Lent Week 5: Thursday
ABRAHAM AND THE RESURRECTION
“Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Did we read/ hear that right? How can Abraham, generations apart from the Lord Jesus, have seen the Lord’s Resurrection, his “day,” and made him “glad?” No wonder the Jews couldn’t fathom the Lord’s words; they seemed incredible to believe.
The Lord Jesus in his preaching has been baffling the minds of his critical hearers among the Jews. He speaks to them of surprising things, grandiose things, unimaginable and unexpected. In the Gospel today, however, the Lord was rightly saying that Abraham has glimpsed in anticipation, the event of his Resurrection. In the life of Abraham, there have been instances of divine interventions that in seed form pointed to the future event awaited in Israel.
Abraham did experience the “Lord’ day” in two special occasions of his life. First, when Isaac was conceived. Abraham and Sarah’s old age precluded procreation, added to the infertility that marked their marriage for a long time. But when Isaac was born, the generativity of the unsuspecting couple brought joy and hope to their family and to many others around them. Isaac, the son of the promise emerged from the barren, dead womb of his mother.
Second, Abraham knew firsthand the meaning of the Resurrection when he offered Isaac as a sacrifice. In trust and obedience, he was willing to lose his son but the Lord delivered Isaac from death and returned him to his loving father. Isaac, though he evaded death, was a sign pointing to the future Messiah who will become a sacrifice for the salvation of the people. His Resurrection will signal the victory of God over sin and evil in the world.
These are the two ways Abraham can be said to have known in advance the feeling, the meaning, the revealing of the Lord’s day.
Approaching Holy Week, we need to remember that before us will not only be the Cross of sacrifice, the Cross of suffering and death. At the end of it all, we will rejoice at the Risen One, our Lord and Savior. While it is true that we experience many challenging moments in life, when all might seem dead, sterile, or ceased, God gives us a foretaste of the Resurrection through events in life we do not expect. He surprises us with the Resurrection.
What are your sufferings today? What are the trials you go through? Have faith, that in God, the last word is not death but the Lord’s day, the Resurrection.
