Jun 20: The Call to a Distant land

Pieter Lastman: Abraham on the Road to Caanan
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 1614

Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading I: Gn 12:1-9

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing (NRSV, Gen 12:1-2).”

Father, in every moment, you call us forth, as you did Abraham, from the situation in which we find ourselves into something new. Abraham could only conceive of that call as one to a distant land that would be given to him and to his descendants. In the resurrection of our Lord Jesus we have come to understand that it is not the land at all but eternal life with you. This life is offered to us even now in the Holy Spirit through the Word who is always present to us calling us to say “yes,” as Abraham did, and to grow in your life.

Father, may every human with Abraham, our father in faith, respond to your call through the Word and let go of what we have been up until the present moment and grow ever closer to you by accepting the offer of continued growth in your own divine life.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.