19th Sunday in Greentime
Abraham (Not the 16th Prez)
Abraham is the common patriarch of three great religions, viz, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Judaism and Christianity trace their development through Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac. Islam traces its lineage back to Ishmael, the child of Abraham and Hagar, Abraham’s Egyptian concubine. Catholics can find in Abraham a figure from the past whose heritage can still be meaningful to us as Disciples of Jesus.
Abraham believed in the promise of God that he would be the father of a great nation, even though he was an old man and Sarah was beyond child-bearing age. Finally, the child, Isaac, was born. It seemed like a remote possibility that God’s promise might be fulfilled. Then, God put Abraham to the awful test of sacrificing his firstborn as a sign of Abraham’s faith in God. We know the terrible story of God’s staying Abraham’s hand at the last moment.
That story is a condemnation of such a practice that Israel’s neighbors practiced. In fact, at, at least, one point in their history, Israel might have practiced such a practice in the Valley of Gehenna, which became the city dump of Jerusalem.
However, the story also shows the radical faith of Abraham in an apparently hopeless situation. Abraham believed in God when it seemed hopeless.
The German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote that, in the future, ranks of Catholic believers might thin out as we become more aware of the awesome demands of the leap of God-given faith. (In Europe, that might, indeed, already be happening for several reasons. Thank God, this dire prediction seems not to be applicable yet to the Catholics in the USA.)
The Brazilian archbishop, Dom Helder Camara, spoke of the Church of the future, as a community of “Abrahamic minorities”, Catholics might be groups of believers who hope, against hope, that the Jesus’ promise of God’s Kingdom will be fulfilled, even though, at times, it seems that reality contradicts Jesus’ Promise.
Human history continues to unfold in a mere fraction of time in the history of the universe. The more we know about the universe, the more we know that we do not know. This is both staggering and humbling.
Yet, Jesus asks us to follow the example of Abraham, the person of faith, who believed in God’s faithfulness, no matter what. Jesus asks us, at the Last Supper, to trust in God, to trust Him, the Incarnation of God in the world.
The universe is God’s creation. The Kingdom of God is gestating in the womb of the universe and will someday come to term through the power of the Holy Spirit. True, things do not always indicate that. Still, Jesus teaches us that our ancestor Abraham still speaks to us now.
St Paul writes us in the Letter to the Romans, “The whole universe is in groaning.” Each one of us is a cell in the Body of Christ, coming to term in the womb of the universe. Just as the universe is still evolving under God’s Plan, so also is each of us as a cell in the universe. Catholic Quantum Theology teaches us that the “whole is contained in each part; each part is contained in the whole; reality is greater than sum of all the parts.” Think about it.
For this reason, Abraham’s children (all who believe, despite what they see) come to accept themselves as works in progress, a mass of contradictions, a book still in preparation, sinful converts and/or converted sinners. We are all still in process in God’s Plan, because we are part of that Plan, no exceptions.
Jesus tells us that faith in God, even in the mystery of our own lives, is a Gift that leads to fulfillment. We all need the Gift.
People wonder whether Jesus ever intended a world-wide and universal acceptance of His proclamation. He started with a small group that became the Jesus Movement. Perhaps, what He asks of us as NY Catholics in the early stages of the New Testament to ask as best we can, in, with and through Him to be “change agents, critical mass, channels of God’s Plan” as community of the Abrahamic Minority. 081207 AD jfq
