Word to the Wise
Saturday, October 21, 2017 - Saturday in the 28th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rom 4:13, 16-18 and Luke 12:8-12]SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2017. SATURDAY IN THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME [Romans 4:13, 16-18 and Luke 12:8-12] It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, but through the righteousness that comes through faith. For this reason it depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not to those who only adhere to the law but to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us.....[Romans] To understand better the importance of Abraham in St. Paul's argument, I recommend going first to Genesis and reading the chapters about Abraham (12, etc) and then going to John 8:52-59. Three great religious faiths depend on Abraham as their ancestor: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Islam traces its ancestry to Abraham through Ismael, the son born to Abraham by the slave girl, Hagar. Christianity takes its descendancy from Judaism and its tradition in the Old Testament. The Gospels According to Matthew and Luke contain a genealogies showing Jesus as a descendant of Abraham. God's covenant with Abraham pre-dates the Mosaic covenant, and it is this convenant to which St. Paul appeals. It is a covenant that resulted from Abraham's faith in God and was not written. Faith is what determined Abraham's relationship to God which St. Paul calls "righteousness." We who are Catholics are brought up in a Church rich in many traditions and also in many rules. We often find ourselves thinking that if we follow the rules, that will be enough. However, all those rules and traditions are nothing if we do not have faith in God and in Jesus as the one who was sent as Messiah and in the Spirit that gives life to our Church with all its rules and traditions. Our faith is historical in that we trace its origins to a particular time and people, but it transcends history in that God is the creator of all life. This history and transcendence are shown in the story of creation and in the story of Abraham. St. Paul's conversion led him to go back behind and beyond the Mosaic Law to the first covenant with Abraham. The dialogue between Jesus and the crowd in John 8:52-59 shows this: "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM." Going back to the roots of our faith can be both frightening and reassuring. I'm sure Abraham won't mind! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
83 ms
4
