My Dear People, 

The Readings today have to do with mountain experiences. Abraham was told by God to go up Mt. Moriah and offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. Obediently, Abraham prepared the altar. But God intervened and said to him: “Do not do the least thing to Isaac. I know how devoted you are to God.” Abraham looked about and saw a ram caught by his horns in the thicket and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son. God then promised Abraham: “since you did not withhold from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.”

By undergoing the test which God presented, Abraham attains perfection. And he is now in position for God to reaffirm in a solemn way the promise He made previously. The sacrifice of Isaac has features which make it a figure of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. Thus, there is the father giving up his son and the son who surrenders to His father’s will with the tools of sacrifice such as a knife, an altar, and the wood (a heavy load) that Isaac himself carried up the mountain.   

The account reaches climax by revealing through Abraham’s obedience and Isaac’s non-resistance, God’s blessing will reach all the nations of the earth. It is not surprising that the Jewish traditions should attribute a certain redemptive value to Isaac’s submissiveness, and those in authority see this episode as prefiguring the passion of Christ, the only Son of the Father, who was sacrificed on Mt. Moriah in the same place where Abrahm was called to sacrifice his son. 

Making an implicit comparison in God’s love, it is written (Rom 8:32), “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also give us all things with Him?  

Some see the ram as a prefigurement of Jesus Christ insofar as, like Christ, the ram was immolated in order to save man. In this sense, St. Ambrose wrote: “Whom does the ram represent, if not Him of whom it is written? He has raised up a horn for His people” (Ps. 148:14). Christ is the He whom Abraham saw in the sacrifice. It was His passion he saw. Thus, our Lord Himself says of Abraham: “your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad’ (Jn. 8:56).

 Scripture says: Abraham called the name of that place ‘The Lord will provide,’ so that today one can say, the Lord appeared on the mount!  That is, He appeared to Abraham revealing His future passion in His body, whereby He redeemed the world; and sharing, at the same time, the nature of His passion when He caused him to see the ram suspended by his horns.  The thicket stands for the scaffold of the cross

  In the Gospel we deal with Jesus being transfigured also on a high mountain.  Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a mountain with Him. The mountain in Jewish scripture means that something important connected with God is going to happen. Indeed, it does happen!  The three Apostles see Jesus in His glory, the fulfillment of the law represented by Moses, and the prophets, represented by Elijah; that the fulfillment was going to be in Jerusalem, where Jesus was heading. The three Apostles are awe-struck at this realization, and of course to witness Jesus in his Glory. As God spoke to Abraham not to harm the child, so in this case, God speaks to these three Apostles and tells them: “This is my beloved son, listen to Him.”

[passages taken from the Navarre Bible, and from Reflections on the Sunday Reading for year B by Dr. John Bergsma]

Blessings in Jesus Name, 

Fr. Vincent Clemente