I have often heard people say that the story of
Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac is horrific.
Maybe it shouldn’t be read at all. Well it is meant to be
horrific. The point is that God asks the unthinkable of
Abraham, but more importantly Abraham trusts in God and goes along
the path that makes absolutely no sense to him at the time. Not
only was it horrific that he should be asked to sacrifice his child,
but it was also through this only child that God had promised him
many offspring. So nothing at all made sense. So Abraham
suddenly finds himself in a situation of complete darkness, where
nothing was right, nothing made sense. But Abraham trusts God
and then everything changes at the last minute. God ‘put
Abraham to the test’ not in the sense of seeing if he was good
enough, but because God knew that Abraham had great faith and he
wanted to stretch that faith to its full capacity. An athlete
won’t reach his or her full potential unless they are pushed to the
limit. Sometimes God does the same with us. He knows what
we are capable of much better than we do ourselves and sometimes He
stretches, or pushes us to the limit because God wants us to reach
our full potential as human beings.
Did you ever notice that sometimes when you pray for
a situation to get better it gets worse first? There is a
temptation to panic and not pray any more. But if we believe
that God is listening to us and helping us, then we persevere in
prayer and we try to trust that the Lord will bring the best out of
the situation, even though it often doesn’t make senses to us.
That requires faith, and it’s not easy at the best of times.
Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac his only son,
but in the end he didn’t have to go through with it. Because
he was willing to do anything that God asked and showed his
remarkable trust in God, the Lord said that He would bless him
greatly: 'I will shower blessings on you, I will make your
descendants as many as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on
the seashore.'
3000 years later or so, God sends his Son Jesus to
us and allows him to be sacrificed for the human race. It says
in the second reading that because Jesus went through with this, the
Father would refuse him nothing. That is why we can have such
confidence when we pray to Jesus. It says in the second reading
that Jesus now intercedes for us before the Father in heaven.
If Jesus the Son of God is interceding for us before the Father, then
what could we possibly be afraid of as long as we remain open to
God? Not only that but we also have Our Lady interceding for us
too. Is Jesus going to refuse his mother anything? Is the
Father going to refuse Jesus anything? And these are the ones
who are interceding for us. Hopefully that will help us not to
be afraid.
In the Gospel the three disciples Peter, James and
John are granted this extraordinary vision of Jesus, Son of God in
all his glory. Why were they given this privilege when none of
the others were? This happened just before the Passion, when
Jesus would be tortured and killed before their eyes. Peter,
James and John were also the three who would be with him in the
Garden of Gethsemane watching him fall apart. They were going
to need great strength not to despair themselves. But what is
especially worth noting is that after the vision on the mountain was
over they suddenly found themselves in a cloud where they could see
nothing. Only then did they hear the voice of the Father speaking to
them:
‘This is my Son the
Beloved. Listen to him.’
God spoke to them when they were in the cloud.
Have you ever been on a mountain when a cloud suddenly descended on
you? It’s quite frightening because you cannot see anything.
You just have to stop and wait until it lifts. Sometimes it is only when we
are in a ‘cloud’ (darkness/confusion) that God will speak
to us most powerfully. When we cannot see the way forward, and
we cannot get any clarity on what to do, then God will show us what
the next step is, but often He will only show us the next step, not
the whole path ahead. This brings us back to the need to trust
that God knows what God is doing when He leaves us in the dark. Most
people are in the dark most of the time, especially with regard to
their faith. That just seems to be how it works. We are
only shown one step at a time, if anything. But God asks us to
trust him that He knows what He is doing. If He doesn’t show
us the whole path it is because we don’t need to see it, only the
next step.
‘This is my Son the
Beloved. Listen to him.’
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