2nd.
Sunday of Lent (C)
(Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke
9:28-36)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us look
closely at Abraham -- our father in faith -- and learn to appreciate anew the
wonderful goodness of our God.
We heard that originally God spoke to a man called Abram
saying:
I am the Lord, Who brought you out of Ur of the
Chaldeans, to give you this land (of
Canaan) to inherit it.
Abram had been born and brought up as a believer in pagan
gods; however, when the Lord called him, Abram heard and listened and -- in
obedience -- left his home and patrimony, giving his life over into the hands of
the Lord. It seemed almost impossible to
Abram that he, with his relatively small household and few retainers, could
take possession of this whole new land as the Lord had promised him, and so we
read that Abram said:
Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?
At this juncture we are about to glimpse something of the
great goodness of our God, for He next told Abram to prepare for something with
which he was quite familiar:
"Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old
female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." (Abram) brought all these to Him and cut them
in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did
not cut the birds in two.
Because Abram was born a Chaldean the Lord told him to
make preparations for a Chaldean treaty ceremony, and the animals He called for
were all those that could be properly offered in such a sacrifice. When the sacrifice was fully prepared, the
Lord and Abram would then enter into a treaty by passing between the parts of
the slaughtered animals and between the pigeons, each of them invoking a similar
fate for themselves if they were to break the terms of the treaty they were
agreeing. That was a common form of treaty-making in those days.
Although Abram had already left the country of his birth in
obedience to the Lord, nevertheless, his fidelity and trust needed to be strengthened
and confirmed by further testing: the sacrificial animals had been prepared but
the Lord did not appear; and vultures, quickly becoming aware of the lines of
carcasses, began to make attempts to feed on them.
When the
vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
Time passed, and though Abram was able to prevent the
vultures eating that evening, he was not able to frighten them away completely:
they were content to just watch and wait.
With the sun declining and still no sign from the Lord, Abram became
weary from continually having to watch for the vultures and:
Behold, horror and great
darkness fell upon him.
Abram was being tested to his limit, but not beyond it,
for ultimately:
When the sun went down and it was (fully) dark, behold, there appeared a smoking oven
and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
The smoking fire-pot and flaming torch represented God
passing through the pieces as a signatory to the covenant:
The Lord your God is a
consuming fire,
is how Moses would later speak of God in the book of
Deuteronomy (4:24). Thus did God reassure
Abram that he would indeed take possession of the land promised him.
With Abram’s treaty-offering to God, all the different
kinds of acceptable animals represented not only Abram himself but also his
descendants promised by the Lord. Those
descendants would be attacked by the nations, as shown by the fact that:
Vultures
came down on the carcasses.
Abram, however, driving those birds of prey away signified
that his faith and obedience would continue to win protection for his
people. This was always recognized in
Israel as we hear in Psalm 105:42-44:
The Lord remembered His sacred promise to Abraham His
servant. He brought His people out with joy.
We, dear People of God, are not of Abram’s family in the flesh,
but Abraham’s family from a multitude of nations, Mother Church: and Abram’s falling
wearily asleep in darkness -- tested and tried to the full thwarting the birds
of prey while still waiting faithfully for the Lord of the covenant – can be seen
as an early foreshadowing of Jesus Himself fighting to the very last moment of
His earthly life to destroy the devil’s lordship of sin and death over all humankind, both Jews and Gentiles:
When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the
whole land until the ninth hour. And at
the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi,
lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me?" (Mark 15:33-34)
before peacefully breathing His last, He said:
It is
finished! (The work is completed,
the covenant established!) (John 19:30)
Let us stop there for a moment and think, wonder, and
admire. The Lord had taken up a pagan Abram;
Abram, however, was no ordinary man, because he had faith and commitment enough
to hear and immediately obey the Lord, leaving all that he had thus far known
-- his parental family and friends, his lands and his anticipated future -- and
go off, in blind obedience to the Lord Who had called him.
He would travel far in obedience to the Lord, and the
Lord, in order to give Abram such confidence for what was a still distant future,
had used a covenant setting with which Abram was familiar. Oh, the goodness and condescension of our God!
Later, when Abram was ninety-nine years old, however, God
willed to re-establish a covenant with him, and his family by fleshly
continuity, Israel, making use of His own covenantal form, not like the earlier
pagan form, because Abram was now to become Abraham of the nations:
For My part here is My covenant with you: you are to
become the father of a multitude of nations.
No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham. For I am making you the father of a multitude
of nations. I will give to you and your
descendants the whole land of Canaan and I will be their God. For your part, every male among you shall be
circumcised: that will be the sign of the covenant between Me and you.
And many, many centuries later, the same compassionate
and understanding God, Who in order to give us -- Jews and Gentiles,
men and women of all times and places, a multitude of nations -- confidence and
strength, courage and hope, in His promises, willed to establish with us the
ultimate and truly sublime covenant, using a form that human-kind could best
understand and appreciate, by sending His only begotten and most beloved Son among
us – perfect God and perfect Man -- to offer Himself for us on the Cross of
Calvary, and after dying on that Cross, to rise again from the dead and ascend
into heaven still clothed in the human flesh He received from Mary the virgin, though
now glorified. In that way – and at what an unimaginable cost to
both Father and Son!! – have we been assured that whoever believes in Jesus and
obeys His word as Abram had originally obeyed the Lord, will themselves become,
in Jesus the Son, children of God: knowing and loving God now – even here
on earth -- as our heavenly and eternal Father!
A divine privilege that neither Abram’s original obedience nor Abraham’s
great dignity among the nations could ever have won for us.
People of God, try to appreciate, rejoice and trust, in
Jesus’ unfailing, covenant-care for His Church foreshadowed by Abram’s centuries-long
watching over his personal family Israel, and by Abraham’s covenantal fatherhood
for a ‘multitude of nations’ which is Mother Church, who in our Mass urges us
to remember and recognize ‘Abraham our father in faith’. We should realize how very important it is for
us to renew our personal Christian
and Catholic confidence and faith in Jesus, through a deepening awareness and
appreciation of the Spirit of Jesus abiding in Mother Church, and Who is
constantly striving to form us her children into our Saviour’s likeness through
all the events and circumstances of our lives as faithful disciples of Jesus.
The fact that today we live in a society where, as
described by St. Paul in the second reading:
Many walk -- of whom I have told you often and now tell
you even weeping -- that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their
belly, and whose glory is in their shame; who set their mind on earthly things;
the fact of being surrounded by many who have nothing but
contempt for the ideals and aspirations so much loved and admired by faithful
Christians:
Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble,
whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely,
whatever things are of good report, any virtue and (all that is) praiseworthy; (Philippians 4:8)
that can indeed be a depressing experience; nevertheless,
it is most important for us today, to find comfort and develop our strength by rejoicing
in the glory and goodness of Jesus, the God and Lord of Abraham and the Saviour
of all mankind.
Yes, let us rejoice in Him because even here on earth we,
with Peter, John and James in our Gospel reading, are able to see some faint
reflection of the heavenly glory of the Lord:
As Jesus was praying, the appearance of His face changed,
and His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. A voice came from the cloud, saying,
"This is My Son, Whom I have chosen; listen to Him."
From Heaven above, there is the Voice of the Father sounding
from the covering cloud of the Spirit’s presence and testifying to His beloved
Son; and on earth below, Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets witnessing
as servants to the One they had foretold and foreshown as the Lord and Saviour
of us all. As of old, the torch of fire passed
between the offerings of Abram so too, the glory of the Lord will indeed
descend not only on Peter, John and James present at that scene, but upon all
those today who are Jesus’ faithful Catholic and Christian People and form part
of His offering to the Father.
My dear friends, the Father has called us to Jesus Who has
made us His own by the Gift of His Spirit; and in the power and strength of that
Spirit we must follow Him as did Abram of old follow the Lord Who called him
out of the darkness of paganism.
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we await a
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with
His glorified body.
People of God: our destiny is glorious for our God is
great: the Father has called us, our Lord and Saviour Jesus has prepared the
way for us, and the Holy Spirit is with us.
Let us, therefore, rejoice in Him and confidently take Paul’s
exhortation to heart:
Stand
fast in the Lord, beloved.
