Father and Son

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Abraham, Father, Isaac, test, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

My father had a mighty love for God but he was mostly quiet about it. Only once did he tell me how he felt at the moment of preparation for receiving the Eucharist. He said he was overwhelmed, his breathing rushed. And sometimes…at special times, he felt tears coming—tears of joy, of humility…bursting with love. I can’t imagine him ever refusing or even resisting a directive from God…

I was thinking of that as I read the story of Abraham and Isaac today. I can’t imagine my father ever being in the situation of Abraham, needing to choose between God and his son. I will have to have a serious conversation with God about the reason for the test with Abraham. Was the test really necessary? Maybe…the people (not just Abraham) might have needed a reminder of their covenant with God…. How would you characterize this story? Put yourself in the place of each of the characters and see how it feels. continue until you have a deep sense of what is happening and maybe you will have new insight into the relationship between Abraham and Isaac. What can you learn?

Looking Back; Going Forward

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Abraham, faith, Isaac, leave home, leave the nest, religious order, Sarah, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trust in God

I’ve been doing a lot of remembering lately, not unusual for one who has reached a milestone in life like 50 years as a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. I smile as I think of the three women who are celebrating 80 years in our religious order – all of whom “have their wits about them” and I wonder about the flow of their memories at age 98 and 99 years.

The first lectionary reading today is about the death of Sarah at age 127 years and Abraham’s concern about a wife for his son, Isaac, so that his family line should continue as God had promised him. Abraham had a lot to look back on at this juncture. The Scriptures say that he was already 75 years of age when he was called to leave his home and establish his family in a new place that God would show him, a move that would begin his life and that of his descendants anew. God promised that they would be a people uniquely (or particularly, in some translations) God’s own. Abraham kept that covenant with God and although his life was blessed, it wasn’t always easy.

This morning, in addition to those women who left their homes for the convent in the 1930s, not knowing how their lives would unfold but feeling God calling them, I think of my own mother and her mother before her. Actually, all four of my grandparents left Ireland at an early age to seek a better life in the United States of America. Having no idea what was in store for them, they trusted God to lead them. My mother was 46 years of age, having lived in the circle of her extended family in the same town all her life, when my father’s work necessitated a move to a new place that seemed like the end of the world for her. It was 8 hours away, if the trains ran on schedule, a rare thing in 1960. It took commitment and a love that would admit of no compromise to follow my father, who was himself in that same position of loss and unknowing, and it was their faith in God that led the way. As it turns out, we were the first in a majority of family members to “leave the nest” and who now are located all across the country and beyond.

This reverie brings me to the conclusion that whether our lives are lived in relative familiarity of all kinds or are disrupted by choice or necessity, it takes courage and a willingness to choose each day and what it holds for our growth. My mother’s pain at leaving her sisters and friends became the seedbed for her growth as a person in ways that never would have happened had she not leaned into the new opportunities and challenges afforded her in the second half of her life. Even should we ourselves not be the prime mover in change – rather like Sarah or my mother, moving as a spouse, or my siblings and myself as the new generation whose roots have been set on both coasts of the USA – we are all affected by change. I believe that our willingness to embrace it will always be the measure of the blessing change brings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sacrifice

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Abraham, Genesis, God's love, holiness, holy, inner transformation, Isaac, sacrifice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wholeness, willingness

When I was young, if anyone ever defined the word sacrifice as to make holy I missed that lesson. It always denoted something I was supposed to give up, something difficult. In religion class I learned that it did involve God and adding that component made me more willing to do it but it was still hard. And then, I guess, I came to know that if I did all those hard things, I would get to be holy but I didn’t understand that it wasn’t the thing I gave up but the willingness to do the giving that would transform me.

This morning we have the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac as a sign of his fidelity to God. (Genesis 22). There are many things in the Hebrew Scriptures that were part of that era and culture that do not, thankfully, exist in ours. Human sacrifice is one of those. In the end it was Abraham’s willingness that God wanted; that’s what effected his holiness. The covenant (that contract of loving fidelity) that God had made with him was so sacred to Abraham that everything in his life flowed from it. We could wonder at God’s purpose in the story today – or of how Abraham could possibly have been ready to kill his beloved son…I would never presume to explain either except to say that the God I know today would not ask such a thing or that perhaps the story was a metaphor for the lesson of willingness. My point in even considering it is to reflect on my willingness to put myself at God’s service, confident that God’s love is strong enough to see me through the most difficult events, and that holiness is the wholeness that will be the result.