Editor’s Note: This series on the Bible is from the book Catholicism & Scripture. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. Send the questions to the addresses listed below.
Special Course On Catholicism And Scripture (Chapter 4)
Abram, whose name God would later change to Abraham, was a shepherd living in Haran (modern-day Syria) when God called him to leave his homeland and travel to the land of Canaan (modern-day Israel). Because Abraham trusted the Lord and obeyed His command, he is called “our father in faith” in the First Eucharistic Prayer at Mass. Traveling with Abraham was his nephew Lot, who was captured by a group of kings. Abraham defeated the kings in battle, rescued Lot, and was greeted with bread and wine on his return by Melchizedek, a king and priest.
The offering of bread and wine by Melchizedek as a sacrifice to God prefigures the offering of bread and wine by Jesus, who is also a king and priest, at the Last Supper, and also the offering of bread and wine by the priest at every Mass today.
When Abraham was an old man, God said that he would become “the father of a host of nations” (Gen. 17:5) and that a sign of his special covenant with God would be the rite of circumcision of every male child when he was eight days old. That ritual was no longer required after Jesus established a new and everlasting covenant with humanity. God also told Abraham that he and his barren wife Sarah would have a child in their old age because nothing is “too marvelous for the Lord to do” (Gen. 18:14).
One day when Abraham was walking with the Lord, they looked down on the city of Sodom, where homosexual behavior had come to God’s attention. Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy the city if Abraham could find just ten innocent people there. He was unable to do so and, when the men of Sodom demanded sex from two angels in human form who were staying at Lot’s house, God rained down fire on Sodom, killing all its inhabitants, except for Lot and his family. Lot’s wife disobeyed God and looked back at the scene and was turned into a pillar of salt. St. Paul would later condemn homosexual acts in his Letter to the Romans (1:24-27).
Meanwhile, Abraham and Sarah had a boy named Isaac, and God tested their faith by telling Abraham to sacrifice the 12-year-old Isaac on an altar. But just as Abraham was about to kill his son, an angel from God told Abraham not to go through with the sacrifice. He said that Abraham’s descendants would be “as countless as the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore” (Gen. 22:17-18) because he had obeyed the Lord’s command. This incident is a preview of God providing His own Son, Jesus, as a sacrificial offering to save us from sin.
The Bible tells us that Isaac married Rebekah and they had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Because Esau was born first, he had inheritance rights, but one day when he was hungry, he gave his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Jacob later deceived his nearly blind father Isaac to give him the blessing which should have gone to Esau. The two brothers became enemies for years. What Jacob did was wrong, but the incident shows again how God can use even sinful people to accomplish His goal of salvation for all who are loyal to Him and to His purposes.
Jacob then fled his home out of fear of what Esau would do to him and went to live with his uncle Laban. On the way, Jacob stopped at a place called Bethel and had a dream of a stairway that reached from the ground to the heavens. He saw angels going up and down the stairway and heard God promise that “I will protect you wherever you go and bring you back to this land. I will never leave you until I have done what I promised you” (Gen. 28:14-15).
The symbolism of the stairway, sometimes called Jacob’s Ladder, was that Jacob’s mission was to serve as God’s link between Heaven and Earth. By virtue of our Baptism and Confirmation, we are also called to act as God’s missionaries on Earth, helping others by our words and actions to ascend the stairway to Heaven.
List of Answers:
BIRTHRIGHT
BLESSING
BREAD
CIRCUMCISION
COVENANT
ESAU
FAITH
FATHER
ISAAC
JACOB
JESUS
MELCHIZEDEK
ROMANS
SALT
SODOM
STAIRWAY
WINE
Quiz:
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