what she was made for, and the result is the “death” of humanity. Now we need a helper more than ever in our weakened state, and so God sends us each our own guardian angel. Genesis 3:24 which states, “at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life,” relates the giving of the guardian angel to protect our heart and keep us faithful.

That is how I understand that passage. Not long ago, I was reading Saint Josemaria Escriva’s book, The Forge, when I came upon entry 412:
“Custody of the heart. That priest used to pray: ‘Jesus, may my poor heart be an enclosed garden; may my poor heart be a paradise where you live; may my Guardian Angel watch over it with a sword of fire and use it to purify every affection before it comes into me. Jesus, with the divine seal of your Cross, seal my poor heart’.”

Many of the same elements of what I think about Genesis 3:24 are present in this paragraph. The founder of Opus Dei does not call the heart a tree here, but he does call it a garden and a paradise which is guarded by our Guardian Angel with a sword of fire. The center of our garden is our heart; the temple’s center was the holy of holies: the temple is a symbol of our body, and the holy of holies is a symbol of our heart. What are gardens for but to bear good fruit, and what are temples for but to worship God? We bear good fruit when our gardens and temples are protected from scavengers on the one side, and when it consists of good dirt which gets healthy amounts of water and sun on the other. We have to keep away from sin, be steeped in humility, drink deeply of God’s grace, and bask in the warmth of his divine love, seen most clearly in Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Heart of a Son

One of the greatest events of the Old Testament is the sacrifice of Isaac. God directed Abraham to sacrifice his only son; this was the trial of faith God sent Abraham to see if he really trusted and loved God. This time, Abraham passed this very difficult test. There are many parallels between Isaac and Jesus here.

Abraham had to walk for three days to get to the place of the sacrifice. In his mind, Isaac was as good as dead for those three days. “On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the ass; I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.’ And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together” (Genesis 22:4-6). Isaac carried the wood for the burnt offering; this is no task for a young boy for that is a decent amount of wood to be carried to a place “afar off.”

This carrying of the wood is fulfilled when Jesus takes up His cross to His sacrifice. Another similarity between the two is that Isaac’s sacrifice and Calvary where Jesus was sacrificed are both on Mount Moriah, so they both take place in the same general geographical location. Jesus and Isaac are both righteous first-born sons and only children who are sacrificed by their father. Both are tests of faith. Instead of Isaac actually being killed, there was a ram caught by its horns in a thorn bush, and this is a symbol of Jesus being crowned with thorns.

Jesus willingly offered Himself up to the Father. Did Isaac willingly offer himself? Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born, and now Isaac is at least a teenager which would make Abraham somewhere between 115 and 135 years old. If Isaac is strong enough to carry all that wood such a long distance, surely he is strong enough to escape from an elderly man. Since Abraham bound Isaac, doesn’t that mean Isaac was not a willing victim? Not necessarily. If Isaac could easily overpower his father, then he would want to be bound before he offered himself so that he would not escape when the time arrived. Out of fear Isaac could change his mind and escape from his father if he is not bound; he does not want to do escape; he wants to offer himself.

At the first, Isaac did not know that he was going to be the victim. He was walking with his father with the wood on his back, “and Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here am I, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together (Genesis 22:7-8). Isaac soon finds out that he is the sacrifice, that he is the lamb. Yet on another level, Abraham is prophesying about the Lamb of God that the Father will send—Jesus.

As Abraham was in the act of sacrificing his son, “the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me’” (Genesis 22:11-12). Abraham passes his ultimate test of faith for he believes God will raise Isaac even from the dead. Isaac, too, believes in God that God will resurrect his body so that he can go on to be the father of a multitude. For three days, Abraham considered his son to be dead, and on this third day, he re-gains his only son; this, of course, parallels Jesus’ three-day-old death which was followed by his resurrection.

Isaac is spared the knife, but a sacrifice still needs to take place. Abraham looked up and saw a ram with his horns entangled in a thorn bush. “Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place The LORD will provide; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided’” (Genesis 22:13-14). Isaac was passed over, and God provided the sacrifice.

God is so pleased with Abraham and Isaac’s trusting hearts that He does something which is no where else recorded in Scripture. He swears by Himself and puts Himself under a curse. “By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22: 16-18).

This is Israel’s life-insurance policy which saves them and brings them out of Egypt, keeps them alive after the Golden Calf, keeps them alive after the ten faithless spies don’t trust God to give them the Promised Land, keeps them alive with all their grumbling in the desert, keeps them alive when the second generation was about to go into the promised land and they sinned again with Baal of Peor. It is Abraham and Isaac’s faithfulness which keeps them going, for God has sworn to bless them and to have all the nations bless themselves by Abraham’s descendants.

This sacrifice brought down so many blessing upon the earth. It became Israel’s life-line, and it would be what called down God from heaven. Because God swore an oath to bless the nations through Abraham’s descendants, He was under a curse to make this happen. Jesus takes this curse upon Himself as Paul explains: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree’—that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14). Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 21:23, and he sees the curse Christ took on for our sakes as the fulfillment of the oath sworn to Abraham. God became accursed so we could be blessed.

God tests us, and that testing is not only for our sakes and benefit. When we are faithful to God, in whatever capacity and to whatever degree, we bring blessings upon the earth. God does not save us against our will and in spite of ourselves; He wants us to cooperate with Him and to participate in our own and others’ redemption. Insofar as we imitate Abraham and Isaac and their unreserved and total gift of self, insofar as we lay down our life for our beloved like Jesus, this is the degree we are blessed by God and bring many blessing upon the world around us. World peace comes about through this type of self-sacrifice.

In baptism we receive adoption as sons, “and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6). These are the words of Isaac as he asked his father where the sacrificial lamb was that they were going to slay. Abraham tells him a bit later that Isaac himself is the lamb. Baptism makes us children of God who are willing to lay down our lives for others and to be faithful to God to the point of shedding our blood. The Eucharist is that pierced heart of Jesus on the cross that replaces our dead, stony heart so that we, too, can love with such a love and lay down our life in service to others in all that we do, both big and small.




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A Living Sacrifice

God promised a son to Abraham when he was seventy-five, and God gave him that son twenty-five years later when he was 100 years old. Isaac grew up and became a strong young man. “After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you’” (Genesis 22:1-2).

Abraham had failed his first major trail of faith fifteen years before when he listened to the voice of his wife and went in to her maid to try to fulfill God’s promise. Ishmael was the fruit, and circumcision was his penitential punishment and symbolized what needed to happen to his heart. This, now, is Abraham’s second chance to live by faith, eat of the tree of life, and trust God in the face of death. God’s asking Abraham to sacrifice his son is the fulfillment of what circumcision symbolized: a heart of faith that trusts and obeys God even when intellectually it makes no sense.

What is the significance of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son? This was the promised son who took twenty-five years for an elderly barren couple to birth at the ages of 100 and ninety. They had waited what seemed like forever, and all human hope had long ago vanished that they would ever conceive a baby. When they heard of the updated promise that he was still going to come to them, they simply laughed. It was preposterous that a ninety-nine and eighty-nine year old should conceive a son, so all they could do was laugh. And they did.

Beyond just the extremely long and impossible waiting for the promised son, this son was incredibly important. This was the boy through whom God had promised to make Abraham a multitude of nations and a father of descendants greater than the sands on the sea shore. This Isaac and no other was the one who would marry, have a family, and be the beginning of an enormous number of people. This Isaac was the one God asked Abraham to sacrifice.

This makes no human sense. God had promised both to give Abraham a son and that this son would be father of an innumerable quantity of descendants; it is similar to God’s command for our first parents to be fruitful and multiply. God then asks Abraham to kill this son which God had given him; this is similar to God asking our first parents and Mary to remain virgins (which normally means one is not going to have children). All of these appear to be contradictory commands/directives from God. They don’t make sense. Our intellect does not know how to handle this discrepancy.

All Abraham has left is his faith to pass this test. He has to eat of his tree of life, which is to believe in his heart that God knows what He is doing, and obey what God asks of him. “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your descendants be named.’ He considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17-19). Abraham’s descendants would come through Isaac, so if God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, God must be planning to raise Isaac from the dead. That is how much Abraham believed in God, that, even though he had never seen it, Abraham believed that God would raise his son from the dead.

The quest for a son that Abraham embarks on many years before comes to completion here when he offers up his only son, Isaac. This quest and Abraham’s faithfulness in the face of his only son’s death, is one of the very most important events in the Old Testament. God stops the hand of Abraham, and He Himself provides the sacrifice: a ram caught by its horns in a thorn bush. This prefigures what God will ultimately do when He sends His only Son crowned by thorns. Abraham’s sacrifice is also the first Passover, for Isaac was passed over. It is his faithfulness which brings down God’s blessings and grace and is the reason for the Israelites’ Passover which set them free from Egypt.

May we eat of the tree of life and so imitate our self-sacrificing Savior and bring down God’s grace and blessings to all those around us; let us offer up our bodies in penance and lay them down in the service of others; let us be willing to be a sacrifice as Isaac was, and if God sees fit, let us be a sacrifice as Jesus was. There is the prayer of the heart, and there is the prayer of the body; we need both, and together they are very powerful. “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1).


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Abraham's Understandable Fall

God tested Abraham a number of times during his life: He called him to come to the Promised Land, had him fight in that foreign land against four kings to redeem his nephew Lot, and promised to give him a baby of his own. Abraham passed all these minor tests very well. When God promised to send Abraham his own son, Abraham believed that God would be faithful to His promise. For his belief, God considered Abraham to be righteous. Everything looked wonderful for Abraham who always did what God asked of him and who always believed in God in his heart.

To fully and truly test Abraham, however, God would need to pass Abraham through a trial of faith. He would have to give him a test that would go beyond his intellectual ability to pass the test; the only way to pass such a test when the intellect is rendered useless is to have a full and pure trust in God. So God delayed in sending the promised son. Time is of the essence to an elderly, barren couple. Every day is like a thousand years. After about 3,650 days, when Abraham was eighty-five and Sarah was seventy-five, which seemed like 3,650,000 days, it became humanly obvious that Sarah was not going to have a child.

Sarah, at her wits end, logically and prudently discovered another path to fulfilling God’s promise: Hagar. Maybe God wanted to give them a son through Sarah’s maid. God helps those who help themselves, so it became time to take matters into their own hands. If God was going to send a son, He would have and could have and should have done it already. It must be that God wanted us to use our reason, she must have thought, to figure out a way to make good on what God said would happen. The rationalization that took place is so easy to understand and relate to for we in the modern world do this sort of thing all the time.

At our worst times, we utterly forget God and His providential care of us and think that everything depends on us. At our best, we work as though everything depends on us, but we always are fully aware that it is really up to God. The first is a totally man centered attitude and the second is God centered. The first is fueled by despair and its fruit is selfishness; the second is enlivened by hope and its fruit is the joyful and peaceful offering of self.

Sarah, understandably, gave bad advice to her husband, and he followed it and fell. All of us can relate to such a logical and reasonable and, at root, faithless response for we have all done it ourselves. Abraham, who had perfectly passed three minor tests, does not endure the ultimate test of faith. He lasted for ten years of hell, but then he fell. God needed to send him another test to purify and bring to maturity Abraham’s faith.

To pass this next test, Abraham would have to have complete trust that God would be faithful to His promises, even though what God asked made no human sense. Abraham would need to eat fully of the tree of life. How is this done? God shows Abraham through the covenant of circumcision. On the one hand, it is a penance showing that it is not by human power or ability that we have life; on the other it is a symbol of the stony heart which needs to be broken so that the heart of flesh, the heart that loves and obeys, which lies underneath the heart of stone may beat once again and trust in God no matter how absurd.

God ends up asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac; this seems to contradict God’s promise to give Abraham a vast multitude of descendants through this son. This time Abraham believes God completely, for “he considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead” (Hebrews 11:19). This will be our topic for tomorrow.


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Quest for a Baby Part Three

God promised Abraham a child when he was seventy-five but did not give him a son until he was 100. When Abraham was eighty-five he listened to the voice of his wife who encouraged him to have relations with her maid. Ishmael was the result. Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian maid, was the mother. Abraham does indeed have a son, but this is not the son that God had promised. This is the son that Abraham gets by his own efforts and contrary to the plan God had: to give him a baby through his wife.

This is a re-enactment of the original baby quest with Adam and Eve. They wanted a child and to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, but God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is not to have marital relations. Adam listened to the voice of his wife, and viola, Cain was conceived. They realize they were naked, and the woman’s pain in bearing children is increased. The man’s ability to plant good things in the ground is diminished for he just planted his seed (semen) into the ground (his wife), and it brought forth a thorn and thistle: Cain.

Ishmael was conceived when Abraham was eighty-five, and he was born when Abraham was eighty-six. Thirteen years later, God talks with Abraham and once again promises to make him and his wife the parents of child which will lead to a vast multitude of generations to follow. God makes a new covenant with him and requires for the first time that all the males be circumcised. All newborns will be circumcised at eight days old, and anyone who wants to be a part of the family of God will need to be circumcised before he is considered so.

Then, God again promises to give a baby to Abraham and his wife. “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ And Abraham said to God, ‘O that Ishmael might live in thy sight!’” (Genesis 17:17-18). Abraham still wants God to fulfill His promise of many descendants through Ishmael; in the end, Ishmael is not even considered Abraham’s son; Isaac is Abraham’s only son. Isaac means laughter, and that name was given to him because both his parents laughed when they heard that God was going to give them a baby.

God still blessed and multiplied Ishmael who is a major patriarch of the Islamic religion, for Middle-Eastern Muslims trace their genealogy back to him. Ishmael was circumcised when he was thirteen years old, which was the custom of the Egyptians as a right of passage into manhood. By circumcising him at thirteen, it signifies that he is an Egyptian, born of an Egyptian slave, and not a true member of the household of Abraham. “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise.” (Galatians 4:22-23).

Paul continues saying, “Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. But what does the scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’ So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman” (Galatians 4:28-31). Gob blesses Ishmael, but he does not become a member of God’s people. He is a slave with a slave’s mentality, and even today the Islamic religion is one where they see themselves as slaves and God as supreme master. It is blasphemy for them to call God “Father.”

Because Abraham relied on the power of his flesh to conceive a son and not on the promise God had given him, God punishes him in the flesh and the exact part of the flesh. He relied on his sexual organ to give life, and so now that organ needs to be cut around as a penance and reminder that life comes from God. It would have been no easy thing to be circumcised at age ninety-nine, yet so Abraham was. Because Abraham did not trust in his heart that God would be faithful to accomplish what He promised, Abraham turned to Hagar. Because he did not eat of his tree of life, he turned instead to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What is the significance of circumcision? It says in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” There seems to be some connection between circumcision and the heart. At the end of Deuteronomy, there is a very interesting passage about circumcision of the heart:

“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live…. And you shall again obey the voice of the LORD, and keep all his commandments which I command you this day. The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body…and in the fruit of your ground; for the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (30:6-10).

Circumcision of the heart is loving and turning to God with all one’s heart, and it is obeying all His commands. God delights (Eden) in us and prospers our work and the fruit of our bodies (children). Abraham failed his test when he did not wait upon the Lord just as Adam gave up waiting, too. They stopped waiting and trusting in God and so took matters into their own hands to gain life; they tried to save their life and so lost it.

Paul talks a good deal about circumcision in both his letter to Rome and Galatia. In Romans he says: “For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (2:28-29). Real circumcision is an internal, spiritual matter of the heart. Circumcision is a sign of what needs to happen to our hearts.

Our tendency is to turn our trust from God and put it in our abilities, especially our ability to generate children; God gives circumcision to remind us that it is not by our strength and might that we have life; life is given to those who eat of the tree of life, to those who trust in God. Life does not come from the goods of the earth but from God and His commands to us, as Jesus said during His temptation: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4).
The tree of life is the heart because it is only by means of a trusting, loving and obedient heart that we have life: this is a circumcised heart. Our hearts need to be circumcised because at the Fall they turned from God and became dead and stony. We need new hearts of flesh, a circumcised heart. Jesus gives us his pierced heart which loves and obeys unto death when we receive the sacraments of baptism and the Holy Eucharist.

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Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Quest for a Baby Part Two

Abraham receives the patriarchal blessing and so requests a baby from God. After Abraham asks God for a child saying that if he doesn’t get one, the blessing will go to someone from Damascus, God responds to Abraham. “And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir.’ And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:4-6).

Abraham asks for a baby of his own, and God promises to give him one. God goes much further, for He not only promises him a child, He also promises to give Abraham a vast multitude of descendants through the promised baby. His descendants will be innumerable. Abraham, seventy-five years old married to a sixty-five year-old barren woman, believes God; he believes that God will be faithful and give them a child. God is pleased with Abraham’s belief in Him.

So nine months later God sends a son to Abraham and Sarah. Actually, the child came two years later. No, on further thought, God didn’t send the child for five whole years. Can you image that? God promised a baby, but then He did not send the little one for five more years, and these are elderly people already. I hate to say it, but God did not send that promised baby even after five years; ten years later and guess what? They are eighty-five and seventy-five, and still the promised bundle of joy has not been sent.

They might have been wondering, “Does God really know what He is doing?” “Is He really able to give us old and as good-as-dead childless hopefuls a baby?” Sarah may have asked her husband, “Are you sure that God said He would give us a baby? Are you sure that He promised to give you one?” She may have carried on asking, “Did God promise that the baby would be from you or from us?” Whatever questions went on, and we all know well enough how much and often we question what God is doing or not doing, whatever the actual questions were, Sarah talked Abraham into having relations with Sarah’s maid Hagar.

“ Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar; and Sarai said to Abram, ‘Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’ And wrong with what God had promised since it had already been ten years and no baby had been born. The promised little one had not been given. Sarah thought that God would give them the promised one in some other way. She did not trust the promise as given; Abraham, too, did not trust, after ten long, long years of waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. So he listened to the voice and the wisdom of his wife, for she did have some good points you’ll have to admit.

Adam, the first human made, had done basically the same thing. After his fall, God said to him, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife… (Genesis 3:17) the ground will bear thorns and thistles. Both men listened to the voice of their wife; both were seeking the God-promised child; both accomplished God’s promise on their own strength in their own way; both failed in their trust in God when the test became fierce; both bore a child who was a thorn and thistle: Cain and Ishmael; both had a change of heart and bore a righteous second child: Abel and Isaac; both sons were sacrificed, although Isaac was passed over.

For Adam and Eve, we don’t know how long they patiently waited for the promised baby of their own. Abraham and Sarah ended up waiting twenty-five years before God sent the promised little one. Abraham was 100 when God fulfilled the promise He gave a quarter century earlier. God waits and tests us. He is not about immediate gratification; we would have gone directly to heaven, entirely bypassing earth. Love requires testing, and testing requires time, and time tries our patience and trust. It is only by trust, only by living our daily life with a believing and hopeful heart that we pass the test.

That is why God placed us on earth. He wants to make self-sacrificing lovers out of us; He wants to make us into true lovers of Himself; if we daily give Him our entire self, He makes us into His spouse. Earth is the place for this transformation and growth. Earth is a time of testing and waiting; it is a place of sorrows and I-hope-it-happens-tomorrows; it is a valley of tears; it is our training ground to learn how to trust, and hope and love; in a similar manner, infants learn how to sit-up and crawl and walk under the watchful eyes and close to the loving arms of their parents.

“Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it’ ” (Luke 18:15-17). There is nothing but trust in the heart of an infant learning to walk and crawl; they are our example, according to Our Lord, of how we are to walk by faith.

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Saint John of the Cross

Blessed feast of Saint John of the Cross!

The feast is almost over now that I am sitting down late at night to write. One of the few times I have freedom to write is late at night when my family is in bed. I don't know much about Saint John of the Cross, but what I do know I like. He is a Doctor of the Church and is one of the masters of the spiritual life. Here is a passage from The Spiritual Canticle that deals with spiritual realities. He is giving commentary on a poem and explaining what it means; in stanza 14-15 paragraph 28-29 he says:

28. The Supper that Refreshes and Deepens Love
Supper affords lovers refreshment, satisfaction, and love. Since in this gentle communication the Beloved produces these three benefits in the soul, she calls it "the supper that refreshes, and deepens love."

It should be known that in divine Scripture this term "supper" refers to the divine vision [Rv. 3:20-21]. Just as supper comes at the end of a day's work and the beginning of evening rest, this tranquil knowledge causes the soul to experience a certain end of her evils and the possession of good things in which her love of God is deepened more than before. As a result, he is the supper that refreshes by being the end of evils for her, and deepens love by being to her the possession of all goods.

29. Yet for a better understanding of what this supper is to the soul--it is as we said her Beloved-- we should note in this appropriate place what the beloved Bridegroom says in the Apocalypse: I stand at the door and knock; if anyone opens, I shall enter and we shall sup together [Rv. 3:20]. In this text he indicates that he carries his supper with him, and it is nothing but his very own delights and savors that he himself enjoys. In uniting himself with the soul he imparts them, and she likewise enjoys them. For such is the meaning of the words, "we shall sup together." Hence these words declare the effect of the divine union of the soul with God, in which God's very own goods are graciously and bounteously shared in common with his bride, the soul. He himself is for her the supper that refreshes and deepens love, for in being bounteous he refreshes her, and in being gracious he deepens love in her.


I recommend reading more of Saint John of the Cross; this was just one tiny little bit. I need to read more of it, too. He constantly talks about God as the Bridegroom and our souls as the bride; God seeks to give Himself to us as such. He stands at the door and knocks at each of our hearts. Will you let Him in?

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Copyright 2007.
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My Invitation to You

I lost my keys. Have you ever lost yours? There is not much one can do when the keys are lost. You cannot get into your home; you cannot drive your car; you can not get into your office. The key is everything, and…it is nothing. We only think of our keys when we cannot find them. Otherwise, there is really nothing special about keys (no offense all you locksmiths). Don’t worry, I didn’t really lose my keys; I was just saying that for dramatic effect.

The hinge or heart of my theory, as I’ve stated many other places, is that the tree of life is the heart and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is sexual relations; the garden of Eden is the garden of delight, and it refers to the man and the woman first and foremost. God made us, His garden of delight, with the ability to bear fruit in two ways: begetting and bearing children (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and by a heart that loves, trusts, and obeys God. He told them to be fruitful and multiply and then told them not to have marital relations. That was their test of faith. Mary had the same test, and she passed.

A main part of the hinge of my theory has to do with sex. Sex, as I’ve said many times before, is the greatest of this world’s goods. It is a symbol of the ultimate supernatural good: the union of Christ and His Church. It seems that a common pitfall for people when considering this theory is that I say God commanded Adam and Eve not to have marital relations. It seems that for a lot of people, when they hear this theory, their gut reaction is to dismiss it or attack it as being against marital relations and the teachings of the Church. I understand that reaction. I don’t think those who have that response understand what I am saying, but I do see that the theory is rather easily misunderstood by some.

My point tonight is that most of what I say has very little to do with sex, per se. I certainly talk about it a fair amount, but there is so much more that I have to say. Mostly, I talk about it insofar as it is discussed in the Bible as I make sense of the Biblical story. The point about sex being the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is part of the key to understanding everything else. That theory is a key: necessary to drive the car, but not all that impressive by itself. Driving the car is the thing. I invite you to give yourself some time pondering this theory I propose, and see if it makes sense, sheds light, and puts the pieces of the puzzle together of the Bible, the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and your life. It did for me and has continued, these past fifteen years, to clarify and make sense of thousands of points about life, love and the gospel.

In other words, my focus is not on sex but on the fact that God created us from the beginning to be His spouse. Even today, He is calling each of us to the most intimate of communion with Himself. He wants all of us and is dying to give us all of Himself; having died for us, He is dying for us to enter into Himself and His death and resurrection and so have life abundantly. He is our spouse, and united to Him we bear much fruit and give glory to God.


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Copyright 2007.
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Short Summary of Theory

Blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe! Giving our heart, our tree of life, into her protection, into the protection of our rib, our dear and powerful mother, we have complete confidence that she will keep our tree strong, and so we will have life; she will help us obey and trust her Son, and in so doing we will have life and have it abundantly. Rivers of living water will flow from our heart, and we will bear fruit twelve months of the year. She is the follower of Christ par excellence and the sure way to her Son.

A friend of mine regularly visits another blog; yesterday (was it only yesterday?), he alerted me to the fact that a discussion on that blog was addressing the question of whether or not the Fall had anything to do with sex. I had never been to that blog, but he told people about this site. Some of them commented about what I was saying on that site, so I responded over there. Today’s entry will be what I wrote over there; if you want to see the discussion going on there, go here. It is a rather long discussion, and the material relating to this blog begins toward the bottom.

Here is what I posted there tonight:
Fr. John Wauck wrote, "...Pullman is wrong to describe the Church as spending the last 2,000 years advocating a theological position that hasn’t even existed for 2,000 years, that flies in the face of the scriptural text, and that the Church not only never officially taught but also had to combat and condemn on a number of occasions?" From what I understand, Pullman is saying that Christianity has been saying since its inception that sex is bad; the Church surely condemns such a position. I am not sure if Father's comment was meant as a response to my blog and the theory I am defending there. Maybe not, but if it was, that is a misunderstanding of my theory. In fact, my theory doesn't even make sense if marital relations are not good; my theory makes most sense if marital relations are the highest good of the natural world.

The hinge of my theory is that the tree of life is the believing, trusting, obedient, loving heart and that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is marital relations. As far as I am aware, the Church has never condemned such a position. If it has, I need to disavow myself of my error; please let me know. As someone who desires above all to be a faithful son of the Church, I am "prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of the faithful" (Humani Generis #36). However, at this moment, it is my understanding that my theory has never been condemned; if it has, then there is no further discussion needed.

Marriage is a "great mystery" symbolizing the relationship between Christ and His Church. Nothing is more important, other than the Trinity itself, than the relationship between Christ and His Church, and therefore, there is nothing greater on this earth than marriage. God gives us free will, hides Himself, and tests us to see if we truly trust and love Him. In the Old Testament, there is no one tested as severely as Abraham, other than the man and the woman. His test? He was to kill his only son, the son through whom God promised to give Abraham descendants as many as the sand on the seashore.

He asked our first parents (Eve was only named after the Fall because she has just conceived Cain) to forgo the highest natural good, which is the symbol of the highest supernatural good, to obtain the highest supernatural good. Their trial of faith, which went beyond their intellect, was to tell them to be fruitful and multiply but not to have relations. Relations are good, and that is what the woman saw, but God had a higher gift planned. He wanted to give them more than the symbol (marriage), He wanted to give them the reality (mystical marriage). We are all called to holiness, but there is no holiness without deep prayer; the endpoint of prayer is mystical marriage, and the reason there is no marriage in heaven is because we are all married to God as members of His Body, the Church.

My main point is that God wants you and me as His spouse; He calls each and every one of us to the deep prayer of mystical union. That is true for priest, nun, husband, wife, and single from every occupation.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Sex is Good

Over the past fifteen years that I have been pondering this theory and meditating upon it, I have shared it with many people, both priests and religious, theologians and lawyers, moms and dads, young and old, single and married, laity and consecrated virgins, writers and publishers, highly educated and not so much, and just about anyone who seemed willing to listen. There has been one main concern mentioned by two of these people, and that was the theory sounds a bit Manichean or that the body and sex is bad.

I understand this concern, but this would be a misunderstanding of the theory. I think that a closer look at the theory will show that my theory would fall apart if sex were bad. On my post of 11/15/07, I talked about how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil must be good for good people to have chosen it. In itself, it must have been a good tree; the man and woman had no inclination toward evil and no disordered passions, so choosing an evil would not have been appealing to them. The deception of the serpent was not getting them to think that the tree was good, but it was getting them to distrust God and to think that disobeying His singular command would be good for them. God had given them an extremely difficult trial of faith, and instead of trusting in Him and eating of the tree of life, they trusted in themselves for life and received death.

What I want to highlight today is that sex is good. It is the highest good of the created order. To be more precise, I mean marital relations or sex between spouses. Any sexual activity outside of marital relations open to life is intrinsically disordered and evil, but the marital embrace open to life is a beautiful and holy reality. It is the symbol of God’s relationship to man. God wants the most intimate union with humanity, and He created the marital embrace to symbolize that heavenly reality. Of course sex is not bad; it is holy and is the most awesome activity of this world. Part of its greatness comes because of it symbolism of Christ and His Church. The reality that sex is a symbol of, will only be fully realized in Heaven with God (although in mystical marriage, some of that reality is given).

Now for those partaking of immoral sexual behavior, which is anything outside of marriage that is open to life, of course that behavior is bad. It is not the sex that is bad, but it is the use of that sex that is bad. A knife is not bad; in and of itself it is good; morally, it is neither good nor bad. If the knife is used to make dinner, it is used well. If the knife is used to murder an innocent person, it is used badly and in an evil manner. Sex is far better than an object like a knife, as I said above, but even the best of things can certainly be used for evil or used in an evil manner.

Sex is meant to be used under very precise and exacting circumstances because it is so good and so powerful. To use some more analogies, it is like dynamite or nuclear power; used in the correct manner, time and place, it brings a fuller life; used in the wrong way, time or place, it brings mass destruction. Sex is like that, too. It always has been like that.

Adam and Eve were tested by God as well as were Abraham and Isaac. Each one of us is tested throughout our lives; many tests are small, and a few are large. The test of virginity (which is what I think Adam and Eve’s test was as well as Mary and Joseph’s) is still a common test today. Every priest and sister and nun has passed through that test. Married couples and singles are all called to chastity, and that is a test and a trial, too. In our sex-crazed society, purity in marriage is a challenge; singles are called to live celibate lives until and if ever they get married: that is a struggle. Many voices today say that it is not even possible or healthy to keep sex only for married couples open to life; certainly, then, this is a test. Things haven’t changed much, and it is in our faithful living according to what God wants (summarized in the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments of Jesus), that we please Him and are fully alive.

Mistreating sex as just another appetite to be satiated whenever and with whomever I please, only brings loneliness, separation, sickness, misery, destruction and death. The irony is that those who claim Christianity teaches that sex is evil or bad or dirty, are the ones who treat sex as no big deal; they are the ones who degrade sex and make it like simply blowing one’s nose. It is like using fine china as a Frisbee, or a rose as a hammer, or a Ferrari as a bulldozer. It turns people into objects for use, for pleasure. It degrades humanity. Treating sex as sacred personalizes people and gives them great dignity. The proper use and respect of sex breeds deep and lasting joy, peace and life; without such reverence in the face of such a mystery, there is only discord, divorce, disease and death.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Eucharistic Poem I Wrote in College

I just found this old poem I started on 8/24/1991 and finished 4/9/1992 during my junior year in college. I had forgotten that I had written this. I wrote a few poems in college, and this may be the last one I've written.

RAYS

Small gestures made
A scattering of words spoken
The roaring waterfall pounds down.
The morsel washed away
Vanished from between fingers.

The Sun rises.

Soaked to the bone
We are given something uncontainable
Contained
All glorious and mighty
Hidden.

The Sun’s rays beam through the water
Colors captivating
The universe is naught
‘tis but a making
And it is everything
He who is, has entered it.

The non-nourishing morsel
Lost
Leaves in its place
The Nourisher.

The Sun rises.
Life is lifted.

Soaked to the bone
Kneeling
Overwhelmed
Drawn forth
We hold onto faith.

We rise
We consume
And are consumed.

One we become.

The Sun Has Risen.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Quest for the Son Begins Again

Last night we discussed how Abraham was called back to his ancestral home to reclaim the family’s rightful inheritance; once he established a peace from his enemies round about, the undisputed head of the family, Shem/Melchizedek, comes out to bless Abraham. Shem is also the King of Salem and priest of God Most High who celebrates using bread and wine. It is possible that Salem, which means peace, later becomes Jerusalem when the Hebrew word for “it will be provided” is added as a prefix. It was added later in Abraham’s story when he offers up his only son in chapter twenty-two and says that God Himself will provide the lamb.

Shem was one of a handful of righteous first-born sons, and he is the king of peace in (Jeru)salem who offers bread and wine. Later, in this same location, Abraham/Isaac offer up Isaac, and God provides the lamb. This provision is all fulfilled when the true King of Kings and King of Peace, the true King of Jerusalem comes offering bread and wine; Jesus is the Lamb that God provided on Calvary in the same general location as Mount Moriah where Isaac offered himself up. Isaac was passed over, becoming the reason God provides the Passover to the Israelites in Egypt, and Jesus fulfills all of these prefigurements when He remakes the Passover at the Last Supper which ends with His own self-offering as the Lamb of God upon the cross.

Abraham is blessed by Shem when Abraham retakes the Promised Land, which solidifies the constant quest for the Promised Land by his descendants. The other primary quest now comes to fruition: the quest for a son. The very first thing that is mentioned after the blessing sequence is completed, is that God speaks to Abraham who immediately asks for a son. Blessings/the inheritance are meant to be passed on to one’s son. This is no ordinary blessing but a powerful, life-changing reality, and it is meant for one’s son. Abraham was quite wealthy before, but now that Abraham has been endowed with such a blessing from the patriarch, Shem, he knows he needs a son and so asks for one the first chance he gets. Thus begins anew the quest for the son.

God does not take long to respond: “And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir.’ And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:4-6). God wants to give Abraham a son; that was His plan from the beginning and why He called Him to come to his homeland. Abraham trusts God and believes that God will provide him a son, even though he is at the age of 75 and his wife is 65 and has been barren her whole life.

Ten years later, Abraham and Sarah still have not been given a son. There are key parallels to this story and the Adam and Eve story. Here Abraham and Sarah, with the God-given promise of a son, have been given something like the command to be fruitful and multiply. They have not been given the command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they are tempted to have a child outside of the ordinary way children come to couples. In both stories, the husband listens to the voice of his wife and sins. Both tried to fulfill God’s will by their own strength instead of allowing God to provide the son. Eve conceived Cain, and Hagar conceived Ishmael. Neither was the son God promised.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Canaan Stole Shem's Promised Land

Continuing the discussion from two days ago, Ham attempted a takeover of the family by sleeping with his mother, and Canaan was the fruit of his action. Noah curses Canaan, and then he blesses Shem in the very next verse: “Blessed by the LORD my God be Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave” (Genesis 9:26).

The blessing is a big deal; later, we see Esau and Jacob doing whatever they can to get the blessing from their father, Isaac. Shem gets the blessing, and then we no longer hear of the blessing until 290 years, ten generations, later when Abraham gets blessed by Melchizedek saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14:19).

Melchizedek is probably not a person’s given birth-name but a title-name. The letter to the Hebrews says of him that, “He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace” (Hebrews 7:2). So if Melchizedek isn’t his birth-name, who is he? Hebrews is not arguing that Melchizedek had no genealogy but that he did not have the correct Levitical genealogy required to be a Levitical Priest. The argument is about which is the enduring priesthood, and the answer is the bread-and-wine priesthood of Melchizedek.

Since Melchizedek is someone other than Melchizedek, and he is someone who possesses the blessing, could he be Shem, the last one we heard about who was blessed? Shem lived 210 years after the birth of Abraham, so he was around.

I’ll tell you what I think. Shem was blessed and given the inheritance, but the Canaanites and the Hamites continued to try to take over his inheritance. Shem’s descendants moved away to avoid the conflict, leaving Shem mostly on his own but still the king of Salem. Shem’s inheritance, the land promised to him, is taken by the Canaanites and becomes known as the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan is really Shem’s rightful inheritance stolen by Canaan and his family.

Abraham is called back to this land by God to retrieve it for God’s chosen people. As soon as Abraham defeats the four kings who had defeated the five kings in that region, becoming a sort of king of kings in what later will be called Israel, Melchizedek comes out to bless him. When Abraham reasserts authority over his family’s rightful inheritance over against the Canaanites, it is then that the ultimate family father, Shem, comes out to pass on the family blessing and inheritance. Abraham comes to set his people free and to regain the lost inheritance, and so he is blessed and made the new head of the family of God by the former head, Shem.

The Promised Land was controlled by the Canaanites because they had usurped it from Shem’s family. Abraham reasserted his familial claim, and so was made the family’s new head. This is all symbolic and a representation of the battle between humans and demons. The demons are jealous of us and seek to keep us from our God-given inheritance, heaven. The Promised Land is one of the strongest symbols of heaven, and through the disobedience of our first parents and the deceit of the devil, we lost our inheritance.

We have been trying to regain it ever since; this is represented in the Old Testament by the continual quest for the Promised Land. Abraham was the first one to reclaim it; David is the next one to get peace from his enemies round about, and then God makes a covenant with him promising that one of David’s descendants will reign on his throne forever. Jesus is the fulfillment of these prefigurements, for He definitively retakes heaven and opens its doors for all who are united to Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

"I am the Immaculate Conception"

Blessed Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception!

A few years after the Church, over 150 years ago, declared that Mary was the Immaculate Conception, Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in France telling her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She does not say, “I was immaculately conceived,” but, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” No other human person can say this. Jesus is fully human and divine, but He is not a human person; He is one person, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, to which He has united two natures: a human one and His divine one. Jesus, in His divinity, was not conceived for He proceeded from the Father; his humanity was immaculately conceived, but His divine personhood has always proceeded from the Father. Properly speaking, Jesus cannot say, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

The night before Saint Maximillian Kolbe was taken away by the Gestapo to his eventual death at Auschwitz where he offered his life in place of another, He received a new insight into Mary and the Holy Spirit; it was the last thing he wrote. He said Mary is the created Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and in that way could be said to be conceived. One of the titles of Mary is Spouse of the Holy Spirit; Maximillian said that as they are both Immaculate Conception, Mary is an image of the Holy Spirit in a way similar to spouses who look like one another.

The grace for Mary to be the created Immaculate Conception came through the Redemption Jesus won on the cross; Jesus saved his mother from the stain of sin when He created her, making her the Immaculate Conception. His Redemption, the center and focal point of human history, opened the treasure chest of graces, so to speak, and He used those gifts to redeem His own mother whom He created. She, then, becomes the New Eve who passes the test and acts as a true rib protecting the heart, protecting the tree of life, encouraging her Son to trust, love and obey God even to the shedding of His blood on a tree.

Jesus, being God, obeys the Ten Commandments perfectly; as such, He would obey the fourth commandment, too. He would obey and honor his parents perfectly, both His Heavenly Father as well as His human parents, Joseph and Mary. Of course, Joseph and Mary were perpetual virgins, and this virginity was the test God gave them to see if they loved and trusted Him to the point of death (for virginity was considered death). There reward for eating of the tree of life in their acceptance of virginity was to become the parents of the Son of God and of the entire human race. They were rewarded with the very thing they gave up. We know that Mary was the true mother of Jesus; I think that Joseph, too, was, in a certain way, the true father of Jesus. We call him the foster father of Jesus so people don’t think that Jesus was conceived in a carnal way, but in the spiritual realm, Joseph is more a father to Jesus than I am to my five kids because Jesus was given Joseph by God when Joseph gave up that which he desired most on this earth: a child.

Since Jesus perfectly obeyed the fourth commandment, Mary had a certain authority over her Divine Son. If she had asked or demanded Jesus to not die on the cross, that might have been a problem for His fulfilling the fourth commandment. To a degree, Mary had to allow Jesus to suffer and die an ignominious death; at any time along the way she could have approached Him and ordered Him to call on legions of angels to deliver Him and instantly annihilate all His enemies. She didn’t do that. She stayed close by His side, encouraging Him along the way to lay down His life for His beloved.

Since Mary had already suffered her own crucifixion when she accepted perpetual virginity which usually means not having children, since she had already not put her trust in the powers of the body, she was able to be the rib and encourage Jesus to give up His entire body on the tree. As the beginning of the betrayal of Adam began with a kiss in a garden after the beloved consulted with the enemy, so the beginning of Jesus’ betrayal began with a kiss in the garden by one of his beloved friends who had consulted with the enemy. The first betrayer was Eve, and the second was Judas. The New Eve, Mary, does what both should have done and trusted in God for life and given up the body of her husband. Eve clung to Adam’s body and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the New Eve ate of the tree of life, clinging to God, and allowed her spiritual husband, Jesus, to offer his body unto death on the tree. Eve ushered in death for all her children, the human race; Mary ushered in life for all her children, the human race.

On this great feast day let us call upon our Mother, the Rib, to protect our heart, to protect our tree of life, so that we may always trust and obey God and be ready to lay down our life for our beloved. Mary always leads us to imitate her Son; she always leads us ever closer to Jesus; she is always ready to help us, when we ask her, to avoid sin; she is our mother, and her primary desire for us is to be there for us to encourage us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus to our very own crucifixion. Fully entrust yourself into her loving, motherly arms in a special way this feast day, and she will make sure you reach your destination—the Promised Land of Heaven.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Quest for the Promised Land: Part 1

The question I will address tonight is why does God promise to give Abraham and his descendants the Promised Land? This question ties together with another question, why is there this never-ending quest for the Promised Land?

To examine the first question, we have to start by looking at who occupies the Promised Land. It is known as the land of Canaan. Who are the Canaanites? Where did they come from? Who was Canaan? We have to look back to Genesis 9:18 where Noah’s three sons are mentioned for the first time after getting out of the ark: “The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.”

A few verses later it says, “Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent” (9:20-21) The sense of the Hebrew word translated “uncovered” means one’s private parts are exposed. The passage continues with the second mention of Canaan: “And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside” (9:22).

What is the big deal? Noah gets so angry with Ham for seeing his nakedness that he proclaims: “Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers” (9:25). Noah curses his grandson! Whoa! Either Noah is some ultra-sensitive wacko who is both extremely insecure about his own son seeing him naked and highly vindictive to the merely guilty-by-association, or there is something going on which is more than meets the eye. Let’s see what it was that Ham saw.

Our clues lie in Leviticus 18. This chapter opens up with God warning the Israelites not to do what the Canaanites do: “you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes” (Lev 18:3). “Ok, ok,” we could respond to God, “we won’t do what they do in Canaan. We will follow you, O Lord.” We would be wondering, “What exactly do they do in Canaan?”

God continues: “None of you shall approach any one near of kin to him to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is your father’s nakedness” (18:6-8). Seeing one’s nakedness is to have sexual relations with them. When Ham sees his father’s nakedness, that is an idiom saying that he had sexual relations with his mother.

Ham sinned with his mother when she was not protected by her drunken husband, but why is Canaan cursed? Why isn’t Ham cursed? Canaan was the fruit of the union of Ham with his mother. The Canaanites’ religion was based in cult prostitution and incest; it was an incestuous fertility cult. A people celebrates their beginning and origin, so the Canaanites celebrated their incestuous coming-into-being in their worship. This is why God warned the Israelites before they entered into this land.

Why would Ham do that? It was an attempt to take control of the family and lay claim to a double portion of the inheritance. Normally, that automatically goes to the first-born son. Shem was the first-born, and Ham wanted what was due Shem. The mentality seems to be: whoever is sleeping with the mother of the household is the head of the family.

Absalom did a very similar thing to his father, David. David had many sons, and Absalom wanted to be his successor instead of any of his brothers. “Then Absalom said to Ahithophel, ‘Give your counsel; what shall we do?’ Ahithophel said to Absalom, ‘Go in to your father’s concubines, whom he has left to keep the house; and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself odious to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.’ So they pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel” (2 Sam.16:20-22).

Another one of David’s sons, Adonijah, tries to take over as the next king. His plan does not work and Solomon is anointed as the new king. A little later, Adonijah asks his brother Solomon, the new king, to give him one of David’s wives, and Solomon responds: “And why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother, and on his side are Abiathar the priest and Joab the son of Zeruiah” (1 Kgs 2:22). If Adonijah has as wife one of his father’s wives, he could try again to take the kingship.

Earlier, Jacob’s first-born son, Reuben, does the very same thing, going into Bilhah, one of his father’s concubines (Gen 35:22) Although Reuben was Jacob’s firstborn, the son of Leah, his first wife, Jacob did not fully consider Reuben the first-born. Jacob was tricked on his wedding night by his father-in-law; he thought he was marrying the love of his life, Rachel, but Leah was given him instead. He loved Rachel, so he ended up marrying both. The two women had a baby competition, and to try to get ahead, they use their maids to have more children. Jacob had his twelve sons through four women.

The inheritance was going to go to Joseph since Jacob considered him to be his first-born, being the first child of the one he considered his real wife, Rachel. Bilhah was the maid of Rachel by whom Jacob had two sons. So Reuben tried to take what he considered rightfully his (the inheritance) by sleeping with the mother of the competition. Before Jacob dies, he blesses his sons; to Reuben he says: “Reuben, you are my first-born, my might, and the first fruits of my strength, pre-eminent in pride and pre-eminent in power. Unstable as water, you shall not have pre-eminence because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—you went up to my couch!” (49:3-4)

Canaan is the result of Ham’s attempt to take over control of the family. It is his descendants who live in the Promised Land. I will have to continue the explanation tomorrow.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.