The Gospel for tomorrow’s Mass comes from John 5:31-47, and I would like to examine a sentence or two in the middle and at the end of this passage. Here are the two passages from 5:39-40 & 45-47: “You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life….Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
Jesus’ point here is that He is the source of eternal life, and that to obtain eternal life it is necessary to believe in Him. People search the Bible for life, but what the Bible points to and reveals is Jesus. The Scriptures in general testify on behalf of Jesus, and Moses in particular wrote about Jesus. If one rejects Moses’ writings, he will be deaf to Jesus’ words.
One of my assumptions is that the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses or the Torah, go a long way in preparing the way and revealing who Jesus is and what He came to do. My theory revolves around the first three chapters of Genesis, in fact, and there are many more clues and much more evidence in support of my theory in the remainder of the Pentateuch. The better one understands the Pentateuch and its beginning in the first three chapters of Genesis, the better one is able to understand the person and mission of Jesus and His Church. It is also true that the better one understands the Old Testament as a whole, the more one is able to fully and truthfully understand the New Testament.
My theory makes much progress in understanding the Old Testament, and, as such, it helps to better and more fully understand what Jesus did, why He did it, and how we need to respond to His saving actions and death on the cross. I spend a good bit of my time writing, you may have noticed, commenting on the readings of the day for Mass since the basic outline of my theory can be applied to just about anywhere in the Bible to much good effect. That is part of the reason I have been skipping around and commenting on the readings of the day; one of the other reasons I do this is because I don’t think my theory could be proved in an absolute, syllogistically logical manner; if it is going to be proved, it will be largely through thousands of other passages which connect to the beginning of Genesis and which both illuminate Genesis and are illuminated by it.
Another point from today’s Gospel comes when Jesus says, “you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent” (John 5:38). God’s word abides in us when we believe in Jesus. Believing in Jesus results in God’s word abiding within us. Believing in Jesus is how we are saved and have eternal life. Believing in Jesus means coming to Him for our life. Believing in Moses opens us to believe in Jesus. Belief is a matter of the heart, and, as such, the heart is the conduit for being saved, having eternal life, being a home for God’s Word, and coming to Jesus for life. In other words, the believing heart is the life-receiving heart; the heart is the tree of life.
What I was just saying reminded me of part of today’s Gospel which comes from the passage right before tomorrow’s passage in John. The segment I want to highlight is:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5: 25-29).
Hearing and believing in the Father through Jesus is what gives eternal life; the Father and Jesus have life in themselves, and those who do good deeds, that is, obey, will be connected to their life and so have the resurrection of life. As I have said many times, our salvation and eternal life, that is the tree of life, is the loving, trusting, and obedient heart. The heart that loves, trusts and obeys God is the vehicle through which God imparts to us life here on earth and life everlasting in heaven.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label resurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resurrection. Show all posts
1.01.2008
The Circumcision of Christ
It is New Year’s Eve and the vigil of the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. In less than 40 minutes, the year 2008 will begin. Following is the gospel for tomorrow’s solemnity mass that I would like to consider tonight:
“The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:16-21).
Do you and I have the humility and simplicity as the shepherds did to run with urgency to find the Holy Family, especially to find the Son of God? Do I seek Him out? Am I amazed by the gospel or do we take it for granted, quickly turning my attention and heart to other concerns? I need to follow Mary’s example who took all these amazing events in and kept them in her heart to consider and unpack them. The shepherds left the Holy Family glorifying and praising God; do I do the same with the good news of salvation, bringing it back to my ordinary, everyday life? Does it affect how I life my life?
These miraculous events changed forever the lives of Joseph and Mary and I would assume the shepherds, too. All of these people who first encountered the living God made man had their hearts focused fully upon Him. They had an undivided heart that rejoiced in His birth, and their hearts were full for the joy of His arrival and for the love that enraptured their hearts. In proportion to how completely they opened their hearts in the direction of He Who Is Love their hearts were full and at peace.
The focus is the heart. When Jesus was eight days old, as was the age-old practice, he was circumcised and given His name. Circumcision in the Old Covenant is the pre-figurement of baptism in the New. They have a number of similarities: they are the passage way to entering the people of God, one is named as a part of the ritual, it is usually performed on infants, and it leaves a lasting mark. God added circumcision because of Abraham’s sin with Hagar as a penance and reminder that life does not come from our resources but is given as a gift by God. When Abraham fell, it was because his heart was hard and did not trust the promise of God to give him a son.
Circumcision is also a symbol of the need to cut away the stony outside of our heart so that we can have a new heart of flesh. It says in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” Circumcision at its deepest meaning is a matter of the heart as Paul said: “real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (Romans 2:29).
The majority of Paul’s argument in Galatians is that we no longer need to be circumcised because circumcision was a symbol added because of sin, but now the reality has come. The reality is that Jesus’ heart was circumcised when He gave Himself up fully as a sacrifice on the cross and His heart was pierced. Circumcision is no longer needed because now we have been given the circumcision of Christ: baptism. We are baptized into Jesus’ death, and Jesus died because He trusted and obeyed fully with His heart. In baptism we are given Jesus’ faithful, crucified, pierced and resurrected heart so that we can be faithful, crucified, pierced and one day rise again, too.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he says much the same thing: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12). Baptism is our circumcision and the real circumcision. In baptism we receive our new hearts, our new tree of life that we needed ever since the Fall when our first parents turned their hearts away from God and His singular prohibition.
As we celebrate today the circumcision of Jesus as an infant, we can look ahead to when He fulfills that Old Covenant sacrament when His body is nailed to the tree and His Sacred Heart is pierced. Today we can remember and celebrate our own baptism when we received the circumcision of Christ and re-dedicate our hearts to Him that they may be His alone, for that is why we were baptized in the first place. We can fulfill this holy day of obligation by going to mass and receiving Holy Communion which is the fulfillment and celebration of our baptism. In The Sacrament, we receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, and the Body we receive is actually Jesus’ heart. It is all about the heart. It is all about eating the tree of life.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
“The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:16-21).
Do you and I have the humility and simplicity as the shepherds did to run with urgency to find the Holy Family, especially to find the Son of God? Do I seek Him out? Am I amazed by the gospel or do we take it for granted, quickly turning my attention and heart to other concerns? I need to follow Mary’s example who took all these amazing events in and kept them in her heart to consider and unpack them. The shepherds left the Holy Family glorifying and praising God; do I do the same with the good news of salvation, bringing it back to my ordinary, everyday life? Does it affect how I life my life?
These miraculous events changed forever the lives of Joseph and Mary and I would assume the shepherds, too. All of these people who first encountered the living God made man had their hearts focused fully upon Him. They had an undivided heart that rejoiced in His birth, and their hearts were full for the joy of His arrival and for the love that enraptured their hearts. In proportion to how completely they opened their hearts in the direction of He Who Is Love their hearts were full and at peace.
The focus is the heart. When Jesus was eight days old, as was the age-old practice, he was circumcised and given His name. Circumcision in the Old Covenant is the pre-figurement of baptism in the New. They have a number of similarities: they are the passage way to entering the people of God, one is named as a part of the ritual, it is usually performed on infants, and it leaves a lasting mark. God added circumcision because of Abraham’s sin with Hagar as a penance and reminder that life does not come from our resources but is given as a gift by God. When Abraham fell, it was because his heart was hard and did not trust the promise of God to give him a son.
Circumcision is also a symbol of the need to cut away the stony outside of our heart so that we can have a new heart of flesh. It says in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” Circumcision at its deepest meaning is a matter of the heart as Paul said: “real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (Romans 2:29).
The majority of Paul’s argument in Galatians is that we no longer need to be circumcised because circumcision was a symbol added because of sin, but now the reality has come. The reality is that Jesus’ heart was circumcised when He gave Himself up fully as a sacrifice on the cross and His heart was pierced. Circumcision is no longer needed because now we have been given the circumcision of Christ: baptism. We are baptized into Jesus’ death, and Jesus died because He trusted and obeyed fully with His heart. In baptism we are given Jesus’ faithful, crucified, pierced and resurrected heart so that we can be faithful, crucified, pierced and one day rise again, too.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he says much the same thing: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12). Baptism is our circumcision and the real circumcision. In baptism we receive our new hearts, our new tree of life that we needed ever since the Fall when our first parents turned their hearts away from God and His singular prohibition.
As we celebrate today the circumcision of Jesus as an infant, we can look ahead to when He fulfills that Old Covenant sacrament when His body is nailed to the tree and His Sacred Heart is pierced. Today we can remember and celebrate our own baptism when we received the circumcision of Christ and re-dedicate our hearts to Him that they may be His alone, for that is why we were baptized in the first place. We can fulfill this holy day of obligation by going to mass and receiving Holy Communion which is the fulfillment and celebration of our baptism. In The Sacrament, we receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, and the Body we receive is actually Jesus’ heart. It is all about the heart. It is all about eating the tree of life.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
12.24.2007
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.
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.
12.18.2007
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).
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
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).
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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