GENESIS

1: 1-19 - The Divine Touch

A few of the passages throughout the Bible are so integral to the formation of our societies and our cultures that everyone is familiar with their words. Examples include John 3:16 - “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…”, or 1 Corinthians 13:4 - “Love is patient, love is kind…” However, the one passage of the Bible that incorporates every aspect of Sacred Scripture and with which we are all familiar is the very first chapter and verse found in the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” Thus initiated the relationship between Creator and creation, which culminated in the words found in the Gospel of John through the Incarnation, and the message found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians about love.

The first words that God speaks in Scripture are just as popular: “Let there be light.” If we take the very simple wording found in the first chapter of Genesis and apply it to the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we can see the similarities between the two and how they relate to one another. John begins his Gospel saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word was that which God uttered when He called the light into being. The very same Word that God used to create the Heavens and the Earth eventually took on flesh, became incarnate, and inhabited His own creation in the person of Jesus Christ. We cannot even begin to wrap our heads around how monumental such a concept is. The very person that created all things became one of His creations. He lowered Himself to our level and lived among us, but only did so out of love. Still, the divine spark within Christ was even inseparable from his humanity, which manifested in the numerous signs and wonders he performed throughout his public ministry. Hoards of crowds went after him seeking to be made whole again, healed from their ailments, rid of their demons, brought back to health. All they asked was to merely touch the tassel on his cloak, and surprisingly, it seemed to have worked, since Mark tells us that “as many as touched it were healed.” There are two images that capture the divine touch that brought about wholeness in creation: the first can be found in the Gospel, when the woman with a hemorrhage merely touched the hem of Christ and was immediately healed. This touch matters. However, the second image of the divine touch can be found in Sacred Art, in the fresco of the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. God’s finger reaches out to Adam’s, implying a touch even though there is visible distance between the two. 

The Creation of Adam gives a profound opportunity to reflect on our own creation. God made us in His image and likeness. A mere touch of the person of Christ, God Incarnate, brought certain people back to their human wholeness. But the creation of humanity, like with every other part of creation, was not done by a touch of God, but rather a word - specifically the Word, which became Incarnate in Jesus Christ. As creatures whose knowledge is often limited by our senses, the sense of touch is about as tangible and real as we can possibly desire. Even to see is not enough; like Thomas who doubted the resurrected Christ, he felt the need to touch his wounds in order to believe. But as Catholics, we quote the centurion every time we attend Mass to remind ourselves that we are not worthy of even touching the hem of Christ’s cloak; all we need is for him to say the Word, and our souls are healed and made whole. The divine touch is a gift freely given so that we may believe; the divine Word, though, is God’s creative power itself. 

Many creation myths throughout human history share certain details, but most are completely unique from one another. These myths are clearly not meant to be historical accounts, but are rather reflections of the most important aspect of sharing information at the time they were constructed - these myths are how we learn about human nature and the world we occupy. The creation story in Genesis may be the most well-known creation myth, but it is fundamentally the creation story of the Jews. If both Jews and Christians are correct in believing that the Jews were established as a group to be God’s chosen people on earth, then this creation story should give us a certain understanding about human nature and our world that is both accurate (though not necessarily in a literal sense) and divinely inspired.

This passage from the second half of the Genesis creation story focuses on the creatures created by God to inhabit the abodes He first created. On the fifth day, He created the animals. On the sixth day, He created humans. On the seventh day, He rested. By resting, the Genesis writer tells us that God sanctified and made holy the seventh day. Since we live in a society that is not defined by a Jewish foundation and that has since abandoned its Christian foundation, we have lost what it means to honor the sanctity and holiness of this seventh day. Even devout Jews today honor the Sabbath in very dedicated ways; regardless of the methods they use to rest, it should be clear to any observer that they take this seventh day and treat it differently than the six others, because they firmly believe that it is holy. In Christianity, we use this day each and every week to capture what is essentially a “mini Easter”; each Sunday, we are required to attend Mass because this is the day that the Lord set aside at the very beginning of creation to be holy. It is our day to honor Him. Because the pinnacle of Christian theology is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Sunday, this is the day we must give back to him. If it is treated like any other day, we strip this day of the holiness it received both at creation and on the day that Christ resurrected. First and foremost, though, to disregard Sunday as a day set apart for God is to break the Third Commandment: keep Holy the Lord’s Day. We cannot honor God unless we actually go to Him, both in prayer and in body, which is done by attending Mass. Additionally, Mass is where He gives Himself to us in the Eucharist; to forego Mass for any trivial reason is to both reject His gift and to refuse to give Him the company and honor He so rightly deserves from us.

The precept of the Church on Mass attendance can be misunderstood in two ways: it might be seen as being too stringent, or it might be blown off as something that doesn’t necessarily need to be followed. The excuse one might use to justify these positions is to wrongfully look at certain scenes in the Gospel, like the one in Mark 7: 1-13 where Jesus seems to lambast the Pharisees for being too rigid. The main moment, though, is when Christ quotes Isaiah: “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” The Pharisees were not exercising the Law of God, but the laws of man. The precept of the Church on honoring the seventh day through Mass is a Law of God. It is the Third Commandment. It is impossible for Catholics to not attend Mass on Sundays and still be able to set aside the day for God in some other way. A Sunday Mass is unique from other days - it is a mini Easter. If we want to honor and obey God, we must emulate Him on this Seventh Day. We must rest in Him through the solace of the Mass.

Humanity’s fall brings up many questions about the nature of God’s creation. The first of these questions is the most obvious: why would God create the world if He knew that humanity would bring corruption into it? Why would He create humanity if He knew we would fall away from Him? These questions are not addressed explicitly in Scripture; instead, God diligently and lovingly continues to craft the world until He reaches the pinnacle of His creative expression in the forming of man. There is no explanation as to why, instead God simply does. As human beings, we have been given an immense gift by God that manifests in our intellect - we always want to know why. However, there are a few moments in our lives when we totally forego a rational approach to the world around us, which most frequently occurs whenever we act out of love. There is no need for an explanation or an answer to why we do what we do if we do it for love. Love itself is the answer to the question.

Still, with our intellect, we can begin to understand why God created us even if He knew our trajectory and the future errors we would continue to commit. When we look at the description of the garden in this passage from Genesis, we realize that we were given everything through the gift of the created world. The garden was beautiful, it satisfied our needs, it was perfectly ours. Why would God even allow us to potentially lose this if He created it specifically for us? He could have decided not to give Adam and Eve the directive regarding the Tree of Knowledge, but He did so anyway, knowing full well that they would soon disobey Him and sever themselves from the gift of Paradise. The explanation to this can be found in the words of Christ when he preached on cleanliness, a strange sentiment that seems contrary to what we know about creation: “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” According to these words, Adam and Eve defiled themselves, they were not influenced by anything outside of themselves. This can be difficult to accept - how could God create something that defiles itself like human beings? The serpent in the garden is a perfect example of this. It was a creation of God, an expression of the Evil One, whom we call Satan. Satan was once a beloved creature of God who was instilled with the same reflection of divinity that was given to humans because Satan was once an angel of God. Both humans and angels share in the greatest touch of God’s love which He bestowed on only His most beloved creatures - free will.

It was Lucifer’s free will that allowed him to turn away from God. It was Adam and Eve’s individual free wills that led them to eat the fruit. It is our free will that can either lead us to sin or allow us to choose God. It is ultimately free will that has the potential to defile us from within, which can spill out to the world around us. As paradoxical as it might sound, the very thing that “defiles” according to Christ is the most perfect reflection of the love by which we were created. There is no greater expression of love than to give yourself entirely to another and not expect anything in return. God expressed this by giving us the ability to choose to love Him back. If He didn’t, we would be slaves or puppets to His Divine Will. But we are not doomed by this gift, because God created us to love. Through our free will, we can love Him back. To reciprocate His love, though, is impossible; perhaps this is why we feel it is “natural” to use the gift of our free will to reject Him. He doesn't care how we love Him back, though; He desires that we choose Him and love Him, but it must be our choice. This is the greatest and most pure form of love.

The beginning words of Chapter 4 in the Gospel of Matthew are also the first words we must reflect upon as we enter into our own spiritual deserts: “At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” Jesus’ time in the desert is the basis of the penitential nature of the Lenten season, the embodiment of those penitential moments in our own lives that manifest themselves at different times. The reason the Gospel writers give for Christ going into the desert, though, is so that he would be tempted by the devil. Why did Jesus need to be tempted by the devil and why do we model the most difficult moments of our own lives and the significant season of Lent after this period of temptation? The answer lies within these words of the Gospel - Christ was led into the desert by the Spirit, and we are empowered to face our temptations with the help of the Spirit, as well.

One of the most famous passages in Scripture can be found in Psalm 23: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” We know that Christ entered the desert for 40 days primarily so that he could focus on praying. As a Jew who was well-versed in Scripture, he must have uttered these words from Psalm 23 often. Christ’s prayers were often addressed to the Father because of their intensely intimate relationship with one another. However, the love between the Father and the Son is considered its own Divine Person, unique from the other two - we name it the Holy Spirit. As we read in the Gospel, it was this love between Father and Son that led Christ into the desert to be tempted. It was love expressed through obedience to the Father that made Christ desire to strengthen himself for the mission that laid ahead of him after his time in the desert. It was love for us that led the Father to send His Son to our world, and that love fortified and strengthened him when he needed it most in the face of temptation. We hear about the Spirit, the personification of Love itself, also in this passage from Genesis, when God blew into the nostrils of man the breath of life. It was the Spirit who animated us, who sent Christ into the desert, and who is with us in our own wilderness journeys. The image of Spirit as breath is crucial - the Hebrew word for breath or wind, ruach, is also the word for God’s Holy Spirit. The word for life or animation in Hebrew is nephesh, which originally means “throat”. Our souls were instilled within us when the breath of life, the Holy Spirit was breathed into the nostrils of Adam so that he would breathe as well. Our earthly life ends when our own breath, a mere reflection of the Holy Breath of God, is no more. 

While being tempted in the desert, Christ was empowered to say no to temptation because the Breath of Life resided within him. If the Spirit led him into the desert, then the Spirit remained there with him. As we enter into our own spiritual deserts modeled after Christ’s time in the desert, whether we choose to go through them or whether we find ourselves within their midst, we can be assured that the Spirit remains with us. If we fall back into the temptations we seek to overcome, though, we risk suffering the consequences of the Fall, when the breath of life was withdrawn from us at our death. We undergo difficult moments in life so that we may experience life and humanity at its fullest, in perfect harmony with God. By doing so, we participate in the love that exists between Father and Son. We participate in the Spirit. However, we must first acknowledge the Spirit’s constant presence throughout our journey in life.

At the heart of our greatest mistakes as human beings, we can find the greatest presence of God. Ironically, God seems to work most in our lives when we get to such a point in our iniquities that we become totally helpless; He never leaves us destitute or helpless if we are in such a state because He knows how powerless we have made ourselves from sin. The best example of this is the moment of Christ’s crucifixion: God became one of us, yet His earthly life ended at the hands of pure cruelty. Death for Christ was not due to age, the natural elements, or any sort of accident; it was a deliberate act done through the very worst of humanity. Regardless, it was this moment that God used to give humanity its greatest gift - victory over death through Christ. 

The scene of the crucifixion is horrendous to think about and to even read in the Gospels. The greatest difficulty of Christ’s death should not simply be the scope of torture and suffering that Christ had to endure, but that this was something that could have been avoided entirely had we not given into sin. The situation of Christ offering himself initially does not make very much sense; how and why would the God of the Universe undergo such a horrific thing for the sake of the people who are the cause of it? This ought to reveal something to us - our sins and the stain of Original Sin is something that only God can remove from us. While it’s true that Adam and Eve made an active choice in the garden to eat of the fruit, God’s greatest punishment in the scene of the Fall that we hear from this passage in Genesis is bestowed on the source of the fall, the tempter - the serpent. There are three punishments meted out here, one to the serpent, one to the woman, and one to the man. The serpent’s punishment is total abasement through the removal of its limbs and the forcing of eating dirt; in this punishment for the very source of the temptation that led to sin is no possible redemption. The woman’s punishment is the pain of childbirth; while this is unfortunate, the pain of childbirth ends with the gift of a child, indicating that God still desired redemption for Eve. Humanity’s punishment is toil and death; through Adam, pain and suffering was introduced into the world, and death now forces us to return to the earth. Initially, there doesn’t seem to be any redemption in Adam’s punishment, until Jesus Christ’s own death and resurrection, giving us a chance to overcome a spiritual death. Toil remains, but we can sanctify our work by giving it back as an offering to God.

The one who is truly punished without a chance for redemption is the serpent. The first notable detail here is that the serpent is not human, and God implies that it should have known better than the humans whom it led into temptation. However, the most notable detail is that the serpent was the source of temptation. Even when we sin and suffer the consequences of our choice to sin, God offers us a chance to be redeemed while empowering us to eradicate the source of what tempts us and leads us to sin. We play a role in that, though; the greatest sign of redemption in the entire narrative of the Fall of Man is in the punishment of the serpent. God promises that there will be enmity between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman. We call this the protoevangelium, the first promise of the Messiah, the first promise of Christ, and the first promise of redemption for humanity. Through Christ (the offspring of “the woman”), we must battle against that which leads us to sin. We cannot do this on our own; we must pray and give ourselves over to Christ, because it was through him that we gained redemption. In our greatest pains, God lifts us up through His Son.

The earth is a fragile place. From earthquakes to wildfires, floods to droughts, or even cosmic impacts, the planet on which we live is susceptible to certain events that can completely alter or even wipe out human civilization. Cataclysmic events that have the potential to wipe out all of humanity are completely beyond our control, which can make us feel powerless. This can be a sobering reminder for us that every single individual life is fragile, but every individual life is a reflection of humanity as a whole. Within a single person, there is a conscience, an intellect, an ability to discern right from wrong, and a will to survive. All of those things can be found in human nature and humanity as a whole; unfortunately, humanity has used these things to sin against God. After the flood, God even says, “the desires of man’s heart are evil from the start.” That flood wiped out every living thing except for those on Noah’s Ark.

The flood narrative in Genesis is not merely a myth about prehistory; it reveals substantial details about God’s relationship with humanity. God created the Heavens and the Earth. He created the inhabitants of the Heavens and the Earth, including humans, who turned against Him. The wickedness that developed from the Fall led God to bring about the flood, a major cataclysm that can be found in the creation myths of cultures throughout the world. The fact that we hear about this flood from multiple sources around the world indicates that it is possible, maybe even likely, that something truly grand in scale happened that altered the makeup of human civilization on earth. To build back humanity from such an event is wildly improbable, yet it had to have happened in order for us to repopulate and take control of every corner of the world. Our very limited understanding of world history might tell us that we have only slowly evolved from animalistic brutes to the humans we are today, but the myths of Genesis tell us that humans have always had the same intellect and the same powers; perhaps we also always had the potential to create true civilizations that were wiped out when our hubris and pride became too much. If this is true or not, we can be assured of one thing from Scripture: God has made a promise, to us and to Himself, that He will never permit another cataclysmic event like the flood to wipe out humanity. He has chosen that this iteration of human development - our age - will be the last. This is the age when He established a relationship with the Israelites. This is the age when He sent His Son to undo the effects of the Fall from the very beginning of humanity. This is the age when He established His Church that would never be overcome by the powers of this world. This is the age that will see the Second Coming of Christ, the end of the earth as we know it, and the establishment of a new Heaven and a new Earth.

The Christian doctrine on the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ, teaches that it is not an event of cataclysm, chaos, and pure destruction. Those may be the first signs, but the end of this last age will be the fulfillment of a goal established at the Fall - humanity will be reunited perfectly with God. In Mark’s Gospel, there is a scene where Jesus heals a blind man, who only first sees humans imperfectly as walking trees, then ultimately has his sight perfectly restored. In this last age, we are like the blind man: as of now, we are having our sight of the end restored, though not completely. Soon, God will eventually lift the veil and the truth will be fully revealed. To be in the age of Christ and his Church is a gift. We ought to use our time on this earth emulating him and his love, which was God’s desire from the very first moment of our creation. 

When God makes a covenant with His people, He makes sure that His promises are clear and that He will uphold them in their entirety. In His covenant with Noah, He promises never again to destroy all life on earth by flood. In His covenant with Abraham, He promises that Abraham will be the father of many nations and that He will have land promised to Him. In His covenant with Moses, He promises to set the Israelites apart as a holy people through the Law. In each one of these covenants, God does not just make these promises to their recipients; He offers a very visible and mysterious sign so that everyone may acknowledge that these promises will be kept. These appeared as a rainbow for Noah, a fire pot and a torch for Abraham, and the tablets of the Law for Moses. Through these signs, God made sure that His promises were seen as trustworthy long before they were able to reveal themselves to their recipients.

The scene of God’s covenant with Abraham is quite frightening: there are carcasses split in half and laid out to make a path, while Abraham is frightened by the trance which he is put under that envelops him with a terrifying darkness. God manifests Himself physically in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch that walks down the path of the carcass. God is indicating to Abraham what is to be expected of His people from this point forward - as we pass through death and destruction that might frighten us or make us question God’s plan, He is there with us, and He has forged that path before us, serving as a source of light and comfort along the way. This is indicative of the earthly Christian life, filled with trials and difficulties. But Christ indicates to the three Apostles during the Transfiguration of what awaits Him and subsequently what awaits us at the end of that journey. The Transfiguration gives the world a glimpse of Christ in his glorified form, which will be revealed in perpetuity at the Resurrection. All the trials and difficulties that God’s people have undergone and will continue to undergo will eventually pass away, and we will be left in the presence of God in His full glory.

The New and Everlasting Covenant, the Covenant that God makes with His people through Jesus Christ, His only Son, contains every necessary promise God ever needs to offer. Through Jesus, God’s promise of sacrificial love and participation in the Beatific Vision is perfected in such a way that no other covenant with God will ever be necessary again. As Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians, He will change our earthly body to conform with His glorified body; through the glimpse of the Transfiguration and the presence of those two human figures with Christ, it was revealed what awaits us if we hold up our promise of the covenant - to love God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Those of us who are genuinely religious orient our lives toward the belief that there is something more to our lives than only that which is immediately known. The day-to-day actions of our lives are far more significant to the state of our souls and our eternal state, because we have a special understanding of why we exist and what we ought to do with our lives. On the one hand, this keeps us on the path of living out a more ethical life, being more aware of how we treat others, making the correct decisions, and not taking anything for granted. Compared to a secular, humanist, or especially hedonistic lifestyle, we quite simply take things more seriously. While the rest of the world does not need this advice, we as serious and devout Catholics ought to remind ourselves of something important once in a while: life should also lend itself to joy and lightheartedness when appropriate. 

Occasionally, there are individuals who report having “near-death experiences,” in which medically they die for a brief moment in time, yet are entirely aware of an existence outside of their earthly life. As Christians, we already believe in life after death, but these first-hand experiences offer a unique perspective; whether they are real or not, near-death experiences unquestionably change the mindsets of those who report experiencing them. An interesting detail that a great deal of them share is the feeling that, as soon as they die, their state of being dead is rather uninteresting. Once they die, they report that it feels as if one just moves from one state of being to the next. It is in some way familiar to them. Still, the experience of dying has a profound impact on them when they come back, taking their life and their decisions more seriously. Ironically, the surprisingly familiar experience of life after death has the power to radically transform the current lives of these people when they come back. In our own faith, we are familiar with this idea: the call of the individual to a new mission is not always a mystical and overwhelming experience. Consider the call of Abraham - as an old man, nearly 100 years old, God reveals Himself and explains the new trajectory for Abraham’s life, including a new covenant, a new homeland, a new child, and a vast line of descendants. Abraham’s response is to laugh to himself at the sheer absurdity of the situation; in fact, Abraham is told by God to name his son Isaac, which means “He laughs.” It seems God both wants us to embrace how humorous the calling to a new life can be and participates in celebrating the humor with us.

Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, was a very serious figure. The life of a Christian modeled after the teachings and actions of Christ is very serious. Our own actions and decisions in this life are very serious. However, Christ taught us not to worry, to trust that God provides, to live out our faith in joy. When Christ called his followers or healed those who needed healing, he radically transformed who they were because he gave them a new mission in life. They were still human. They still had good days and bad days, cried and laughed, took things seriously and took things lightheartedly. Our faith is meant to transform us into the embodiment of love; joy is a fruit of love, and joy is manifested in experiencing the little things in life just as they are. As we hear in Ecclesiastes, there is a time to weep and a time to laugh. Do not forget to enjoy yourself in life. It’s okay to take a step back and, like Abraham, laugh at the absurdity of how God will radically change our course in life.

Knowing someone’s name is far more powerful than most people realize. A name certainly speaks volumes about a person, such as their culture, background, religion, what their parents felt when they were born or what they wanted their child to live up to, etc. But a name is not just indicative of the person who owns the name; it gives a certain amount of power to those around them to know them more personally. Think of the people in your life with whom you are on a first name basis. You have given this person enough attention that the thing that identifies them individually occupies valuable space in your mind. Sometimes, this takes a while to get to know because being good with remembering names is a rare gift. If someone remembers your name, it means that they were intentional when you shared it with them and they kept that information with them.

Nearly everyone owns a name that was given to them by someone else. A name that we choose for ourselves is less indicative of who we are because the name might symbolize something we desire for ourselves. But a name given to us by someone else, especially a name that we grow up with, indicates who we have always been. We have conformed our personalities and our actions to the name that predated any of our personal choices. If we undergo a name change, it signifies a significant moment in our lives that changes our trajectory. Some religious orders change the names of their postulants upon entering. The Pope chooses a new name for himself upon ascending to the office, although the severity of this position is heavily influenced by the Holy Spirit. Many figures in the Bible undergo a name change (chosen specifically by God) to indicate their new mission. In this passage of Genesis, for example, Abram is now addressed as Abraham (“Father of Nations”). Later, Jacob is changed to Israel (“Struggles with God”), which indicates not only his own personal life but the trajectory of the nation named after him. Simon is now called Peter (“Rock”) by Jesus, with the explanation that he is the foundation on which Christ’s Church is built. The name that was given to us by our parents sets up the life we will lead until we are called to a new life by God. 

Still, names have power. It would be inappropriate to address a superior by their first name because your relationship with them is not as personal. By calling someone who is deserving of respect by an informal address, you are attempting to artificially close the gap between your place and their’s. Likewise, many times in Scriptures, angels refuse to give their name, indicating the gap between their power and ours (This is also why we must avoid naming our Guardian Angels, who protect us, not the other way around). But God is different. Just as he came down to us by becoming a man, he also revealed His name to us. Jesus was the name of God made man, but even he called himself the Holy Name: I AM. Although God has authority over us, he shared this name to reveal that He deeply desires a personal relationship with humanity. We cannot and should not throw this name around nonchalantly. Instead, what matters is that He shared His name and that He desires for us to know Him in this personal way.

In this passage from Genesis, Abraham encounters God through the manifestation of three visitors. Like Abraham who laughed at the absurdity of God’s call in the previous chapter, Sarah laughs at God here because the three visitors say she will have a child in her old age. Sarah attempts to deny it and lie by saying she didn’t laugh, but God’s answer in the voice of the visitors is blunt: “yes, you did.” We can be afraid when reacting naturally to the things of our faith like Sarah did; on the surface, certain teachings of the Church may seem ridiculous - why do we believe bread actually turns into the true body of Jesus? Why do we believe in God as Three Persons when we could more easily explain God as only one person? Why does the Church promulgate moral teachings that are not only difficult to live by, but also contrary to what secular society teaches? The beauty of our faith though is that we are not forced to take on these beliefs without the opportunity to question; in fact, these teachings require questioning in order to fully understand. 

When we wrestle with Church teaching, we are having an immediate reaction against what is being taught to us by our faith. We have two options here: we can deny that we occasionally have problems with what to believe, or we can begin to investigate why we are struggling with them. If we are too scared to admit when we have a hard time believing in the faith, we are behaving exactly like Sarah who immediately denied laughing. But God did not want Sarah to cower in fear from Him, nor does He want us to blindly follow the teachings of the Church. He wants us to come to the realization that His words, expressed through the Church, are the Truth, and He wants us to use our human rationality to get there. God seems to really embrace the identity of Abraham’s family as those who laugh at the absurdity of their calling. Abraham laughed, Sarah laughed, and God instructed them to name their child Isaac, which means “He laughed.” It seems that God was laughing with them. This is further supported when Christ went about his public ministry: he laughed with those who laughed at the absurdities of life, and he wept with those who wept at their struggles and losses. In every sense of the word, God showed His solidarity with us, whether it was through the person of Jesus Christ, the three visitors to Abraham, or in our own daily lives through the Holy Spirit.

When we want to be in solidarity with another person, we meet them where they are. We comfort them in ways to prevent them from feeling as if they need to change for us. God didn’t want Sarah to stop laughing or to claim she never laughed; He wanted to laugh with her. When we are in pain and suffering and we want to express that through anger towards God, God does not want us to feign contentment; He wants us to embrace our emotions so that He may share in them with us. When the Centurion in Matthew’s Gospel wanted his servant to be healed, Christ wanted to go to him. Instead, the Centurion felt he was unworthy, which Christ embraced as a sign of his faith. We recite those words every time before we receive communion. Like the healing of the Centurion’s servant, our souls are radically transformed in the Sacrament because we allow Christ to literally become one with us. We open ourselves up and allow him to express the solidarity he so desperately desires to share with us. When God wants to laugh with you, mourn with you, celebrate with you, and love with you, do not deny Him the opportunity like Sarah attempted. Instead, open yourself up to allow God to become one with you.

The practice of religion is innately human. From the very beginning of human history, religion was an expression of a community,  usually so that the immaterial (gods, spirits, etc.) could be “reached” in a physical way. For whatever reason, sacrifice has always been an integral part of religions throughout history. This was an opportunity for communities to give up something important to show gratitude or to appease the gods they worshipped. Sometimes, this even meant sacrificing members of their own community.

When we look at our own religious history, starting in the Old Testament, it is possible that human sacrifice was very much a familiar concept to figures like Abraham. When Abraham receives word from God that he should sacrifice his own son, he decides to do so in honor of God. This may sound horrifying to us now, but it tells us two things - first, although it may have been difficult, the fact that Abraham chose to do it tells us it may have been a common practice at his time among the religions in his region; and second, his son was especially important to him since it took him and his wife so long to have any children. To be willing to sacrifice the one thing that was most important to him shows immense obedience to God.

As we know, God stops Abraham before he is about to sacrifice his son. It may incite anger in the heart to hear that God would even ask for that in the first place, until we receive scripture in its fullness and learn of the story of Christ. Unlike the other gods of history who demand sacrifices for themselves, the one true God not only shows us he does not want us to sacrifice each other for Him, He takes on the role asked of Abraham, and offers his own son for us. Why? While religion in general may exist for the sake of praise and gratitude to the divine for the gifts we are given, we receive those gifts because God loves us.

There are many instances throughout Scripture where God communicates with certain people through dreams. These instances are worth reflecting on - God could have communicated with these individuals through other methods that would have been more clear. Instead, he spoke in dreams, which by our own experiences, we know may lead to more questions rather than answers.

Dreams may be confusing to us sometimes. They can be intense experiences that seem outside of our control, but we know that they come to us from deep within our own individual conscience. This may be used as a way to count out dreams as being a method of communication by God until we remember that God instills his Spirit within those who open themselves to Him. It is the Spirit that exists inwardly that communicates to us inwardly. When we hear stories of individuals who answer a calling, they claim that there is an inward feeling that cannot be ignored. It seems as though it is this inward Spirit that God pours out into our hearts that enkindles those flames within our hearts.

What about the figures in Scripture who are described as communicating to God through their dreams? Surely, every person recounted in Scripture dreamt throughout their lives, but very few of them are described as communicating to God through dreams. The reason we focus on these specific stories is because these figures are deeply moved by the dreams they have. When the dreams are instructional, these figures follow the instruction and go to where God tells them. It is not so much the dream that is communication with God, but rather it is that unrelenting internal push that cannot be ignored. It is the Spirit within us, urging us to go forward. 

Parents are a significant aspect of our understanding of the Christian faith. Our understanding of God Himself in the Trinity can only be understood when we use the language of a father and a son. The foundation of the Church as we know it is the family, composed of parents with authority and obedient children. When God came into the world as one of us, He did not come in mystery or miracles; rather, He came humbly like any of us would through a mother who gave birth to him. As he grew up, he learned just like we do. He learned how to love from his mother and how to serve through his foster father. Our relationship as Catholics with Mary is properly venerative as she deserves, but we can sometimes neglect just how formative Saint Joseph was to the literal formative years of Jesus Christ, when he learned how to be himself and when he came into his identity as the Messiah. 

Joseph actually plays a fundamental role both in this story from Genesis and in the Gospel. Genesis tells us of the other famous biblical figure named Joseph, the one from the Old Testament. Scripture has plenty of examples of Old Testament characters either prefiguring or paving the way for characters from the New Testament: Adam, Abel, Seth, and Melchizedek all prefigure Jesus, Eve prefigures Mary, Elijah prefigures John the Baptist, the 12 tribes of Israel prefigure the 12 apostles, etc. Unique in this case, however, is that Joseph prefigures Joseph, the only time the one who is prefigured has the same name as the one who prefigures. The story of Joseph in the Old Testament follows a beloved son of Israel who is forced into slavery and must rise up to greatness, saving his people from famine, and showing love and forgiveness to his brothers. The story of Joseph in the New Testament, although there is very little to be said of his background, follows a humble man who is thrust into a situation of potential greatness for which he was not prepared. In both cases, Joseph was set apart from his brothers of Israel. In both cases, he was particularly beloved for being a child of an old Israel. When it comes to the foster father of Jesus, Israel had been in a state of long expectation for deliverance. There must have been a virtue and a humility in Saint Joseph, manifested in his acceptance of God’s Will, that was not seen in any other man at any point in Israel’s history until him. Serendipitously, he lived at the same time as the greatest and holiest human woman, giving the opportunity for Israel to finally receive their long-awaited Messiah, handed on to them through the hands of the two most loving and perfect parents in history.

Joseph taught Jesus his trade, which Jesus would have undertaken until abandoning it for his public ministry. They were builders, specifically builders of homes for their communities. Jesus would have learned both the trade and the prayers of their Jewish faith from his foster father. Jesus preached publicly the one verse from Psalm 118 that perfectly encapsulated these two things he learned from Joseph: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” We may not know much about the life story of Saint Joseph, but if the Old Testament Joseph is any indication, he may have experienced rejection himself. Jesus learned from his earthly father what it meant to assent to God’s Will. He learned from his Heavenly Father who were the ones that accepted him as their own when the world rejected him. Saint Joseph embodies fatherhood because he accepted our humbled Lord and made him his own. Whenever you reflect on the story of Joseph from the Old Testament or Saint Joseph, remember how God prepares the way for us through those who came before us, and pray for the intercession of our first father of the Church, that he may guide us to build up the House of God just as he would have taught Jesus in his youth.

Throughout our lives, we encounter people who constantly form us into our own individual selves. Although many of our relationships form us in a positive way, every once in a while we may encounter individuals who wrong us in a significant way; these relationships are especially damaging when we make ourselves vulnerable to these individuals out of love. The danger of these types of relationships is that it could mis-form us by invoking bitterness and anger, while at the same time shutting us off to others who may serve as positive influences for us.

What do we do when we encounter these relationships? In the book of Genesis, we hear of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his own brothers but worked his way up the Egyptian ruling class, and encounters his brothers after years of separation when they are at his mercy. What he tells them should be our response to these same situations: “Do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you” (Genesis 45:5). It may be easier said than done, and it may even be trite, but Joseph not only forgives his brothers, but also recognizes the will of God being accomplished despite the sin of his brothers. 

This is what we must understand when we encounter difficult people in life - we all have free will, which allows us to act as charitably or as mean-spirited as we want. God does not force our actions, and He certainly does not cause evil for His own will to be done. Rather, in His infinite power and wisdom, He works through the free will of others, even when they act in sin, so that when we choose to do what He wills, we can. Joseph recognizes that because his brothers abandoned him out of anger, he saved lives in Egypt. In the same way, Jesus instructs his Apostles to continue their work even in the face of rejection, because those who are willing to listen will listen. It is then our responsibility to be both the ones who listen and the ones who do the will of God.

There are multiple figures within Scripture who respond to God with the words, “Here I am” after they are called out by Him. This acknowledgement is a simple response, but it is used only by major figures before a monumental mission. Abraham gives this response before he is asked to sacrifice Isaac; Jacob gives this response before he is instructed to return to the land of his kindred; Moses gives this response at the burning bush, before he is instructed to free the Israelites from Egypt; Samuel gives this response when God calls him as a young boy in the house of Levi; and Isaiah gives this response when he accepts the calling to be a prophet.

These men gave this response as an acceptance of their missions. But there are two times we hear the response “Here I am” outside of these Old Testament figures responding to God. Joseph responds this way to his father Jacob as an acceptance of the instruction to go find his brothers. It is here when his brothers take Joseph and sell him into slavery. In the New Testament, a disciple of Jesus named Ananias responds this way to God as an acceptance of the instruction to visit Saul (later Paul) to restore his eyesight. In the case of Joseph and Ananias, these men are sent into situations of danger - for Joseph, despite being unaware, he will be forced into slavery but eventually become a great leader for his people by obeying his father’s instructions. For Ananias, he will go after a man in Saul who has been persecuting the Christians, but will be instrumental in Paul’s conversion through baptism. 

Often in our own lives, we may feel called to go and do something that we don’t want to do. That calling is motivated by a sense of duty and responsibility - it is instilled in us by God through the Holy Spirit. Even when it seems as if we are jumping into the unknown or walking into dangerous situations, we must go where God sends us. By doing God’s will, we further sanctify everyone around us. We must respond to this calling with, “Here I am.”

In his famous book series The Chronicles of Narnia, author C.S. Lewis attempted to use the very basic story of Christianity, specifically that of Jesus Christ, as the template for the foundation of his own story. There are clear allusions between the Gospel and these novels, but none more clear than the allusion between Jesus and the character Aslan. Most interestingly about this character is the fact that Lewis did not choose to depict his Christ-like character as possibly a human king or even a more biblically appropriate figure such as a lamb - Aslan is a lion. The philosopher Peter Kreeft, a devoted follower of the works of C.S. Lewis, considered this to be a deliberate choice in order to emphasize the majesty and fear that God Incarnate may induce. Kreeft explained that, as a lion, Aslan was frightening, but as a figure of Christ, he was good. 

We tend to separate fear-inducing things from those things we consider good, yet many of us have encountered deeply intimidating people in our own lives who were not intimidating for their potential danger, but rather for their potential power. These are also often the people we admire and respect the most, such as a master teacher, coach, boss, or someone who simply is in a position to form us. Just like Aslan, Christ is frightening, but good. It was the fear of the Lord that humbled his disciples into following him. It was also this fear of who he was that led insecure and weak men to attempt to put him to death, as was the case with Herod, or to actually put him to death, as was the case with Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate. Power induces fear, and there is hardly a more powerful image than a lion. We might want to view Christ more as a lamb, who is sacrificed on our behalf and who warmly and lovingly walks among his own, but Christ is also a lion, ready to use his power over his kingdom when the moment calls for it. His victory over sin and death was the end of a battle that had raged since the first sin; he dealt the final blow with ferocity and power, just as a lion goes after its prey with no hesitation because it is confident in its power. The image of Christ as a lion, however, is not one created by C.S. Lewis in the 20th century; it’s one of our oldest images of Christ because it belonged to him even over a thousand years before his birth.

In the genealogy of Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew beginning with Abraham, every name mentioned in this genealogy is incredibly significant. But there is one name that is also the focus of this passage from Genesis: Judah. Judah was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, and his descendants thus made up one of the twelve tribes. The twelve tribes of Israel were the basis of Jewish culture and identity, and everything in the life of a Jew was tied back to their individual tribe. Jesus was a descendant, and therefore a member of the tribe, of Judah. Judah was set apart by his father Jacob to be a king and ruler among his brothers, but Jacob particularly analogizes his son to a lion. The lion of Judah, a title given to the expected Messiah and now to the person of Christ, is one who knows his kingly identity, and accepts the homage of his people. Yet the Lion of Judah, frightening but good, chooses to appear to his own as a sacrificial lamb. With the power of a lion against his enemies and the love of a lamb for his own, our Savior will always be victorious. But he fights for us. He defends and protects us. His power and goodness should never be doubted.