``Where
the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of
Antioch, 1st c. A.D
Quinquagesima Sunday
On Septuagesima
Sunday, the Divine Office focused on Adam, his fall from grace, and
his
banishment from the Garden of Eden. On Sexagesima
Sunday, the focus was
on Noe (Noah) -- Adam's 7th great grandson -- and the punishment of the
unrighteous by a great deluge, and Noe's salvation on the ark God
commanded him to build. On Quinquagesima Sunday, we focus on Abraham
(formerly Abram) -- Adam's 17th great grandson, and the man with whom
God made the first covenant. The relevant geneaology:
When Abram was 75 years old, God told him to leave his homeland of Ur
in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), and that He will make of him a great
nation. So Abram took his wife, Sarai, and his nephew, Lot, and went
into the land of Canaan. When famine struck, they moved on to Egypt,
and there, Abram made a fortune. Lot made a fortune, too -- so much so
that their herdsmen began fighting after leaving Egypt. So Abram and
Lot then split up, with Lot
being given the first choice of land and deciding to move to Sodom, and
Abram remaining in the land of Canaan. But
not long after Lot's arrival in Sodom, the city, along with four other
cities of the area, rose up and rebelled against the King of Elam, who
had authority over the area. Lot was taken captive, but Abram rescued
him and freed the cities. Abram then met the mysterious Melchisedech,
king of Salem and priest of the most high God, the great prefigurer of
Christ who brought bread and wine.
Then God came to the still childless Abram in a vision and told him
"Look up to heaven and number the stars, if thou canst...So shall thy
seed be." And He promised him the land between the Nile and the
Euphrates.
Sarai was very old, so she told Abram to also marry Agar (Hagar), her
handmaid. But when Agar became pregnant, strife grew between the women,
and Agar ran away. An angel appeared to her and told her her seed would
be great, and to return to Abram and Sarai. She did, and gave birth to
Ismael (Ishmael). Abram was 86.
When Abram was 99, God appeared to him and made a covenant with him,
the sign of which would be circumcision.
God also changed his name to Abraham, changed his wife's name to Sara,
and told him that he will have a son named Isaac in the next year.
Isaac was born, and when he became a young man, God commanded Abraham
to do something
startling. He said to him, "Take thy only begotten son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and go into the land of vision: and there thou shalt offer him
for an holocaust upon one of the mountains which I will shew thee."
So Abraham grabbed a sword and some fire, and he took Isaac, whom he
had carry wood, and went off with him to do as God asked. Isaac asked
him, "Behold fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust?"
Abraham replied, "God will provide Himself a victim for an holocaust,
my son." And, of course, God did provide -- a ram caught up in the
thorns of a thicket. This statement from Abraham -- that God will
provide -- is key. About it, St.
Augustine says (City of God, Book XVI,
Chapter 32):
Of course
Abraham could never believe that God delighted in human sacrifices; yet
when the divine commandment thundered, it was to be obeyed, not
disputed. Yet Abraham is worthy of praise, because he all along
believed that his son, on being offered up, would rise again; for God
had said to him, when he was unwilling to fulfill his wife's pleasure
by casting out the bond maid and her son. In Isaac shall your seed be
called. No doubt He then goes on to say, And as for the son of this
bond woman, I will make him a great nation, because he is your seed.
How then is it said In Isaac shall your seed be called, when God calls
Ishmael also his seed? The apostle, in explaining this, says, In Isaac
shall your seed be called, that is, they which are the children of the
flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the
promise are counted for the seed. In order, then, that the children of
the promise may be the seed of Abraham, they are called in Isaac, that
is, are gathered together in Christ by the call of grace. Therefore the
father, holding fast from the first the promise which behooved to be
fulfilled through this son whom God had ordered him to slay, did not
doubt that he whom he once thought it hopeless he should ever receive
would be restored to him when he had offered him up. It is in this way
the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews is also to be understood and
explained. By faith, he says, Abraham overcame, when tempted about
Isaac: and he who had received the promise offered up his only son, to
whom it was said, In Isaac shall your seed be called: thinking that God
was able to raise him up, even from the dead; therefore he has added,
from whence also he received him in a similitude. In whose similitude
but His of whom the apostle says, He that spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all? And on this account Isaac also himself
carried to the place of sacrifice the wood on which he was to be
offered up, just as the Lord Himself carried His own cross. Finally,
since Isaac was not to be slain, after his father was forbidden to
smite him, who was that ram by the offering of which that sacrifice was
completed with typical blood? For when Abraham saw him, he was caught
by the horns in a thicket. What, then, did he represent but Jesus, who,
before He was offered up, was crowned with thorns by the Jews?
In other words, the command of God was a test of Abraham's faith and
his willingness to sacrifice everything out of obedience -- a test
which Abraham passed by doing what God asked while knowing full well
that God would not allow his son to be truly sacrificed. And all of it
foreshadowed God's giving to us His only begotten Son so that we might
have eternal life. Our clinging to that Son is the only way to end the
banishment from Paradise that we've been remembering since the
beginning of Septuagesima. In Lent, which begins on Wednesday, we will
emulate Abraham in our own small way by making our Lenten sacrifices,
showing God that we, too, are ready to sacrifice out of obedience.
Today is a good day to tell your children the story of Abraham (Genesis
12:1-9; 14:18-20; 15-18; 21:1-21; 22). Below are excerpts from the Book of Genesis
from the Catholic Children's Bible (Saint Mary's Press, 2013) that you
can use, along with coloring pages that include Creation, Adam and Eve,
Noe, and Abraham:
If you live in a place with a good dark night sky that
reveals
seemingly endless stars, take your kids outside and show them those
stars,
reminding them how God's promise to Abraham that his seed would be
great -- as numerous as the stars -- came true when Abraham and Sara's
grandson Jacob (whom God
renamed as Israel) had 12 sons, each the head of one of Israel's 12
tribes, and Abraham and Agar's son, Ishmael, also became the father of
12 tribes.
Some fun star-related things for smaller kids to do today to remind
them of God's promises to Abraham:
Make crystal
stars: get mason jars, light-colored pipe cleaners, borax powder,
string, and as many pencils as there are mason jars. If you want
colored stars, also have some food coloring at hand. Shape the pipe
cleaners into classic star shapes (or bind them together so they take
the shape of asterisks) and tie a 6" piece
of string to the top of each. Tie the other end of each string around
the middle of a
pencil. Bring water to a boil and pour into each mason jar until it's
almost full. Add a few tablespoonsful of borax powder to the water in
each mason jar and stir to dissolve. Keep adding more borax and
stirring until the solution is saturated (until it can dissolve no more
borax). If desired, you can add a drop or two of food coloring to each
jar at this point. Now situate the pencils over the tops of the jars
such that the stars hang inside the jars, suspended by their strings in
the liquid. Tighten the strings by twirling the pencil so the stars
hang in the middle of the jars without touching anything else. Leave
them overnight, and tomorrow you will have lovely crystal stars.
As to music for the day, believe it or not, there are four
pieces Bach wrote just for Quinquagesima Sunday. They are: BWV 22
(Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe); BWV 23 (Du wahrer Gott und Davids
Sohn); BWV 127 (Herr Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott); and BWV 159
(Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem). I present them all below:
BWV 22 (Jesus
nahm zu sich die Zwölfe):
BWV 23 (Du
wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn):
BWV 127 (Herr
Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott):
BWV 159 (Sehet,
wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem):
Readings
Quinquagesima Sunday
from "The
Christian Year"
by Blessed John
Keble
I do set my bow in
the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the
earth. -- Gen. ix. 13.
Sweet Dove! the softest, steadiest plume
In all the sunbright sky,
Brightening in ever-changeful bloom
As breezes change on high;--
Sweet Leaf! the pledge of peace and mirth,
"Long sought, and lately won,"
Bless'd increase of reviving Earth,
When first it felt the Sun;--
Sweet Rainbow! pride of summer days,
High set at Heaven's command,
Though into drear and dusky haze
Thou melt on either hand;--
Dear tokens of a pardoning God,
We hail ye, one and all,
As when our father's wak'd abroad,
Freed from their twelvemonths' thrall.
How joyful from th' imprisoning ark,
On the green earth they spring!
Not blither, after showers, the Lark
Mounts up with glistening wing.
So home-bound sailors spring to shore,
Two oceans safely past;
So happy souls, when life is o'er,
Plunge in th' empyreal vast.
What wins their first and finest gaze
In all the blissful field,
And keeps it through a thousand days?
Love face to face reveal'd:
Love imag'd in that cordial look
Our Lord in Eden bends
On souls that sin and earth forsook
In time to die his friends.
And what most welcome and serene
Dawns on the Patriarch's eye,
In all th' emerging hills so green,
In all the brightening sky?
What but the gentle rainbow's gleam,
Soothing the wearied sight,
That cannot bear the solar beam,
With soft undazzling light?
Lord, if our fathers turn'd to thee
With such adoring gaze,
Wondering frail man thy light should see
Without thy scorching blaze.
Where is our love, and where our hearts,
We who have seen thy Son,
Have tried thy Spirit's winning arts,
And yet we are not won?
The Son of God in radiance beam'd
Too bright for us to scan,
But we may face the rays that stream'd
From the mild Son of Man.
There, parted into rainbow hues,
In sweet harmonious strife,
We see celestial love diffuse
Its light o'er Jesus' life.
God, by His bow, vouchsafes to write
This truth in Heaven above;
As every lovely hue is Light,
So every grace is Love.
