EARNING ONE'S INHERITANCE - C: 2nd Sun of Lent

First Reading: Gen 15:5-12; 17-18 (13 March 2022)

“‘My Lord,’ Abram replied, ‘how am I to know that I shall inherit it?’” (Gen 15:8).

These words are part of the remarks of Abram in today’s first reading, which indicate his yearning to inherit a piece of land. Believing God’s promise that his descendants would be as plenty as the stars in the heaven (v. 5) who would soon inhabit a fertile land (v. 7), Abram asked God what he was to do to earn it (v. 8). However, instead of giving him orders on warfare against the Canaanites, God told him concrete steps in worship, mandating him to offer several animals, viz., a heifer, goat, ram, turtledove, and pigeon (v. 9). After faithfully performing this ceremony (v. 10), God spoke to Abram with a comforting assurance: “To your descendants I give this land, from the wadi of Egypt to the Great River” (v. 18).

Here, God sealed a sacred covenant with Abram, promising him of a future takeover of the so-called Promise Land.

Sacrificing animals in antiquity functions as a ritual in establishing a special pact between God and man, which is considered sealed when the smoke of the gifts reaches the skies. Yet, the crux is that this offering is not performed merely to please God, but in view of guaranteeing God that man is ready to give up the best of his properties as a show of devotion and loyalty. This point is illustrated best when Abel’s offering out of his best sheep was appreciated by God (Gen 4:4), while that of Cain was not simply because Cain did not offer the best out of his harvest (v. 5). God’s rejection of his gifts offended badly Cain, sparking him to murder his own brother out of anger and envy (v. 8). The irony is that instead of winning God’s favor, Cain received divine punishment by being banished to distant lands as a nameless nomad (v. 12).

Succinctly, Cain, in his desire to earn God’s blessing, performed an outrageous violence against his own brother, whose blood guilt was even shared by the very land that had metaphorically witnessed it (v. 10). Conversely, today’s first reading on the sacrifice of Abraham informs that no violence against mankind should ever be done just to ensure a possession of a piece of land. God’s instructions of using animal blood serve as a reminder that no human blood shall ever be spilled in any sacrifice. This inference is later affirmed in Genesis 22, when God did not allow to happen Abraham’s supposed sacrifice of his own son by sending a ram instead on his behalf (vv. 12-13).

In the final analysis, since it is God himself who would act as the final arbiter whether a sacrifice is acceptable or not, man should simply follow God’s design of spilling animal blood in worship instead of human blood; by performing otherwise, divine wrath may fall on the offeror as what had happened to Cain in the first murder in the Bible.

It has been three weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine with the premise that the latter is the former’s rightful inheritance, being formerly a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the vicious attack of Ukraine, but which is being bravely resisted by the Ukrainians themselves led by their president Volodymyr Zelensky. While no military victory has been secured from both sides, defeat is already heavily seen in the images of hundreds of human casualties, millions of Ukrainian evacuees under poor conditions, and billions of lives threatened with a knowledge of an impending world war. In Putin’s crazy fixation of regaining Russia’s alleged patrimony, human blood is daily spilled. May we resolve to condemn altogether this evil act and rally for an immediate end of atrocities in this humanitarian crisis since it does not please God in any way nor does it guarantee Russia’s rightful inheritance of Ukrainian land, whose sovereign belongs only to their people.

- Rex Fortes, CM