“Father Abraham, have pity on me.”
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus uses a parable in which one of the main characters is a living person, Abraham. Abraham is an essential piece to salvation history, and he is one of the most important figures in the Church.
Who was Abraham? Abraham was “Born in the twentieth or nineteenth century B.C., in Ur of the Chaldeans on the Euphrates River. His father, Terah, named him Abram. The family migrated to Haran, where Terah died (Genesis 11: 26-31). At God’s behest, Abram, his wife, Sarah, his nephew, Lot, and all their followers moved on to Canaan (Genesis 12:4). When Abram was ninety-nine years old, God made a covenant with him, changing his name to Abraham and promising to make him the ‘father of a multitude of nations…[Genesis 17:1-5] I will make you into nations and your issue shall be kings…I will give to you and your descendants the land you are living in, the whole land of Canaan, to own in perpetuity, and I will be your God’ (Genesis 17:5-8). Hence he has been called the founder of the Hebrew people. Abraham’s dedication to the will of God was tested when he was told to take his son, Isaac, to the land of Moriah (which later became the site of the Jerusalem temple) and sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. He obeyed without hesitation, but Isaac was spared at the last moment (Genesis 22). In his final days Abraham arranged to have his son marry Rebekah, one of his kinfolk (Genesis 24), and left Isaac all his possessions before he died at the age of one hundred seventy-five (Genesis 25).”[i]
Why is Abraham known as “Our father in faith”? The origins of the Church can be traced back to Abraham. “Whatever may be said about the foreshadowing of the Church before the call of Abraham, the covenant that God made with the patriarch marked the origin of that Chosen People to whom the Church of Christ would always refer as its spiritual ancestor. Yahweh chose Israel as his very own, on whom he promised to lavish extraordinary blessings provided they remained faithful to him. Step by step, he taught and prepared the children of Abraham by sending them prophets to reveal himself and the decrees of his will, in order to make them holy.”[ii] Abraham is our father in faith because he was the first person to show perfect faith in God. He was the first person to form a covenant with God. “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go.”[iii] “By faith, he lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land. By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the son of the promise. And by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice.”[iv] Thus, Abraham fulfills what it means to have faith, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”[v].
Why did God change Abram’s name to Abraham? Names have great meaning. The name Abram means “great father”. At the time God changes Abram’s name Abram had no children. Abraham means “father of many (nations)”. During the time of Abraham a person’s name was similar to a title, it gave that person their identity. Imagine having the name “great father” but having no children. It is ironic that the man that is called “great father” was not a father. More ironic is the fact that when right before Abram turns 100, he gets the name Abraham “father of many”! Despite not having any children at that time, Abraham had great faith in God, and because of his faith he was blessed with many children.
Why does Lazarus go to Abraham’s bosom? Abraham being the father of all who believe in God takes all his children and care for them. Abraham is so faithful and close to God that he does not neglect all of those who died in God’s grace. Jesus teaches in today’s parable that people like Lazarus end up in a place for the dead awaiting the coming of Jesus. These are the very people that Jesus descends to save after His death on the cross. “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.”[vi]
What is the connection between Jesus and Abraham? God promised Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. It was also promised that from Abraham’s lineage the whole world would be blessed. Jesus Christ is the descendent to fulfill this promise. “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. It does not say, ‘And to descendants,’ as referring to many, but as referring to one, ‘And to your descendant,’ who is Christ”[vii]. “The promise made to Abraham inaugurates the economy of salvation, at the culmination of which the Son himself will assume that ‘image’ and restore it in the Father’s ‘likeness’ by giving it again its Glory, the Spirit who is ‘the giver of life’.”[viii] Abraham’s faith spared his son Isaac from being killed. However, God the Father would have His only begotten Son handed over and killed, so that His adopted sons would have life. . Jesus completes the sacrifice that God had instructed Abraham to start; Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac and the Sacrifice of Christ. Isaac was Abraham’s one and only son (from his true wife Sarah). Jesus is the one and only Son of God. Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice. Jesus carried the wood of the Cross, the instrument of His death. Abraham took Isaac to Mount Moriah. Christ was crucified on Calvary or Golgotha, which is in the region, very close to Mount Moriah. The two sacrifices are over 2000 years apart but geographically are within walking distance from each other.
Abraham is honored every Morning and Evening in the Liturgy of the Church. We honor our Father Abraham each morning when we pray at Lauds (Morning Prayer), “This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hands of our enemies.”[ix] We honor our Father Abraham each evening when we pray at Vespers (Evening Prayer), “He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever.”[x] In these prayers only two people are named David and Abraham and Abraham is mentioned twice. Abraham is central to Salvation History and we honor him for this.
What can we learn from Abraham? We learn what it means to have complete faith in God. “When God calls him, Abraham goes forth ‘as the Lord had told him’; Abraham’s heart is entirely submissive to the Word and so he obeys. Such attentiveness of the heart, whose decisions are made according to God’s will, is essential to prayer, while the words used count only in relation to it. Abraham’s prayer is expressed first by deeds: a man of silence, he constructs an altar to the Lord at each stage of his journey. Only later does Abraham’s first prayer in words appear: a veiled complaint reminding God of his promises which seem unfulfilled. Thus one aspect of the drama of prayer appears from the beginning: the test of faith in the fidelity of God.”[xi]
Abraham has two sons Isaac and Ishmael, what happened to Ishmael? Ishmael was “the son of Abraham and Hagar, a slave girl. At the time Ishmael was born, it seemed unlikely that Sarah, Abraham’s wife, would have a child because of her advanced age (Genesis 16:1-16). But Yahweh ‘dealt kindly with her’ and Isaac was born (Genesis 21:1-3). Ill-feeling understandably developed between Sarah and Hagar, and the distressed Abraham was compelled to send Hagar and Ishmael away. But ‘God was with the boy’ and protected him. Following his marriage, he had twelve sons (Genesis 21:9-21). As time went on and Ishmael and his sons extended their possessions in the land east of Egypt, they formed twelve tribes, each son becoming a tribal chief. Frequent references to these tribes appear in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. Ishmael was, at least in name, the ancestor of this wide network (Genesis 25:12-18).”[xii]
The descendants of both Isaac and Ishmael believe in the one true God.
The descendants of Isaac, although they lapsed from time to time, would stay faithful to a belief in the one true God up until the time of Jesus. Jesus, the fullness of Grace and Truth, fulfills and perfects the Jewish faith, founded on Abraham, and founds the true Church. The Jews, who were the promised descendants of Abraham, were extremely proud of their Father in Faith and we can only imagine the shock they must have had when Jesus, a simple Jewish Rabbi now only compared Himself to Abraham, but claimed to live before Abraham and then called Himself God (I AM). This was blasphemy in their eyes and they, “picked up stones to throw at him”.[xiii] Jesus says very clearly, “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.’”[xiv] Many Jews therefore rejected Jesus, the Messiah. They were looking too intently upon Abraham, failed to see the promise of Abraham.
The descendants of Ishmael, in time fell into paganism, the belief and worship of many gods. Unlike the Jews they had abandoned the God of their Father Abraham. Muhammad who lived in the 6thCentury, almost 2500 years after Abraham reformed the descendants of Ismael. It was Muhammad, the founder of Islam that promoted a turn from paganism and a return to a worship of one God. Although it is good to move from the worship of many gods to the worship of one God, that move is in vain if the one true God is neither known nor worshiped as is the case with Islam. Muhammad lived almost 600 years after Christ, and like the Jews, the Muslim fails to recognize Jesus as God. Like the Jew, the Muslim, fails to see Jesus as the promise of Abraham. The Muslim acknowledges Jesus as a prophet but not as God. But can the Muslim truly call Jesus a prophet if they reject the message of the prophet who says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”[xv] Sadly, not only do the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael fight to this day, they both live in the darkness of error as they continue to knowingly or unknowingly reject Jesus, the Light of the World.
[i] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary pg. 6
[ii] Hardon, The Catholic Catechism, pg. 206
[iii] Heb. 11:8; cf. Gen. 12:1-4
[iv] CCC 145
[v] Heb. 11:1
[vi] CCC 633
[vii] Gal. 3:16
[viii] CCC 705
[ix] The Benedictus
[x] The Magnificat
[xi] CCC 2570
[xii] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary pg. 288
[xiii] John 8:59
[xiv] John 8:58
[xv] Ibid