LET US IMITATE THE HOLY PATRIARCHS ABRAHAM, ISAAC AND JACOB

 

The Lord Jesus Christ invites us to the banquet of the Kingdom of God, just as we heard in the Gospel reading. The people in the Lord’s parable, when they received the invitation of the Lord, excused themselves for various reasons: material things (a field and pairs of oxen), and also human relationships (a wedding). The Lord summons us also to the Kingdom of Heaven, and we have just the same temptations to excuse ourselves from His invitation.  The Lord wants us to abandon those things that are obstacles to our loving relationship with Him—both attachment to material things and the spiritual and psychological wounds, which require us to accept heavenly remedies.

The Lord Jesus wants us to know that we only have a very short time, “to accomplish our salvation with fear and trembling,” just as the Holy Apostle Paul tells us. We must be attentive to the needs of our souls, instead of those of our bodies and our passions.  Therefore, the Lord gives to us the example today of the Holy Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who lived in obedience to the will of God. Abraham left his fatherland to be obedient to God, and with complete trust, he even prepared to sacrifice his only-begotten son. In the end, he did not sacrifice him. Nevertheless, his offering was complete and pleasing in God’s sight, because he loved God, and his intention was obedience to the One, Whom he loved. In the same way, our intention has to be obedience to God’s will. And why not? Since this is obedience to Him, Who loves us with an everlasting love. We must be like Abraham in this trust, knowing that God creates all our circumstances, even the very painful ones, in order to make us perfect, just as He, Our Heavenly Father, is perfect. This deep trust has to endure in us, despite all the pain in our life.

According to the example of the Holy Patriarch Isaac, we also have to live in stillness and prayer.  Among the patriarchs, Isaac is the most spiritually contemplative, because his job is to remain in the Promised Land. Through the stillness of the Patriarch Isaac, his children, the nation of Israel, receive a right to that land. In the same way, we receive a right to our inheritance in the Heavenly Kingdom through our life of stillness and prayer. Trust in God is very important, but the only evidence of this trust is a life of deep prayer. Prayer is the environment, in which trust and love grow. Through love and trust, the Lord Jesus wants us to become bold in prayer, since it is pleasing to God when we pray boldly, and when we speak with Him as “our” God. Our relationship with our God is very intimate. Have we noted that we always address God by the most intimate of pronouns? He is always, “Thee and Thou,” as if he were our equal. Indeed, He is not our equal, but is all-accessible to us, despite the fact that He made everything that exists. We learn this sort of prayer through the example of the Holy Patriarch Isaac. Our life requires stillness and prayer.

Our life in Christ also makes use of the example of the Holy Patriarch Jacob, because we need to remember that this life is a battle. Jacob was always in conflict with somebody (with his brother, Esau, with his father-in-law, Laban, and with the Canaanites, who then lived in the Promised Land). In the same way, we are always in conflict against the world, the flesh and the devil. We must always remember that we have enemies that desire our destruction, just like a soldier in the midst of battle always has to be aware of a multitude of threats. Just as the Patriarch Jacob defended himself from all his enemies through the strong alliance of his sons and friends, we also need to defend ourselves by the might of the communion of saints. By our Baptism, we have the privilege of belonging to this holy and strong alliance, and we should use the might of the prayers of our patron saints in the fight against temptation. The Holy Patriarch Jacob grew old in his battle against his many enemies, but he died peacefully in the arms of his son, Joseph, who is a figure of Christ. In the same way, the Lord Jesus wants us to know that if we fight faithfully, we will die peacefully in the arms of our loving Jesus and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.