The Ordering of Love and the Awful Story of Abraham and Isaac

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

Spirituality, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Friends, if the intention of an author is to convince people to read and think about what he’s written, the author of Sunday's first reading has done his job well. We hear the deeply troubling story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. How do we reconcile God’s love with his asking Abraham to kill his own son? How should we take the fact that Abraham was willing to follow through with it? And what does this mean for how we must order our own lives?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Word on Fire is an
0:05.7	apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization using media both old and
0:11.8	new to share the faith on every continent and to facilitate an encounter with
0:17.0	Christ and His Church. The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture and bring
0:22.2	the transformative power of God's Word where it is most needed. Today we invite
0:28.3	you to join Bishop Robert Barron as he preaches the gospel and shares the
0:32.8	warmth and light of Christ with each one of us.
0:39.7	Peace be with you. Friends, for this second Sunday of Lent, the church gives us the
0:46.4	awful reading from the 22nd chapter Genesis about the binding of Isaac by his
0:53.0	father Abraham in Hebrew called the Akkadah. It's at the very center of much
0:58.0	reflection within the whole of Jewish tradition. This story has galvanized,
1:03.8	grabbed and enticed the imagination of people ever since it emerged. I'll give you a
1:10.6	really recent example of the impact it has. I don't know if you've been watching
1:13.9	this showtime drama called Your Honor. I won't go into the whole story but
1:17.9	there's a young female character who's fiercely anti-religious and when her
1:23.4	parents are kind of cajoling her, she throws this story back in their face. So
1:28.8	would you do that? If God asked you to kill me, would you do it? Love God, she
1:34.6	says, I hate God. That story got her attention. Oh, maybe 10 years ago there was a
1:41.2	mock trial, those hell I think in New York, and it was a trial of Abraham with
1:47.0	this scene in mind. They had a judge in jury and they had lawyers arguing the
1:52.1	case and they were accusing Abraham of manslaughter and the arguments were made
1:56.5	on both sides and then the jury determined, yeah, Abraham guilty. In an image of
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