Jan 29: Abraham, Our Father in Faith

Pieter Lastman: The Sacrifice of Abraham
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1616

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

Reading I: Heb 11:1-2, 8-19

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (NRSV, Heb 11:1).

Lord God, Abraham, our father in faith, heard your call at the depth of his being, and answered it as best he could. He left everything for you. As fully as Abraham could understand it, leaving all meant leaving his home and everything with which he was familiar and traveling to a distant land. As the Israelites later remembered his story, Lord, you promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great and populous nation and that you would give to them the land.

Abraham, it was remembered in later times, lived to a venerable age, and yet had no child. Still he never doubted that your Word to him, Lord, was true. Finally, when in Abraham’s hundredth year a son, Isaac, was born to his wife, Sarah, it seemed that the promise had been fulfilled at least in its beginning. But then, the story tells us, Lord, that you required the life of Isaac to be offered in sacrifice. Still, Abraham did not waver but remained obedient and trustful even if it meant the death of his son. Only at the very last moment did an angel intervene to spare the life of the boy and to supply a ram to be sacrificed in his stead.

Father, Abraham trusted in you to fulfill your promise to him but the manner in which it was accomplished was beyond anything he could have imagined. The promise of the land, so important to the many generations that followed Abraham, was finally to be fulfilled, not in this world at all, but in the world to come: everlasting life shared with you, O Lord our God. And the great and populous nation? Abraham is indeed the forefather of a multitude, in the physical sense, of course, but more significantly he is for so many, Jew, Christian and Moslem, our father in faith. Abraham remains for us the model of total acceptance of everything that you promise. Abraham’s true descendants are to be found in all those, Lord, who place their trust and confidence in you.

Even in the resurrection of Jesus, as we come to a fuller understanding of the one Word that you speak to everyone, there is much that remains beyond our comprehension. Help us, Lord, with your grace to continue to place all of our trust in you as, through your Word, you summon us forth to ever greater understanding and to an ever increasing growth in your divine life.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.