SACRED SPACES IN HISTORY - C: 16th Sun in OrdTime

First Reading: Genesis 18:1-10 (17 July 2022)

“The Lord appeared to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre…. He looked up, and there he saw three men standing near him” (Gen 18:1-2).

The designated place of God’s appearance to Abraham is Mamre. The name Mamre occurs only in the book of Genesis, always in reference to important moments in the life of Abraham. In Gen 13:18a, he followed God’s command of heeding Lot’s request to separate from him, paving the immediate transfer of his tents to the land of Mamre. Upon reaching it, he “built an altar to the Lord” (v. 18b). He settled there where he encountered the Lord in the person of three travelers (18:2), who visited and announced Sarah’s conception (v. 10). True enough, Isaac was born to him and Sarah the following year despite being both advanced in age (21:2). It can be inferred from these events that, theologically speaking, Mamre is a sacred space of life for Abraham and his family.

It is a sacred space worth treasuring in perpetuity.

In Genesis 23, however, Mamre turned out to be the symbol of death. In v. 2, Sarah died at the age of 127 years. Abraham bought a piece of land from the Hittites (vv. 3-18), where he buried her “in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre in the land of Canaan” (v. 19). When it was Abraham’s turn to be buried after dying at the age of 175 years (25:7) “[h]is sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mambre … the field Abraham had bought from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah” (vv. 9-10). In the end, for Abraham and his family, Mamre ironically stands as memorabilia of death as well.

Nevertheless, it functions as a sacred space of peace, tranquility, and triumph since it reminded Abraham’s posterity of his faithfulness to God despite being an alien to that geographical area.

Life and death. Such is the normal cycle of human existence. The allegory of Mamre in Genesis ties these realities together. As Abraham and Sarah found a new life as a couple here, they were forever bound to this site by their burial to this very locale. Mamre stands, then, as a living reminder that the human person is always tied up to the place where one is either born/raised or inhabited for the long duration. The physical land becomes a sacred space for anyone who exists on earth. Thus, it should be protected, preserved, perpetuated, and venerated at all costs.

Meanwhile, even if the name Mamre is not anymore mentioned in the succeeding books of the Old Testament, it continues to have a lingering significance to the next generations. It came to be known later as the land of Hebron (cf. Gen 13:18; 23:19; 35:27). Hebron is associated best to King David, who used this location as his headquarters as its local king for seven years and six months (cf. 2 Sam 2:1, 3, 11; 3:2, 5; 5:1, 3, 5), before conquering and moving into the city of Jerusalem as king of all Israel (5:13) for thirty-three years (1 Kgs 2:11).

Thus, even if Mamre is just a historical piece of information in the succeeding periods, it remained salient to all Israelites since it evolved into the land of Hebron, where Israel’s greatest king came into power.

In the new Philippine administration, important pieces of historical information are apparently gradually undermined and/or revised in pursuit of a new version of the past. The Bible attests that historical locale, facts, and details are critical to the future generation since they influenced what Israel would become. Let us treasure history and its power to define our national identity.

- Rex Fortes, CM