8 March 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
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“Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.” Genesis 22:8
Today we begin the most solemn page of Abraham's life. “After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’” Then comes the command no father could bear to hear: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” Abraham does not argue, as he argued for Sodom. He rises early, cuts the wood and walks for three days. Then the narrator slows down: “Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.” Isaac asks the question that hangs over the whole Old Testament: “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham answers with a faith larger than he knows: “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” The Letter to the Hebrews says that Abraham “considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead.”
The Church has always read this story with her eyes on Golgotha. St Melito of Sardis taught that Isaac carrying the wood up the mountain was a figure of Christ carrying his Cross, and that the ram caught in the thicket pointed to the Lamb who would be offered in our place (in substance). What Abraham was spared, the Father did not spare himself: he gave his only Son, whom he loves. In the Gospel the disciples of John and of the Pharisees ask why Jesus' disciples do not fast. Jesus answers: “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” Our Great Fast lives in those days: we fast because the Bridegroom was taken away to the Cross, and we fast in hope because he will come again. And the fast is not a patch on an old garment; it is new wine that needs a new heart. St Paul gives a simple rule for the new life: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” He praises the Corinthians for keeping “the traditions just as I handed them on to you,” and asks for order and reverence when the Church gathers to pray. The customs of veiling belonged to the Corinth of his day, and many women in our Church still cover their heads in prayer as a sign of reverence; but the heart of his teaching is that “in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman,” and “all things come from God.”
Theme: “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
Abraham's test on the road to Moriah, the wood on Isaac's shoulders, and the fast of the Bridegroom's friends.
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”” Isaiah 6:8
“By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son,” Hebrews 11:17
Apply: Begin each morning this week by saying: Here I am, Lord.
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7
“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29
Apply: Look at a crucifix for a few minutes this week and thank the Father for the Lamb he provided.
“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;” Joel 2:12
“The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” Luke 5:35
Apply: Offer one hidden fast this week in memory of the Passion.
Abraham trusted that God would provide; God provided his own Son.
We fast as friends of the Bridegroom, with sorrow for our sins and hope in his return.
Take-home resolution: Say “Here I am” each morning and keep one hidden fast for the rest of the Great Fast.
Dear friends, today the Book of Genesis opens its most moving chapter: after these things God tested Abraham. God called, Abraham, and he said, Here I am (Genesis 22:1). Then God asked him to offer his only son, Isaac, whom he loved.
Abraham obeyed without understanding. He laid the wood on Isaac's shoulders and carried the fire and the knife himself, and the two of them walked on together (Genesis 22:6). Isaac asked: where is the lamb? Abraham said: God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son (Genesis 22:8). The Fathers saw here Christ carrying the wood of the Cross up the hill of Calvary.
In the Gospel Jesus says that the wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, but the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast (Luke 5:34–35). We are in those days. We fast because our Bridegroom was taken from us to the Cross, and we fast in hope because he is risen and will return.
St Paul says: be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Abraham's trust, Isaac's patience and Paul's example all point to Jesus. In these last weeks of the Fast, let us say each morning: Here I am, Lord. God himself will provide. Amen.
Children, God asked Abraham to do something very hard, and Abraham trusted him. Isaac carried the wood up the mountain, just like Jesus carried his Cross. When Isaac asked, where is the lamb?, his father said: God will give the lamb. God gave us Jesus, the Lamb of God. Tomorrow when you wake up, say: Here I am, Jesus!
Lord God, you tested Abraham and he answered, Here I am. You did not let him lose his son, but you did not spare your own Son and gave him up for us all. Give us Abraham's trust when your ways are dark, let us walk with Christ as Isaac walked with his father, and keep our fast as the friends of the Bridegroom, until he comes again. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
In this week of the Great Fast the Church walks with Abraham up the mountain. God asks for the son of the promise, and Isaac asks the question that hangs over the whole Bible: where is the lamb? The epistle (1 Corinthians 11:1–10) opens with “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”, and goes on to order in worship at Corinth, with customs of that time about head coverings. In the Gospel Jesus calls himself the bridegroom and says he will be taken away. Both the lamb and the fast point the same way, toward the Cross.
Setting.
Isaac is the son Abraham waited for through long years, and God has said, “it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you” (21:12). Now God seems to ask back the promise itself. The narrator tells us at once that this is a test, so the reader knows what Abraham does not. Jewish tradition calls the chapter the Aqedah, the Binding, from a verb in v. 9.
People in the ancient world around Israel knew of child sacrifice. The Law and the prophets condemn it without reserve (Leviticus 18:21; Jeremiah 7:31), and this story ends with God stopping the hand.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love” (22:2)
Each phrase tightens the grip, and the name comes only after “your only son”. Moriah appears again in 2 Chronicles 3:1 as the hill where Solomon built the Temple, so Israel's later worship stands on this ground.
“we will worship, and then we will come back to you” (22:5)
The “we” is plural in Hebrew. It may be only what a father could bring himself to say, but Hebrews 11:19 hears faith in it: “He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead”.
“God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” (22:8)
Literally, “God will see to the lamb for himself”. Abraham does not know how. He answers his son with trust, and “the two of them walked on together”. Christians hear the answer in John 1:29: “Here is the Lamb of God”.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sees this test as the final purifying of Abraham's faith, by which the father of believers is made like the Father who will not spare his own Son (CCC 2572). Origen, in his homilies on Genesis, says that Isaac carrying the wood on his shoulders is a figure of Christ carrying his own Cross (in substance). The Church reads this chapter as promise and shadow of the Passion, and honours it first as the real obedience of a real man.
Setting.
The scene follows the banquet at Levi's house (5:27–32), where Jesus eats with tax collectors. The critics now raise a question about fasting. Fasting was a serious and good practice. The Law itself commands a day of self-denial on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29–31), and devout people added other fasts, as the Pharisee in Luke 18:12 fasts twice a week. Jesus does not mock this. He asks what time it is.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?” (5:34)
A wedding in that world could last for days, and no guest would fast at it. Jesus does not argue about rules. He tells them who is present.
“The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” (5:35)
Here is the Christian reason for fasting. We do not fast to earn God's attention. We fast out of love and longing for a Bridegroom who gave himself up, and whose return we await.
“But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” (5:38)
What Jesus brings cannot simply be added as a patch on old habits of heart. This is no contempt for the Old Testament, which he came to fulfil (Matthew 5:17). In v. 39 he gently notes how human it is to prefer what we are used to, and to say, “The old is good.”
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism notes that the Lord referred to himself as the bridegroom, and that the Church is his bride (CCC 796). The Didache, a very early Christian writing, already speaks of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. The Church counts her seasons of penance and each Friday among the intense moments of her penitential practice, in memory of the Lord's death (CCC 1438).
If Jesus said his friends could not fast, why do we fast?
He said it of the days when he walked among them, and he added that they would fast when he was taken away. We live in those days: he is truly with us, above all in the Holy Qurbono, and yet we still await his coming. So the Church both fasts and feasts.