By Father James Rodriguez
ONCE AGAIN, AS A Church we have undertaken these 40 days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, walking with our Lord on the way to Calvary. It seems as if our Christmas celebration is barely over before we are called to commemorate the Passion, yet truly both events point to the same mystery: the kenosis, or self-emptying, of God.
Our first reading on this second Sunday of Lent tells the familiar story of Abraham’s offering. However, without some context, we can miss critical details that are not made clear here. Remember that these words were originally conveyed orally, with parents telling their children the stories of God’s amazing presence in their past so that they could see Him in their present. They would have known that Abraham was not a young man at this point in his life.
Complete Trust
According to Genesis 21:5, “Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.” It is no wonder that Sarah, with the sense of humor any first-time mother (regardless of age) needs, laughed (Gen 21:6). Isaac’s age in today’s reading is unclear, but we know that he was certainly strong enough to carry the wood for the sacrifice. All of this is to say that if Isaac had not trusted his father Abraham, the story would have ended very differently. No, Isaac placed complete trust in his father, a trust that he learned by watching Abraham do the same.
A man learns how to be a man primarily from other men. Our society has given ample proof for this, often in the worst of ways. However, God’s design for fatherhood and the conferral of masculinity onto the son is there – written in the DNA of our faith – from the first pages of Scripture through the living Word and Son of God Himself.
Divinity and Fatherhood
Abraham and Isaac both serve to foreshadow the coming of the faithful Son who would trust in the Father completely, even to the point of shedding His blood in the death that we will honor at the end of this holy season. Jesus, true God and true man, shows us the twin secrets of divinity and fatherhood: a humility that gives of itself until nothing is left.
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He deliberately used the word “Father.” More than a function, fatherhood is an identity, and we would do well in our fatherless culture to turn to Him who waits with open arms for our return home.
We receive a glimpse of this paternal radiance in today’s Gospel, in which Jesus brings Peter, James and John to the mountain to pray. I can remember watching my own parents praying the rosary each night with my sisters and me – my ears still red from being dragged there. In those moments, we were more united than ever. What I mistook for boring monotony was the gentle lapping of love’s waves on the seashore of my family’s shared life, or the light knocking of God on my young heart, inviting me to imitate Him, to maybe even be called “Father” myself someday.
On the mountaintop, Moses and Elijah – like good parents – represent the law and prophecy of God. Through Moses, He led His people and gave them the law that would form a necessary
structure for their freedom. The prophets adorned this structure by word and example as living reminders of the kind of God we have, whom Scott Hahn has called “a father who keeps his promises.” Up there, with a face as bright as the sun, Jesus looks at those gathered, and through the centuries to you and to me, with the love of the Father, with a purity “such as no fuller could bleach.”
So Close, So United
This is, as St. Paul said in today’s second reading, the God who “is for us.” Who then could stand against a people whose God is so close, so united to His own beloved sons and daughters? It is a sad reality that we sometimes are our own worst enemies in this regard, sowing division in the Body of Christ that we ourselves are as the Church. We turn from God in our sinfulness, but this does not have to be the end of the story. We can trust Him.
On Abraham’s mountain, God provided the animal of sacrifice. So too does He provide for us on His holy altars, refusing to spare Himself, to hold back even His own beloved Son, so as to give us an example to follow.
May we imitate Him who never holds back, entrusting ourselves to His care more and more each day. May we embrace Him who embraces us with His arms both scourged and transfigured, human and divine, and love each other, even as He who loved us to the end.
Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent:
Genesis 22: 1-2, 9A, 10-13, 15-18
Psalm 116: 10, 15, 16-17, 18-19
Romans 8: 31B-34 Mark 9: 2-10
Father James Rodriguez is the diocesan vocation director and teaches theology at Cathedral Prep and Seminary, Elmhurst.