A Covenant People



The life of Abraham can serve as a guide for us to understand our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Abram and his wife Sarai lived in a normal town surrounded by family and friends. They lived a typical life for people of that time, until one day God asked Abram to take his wife and possessions and set out for a distant land that God would show him.

Imagine the faith that it must have taken to pack up his family and belongings — leave everything — and set out for some unnamed location. You can imagine the conversation he had with his wife! “Sarai, the Lord spoke to me and asked us to go to a faraway land.” “Where?” would have been the reply of Sarai. “Well, He did not say where, He just said He would lead us.” Sarai might have rightfully worried that her husband had been drinking! And yet, full of faith and confidence in God, they set out to find the place that God promised to show them.

They encountered many hardships and trials, and then one day God revealed to Abram and Sarai His plans for their lives. He said, “My covenant with you is this: you are to become the father of a host of nations…. I will make you exceedingly fertile…. I will…be your God…and you and your descendants will be my people…and I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now staying, the whole land of Canaan.”

Changing Abram’s name to Abraham began the process of God covenanting Himself to Abraham and his descendants. The covenant included making Abraham the father of a great nation and giving them a land to live in, but most importantly it meant that He would be their God. This covenant makes the descendants of Abraham and Sarah the Chosen People.

This was a watershed event in the life of Abraham; his life was forever radically changed. An event just as profound takes place in the life of every Christian when they are baptized. At baptism we were taken from the land of sin, and given the land of grace — the Church — as our home. Also through baptism, we receive the promise from God that He will be our God too. This covenant also includes receiving a name at baptism, and then again at confirmation when we take a saint’s name and seek his or her patronage for assistance on our way to our true homeland — heaven.

Heaven is our true homeland, and each of us is on a journey toward heaven. We begin this journey when we come to believe in Jesus Christ and are baptized. At baptism all of our sins are wiped away, we receive grace — the life of the Holy Trinity, and are adopted as the children of God, thereby living in an intimate relationship with Him. Yet, after baptism we sin — sometimes gravely. God knew that we would fall on our journey towards our home in heaven, so Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Today and always, we are called to analyze our sinfulness, to recognize where we are and where we need to go, and to seek God’s forgiveness as we continue on our journey. Please join me in praying that God will open our hearts to understand and to accept His great mercy and love for us.


(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)

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Bp. Paul S. Loverde is the bishop of the Diocese of Arlington in Virginia.

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