Surrendering It All

Is there any area in your life in which you give one hundred percent? Is there a relationship, a career or sport that you invest yourself in with your whole heart and soul? Is there someone or something that you give yourself totally to without holding anything back? Is there one value in your life so great that no obstacle can keep you from devoting yourself to it?

Abraham, whom we hear about in today’s first reading, was totally devoted to God. Nothing was more important to him than his relationship with his Creator. His total devotion to God drove him to leave his country to live in the land God had promised to give him. He left everything behind with complete trust that the Lord would provide for him. Though he was an old man, he trusted God’s promise that he and his wife, Sarah, would have a son and that a great nation would come from his offspring. Abraham was one hundred percent committed to doing whatever God asked of him because he had faith in his promises. 

So, when God asks him to sacrifice his beloved son, he agrees. He wants to prove his total commitment to the Lord.

To us who are reading this some four thousand years later, the notion of killing one’s own son is repulsive. That God would ask such a thing of Abraham sounds exceedingly cruel. However, when we look at the culture of the Middle East at the time Abraham lived, it begins to make some sense. Human sacrifice was a common practice in Canaan. It was not unusual for fathers to offer their first born sons in sacrifice to pagan gods. Abraham must have thought to himself that, if pagans could offer their first born sons to false gods, how much more should he offer his son to the true God.

As we know, God did not allow Abraham to slaughter Isaac but provided a ram as a sacrifice in his place. The Lord was convinced of Abraham’s total devotion to Him and willingness to not hold anything back, even his beloved son. For that reason, Abraham has been a model of faith down through the ages for all those who believe in and are devoted to the one true God. He teaches us to respond to the Lord one hundred percent, with our whole heart and soul.

Just as Abraham proves his devotion to God by his willingness to sacrifice his only son, so God shows his total devotion to us by offering up His only Son, Jesus Christ, to us on the cross.

In today’s gospel, Jesus along with Peter, James and John climb a high mountain just as Abraham and Isaac did. On the top of that mountain, Jesus reveals Himself in all His dazzling glory. God’s voice thunders from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son.” He makes it clear that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is the One sent by the Father to offer Himself in sacrifice for our sins. In the story of Abraham, God sends a ram to take the place of Isaac on the altar of sacrifice. In the New Testament, God sends His own Son to take our place on the cross.

God’s willingness to sacrifice His Son proves His total devotion to us. Our Heavenly Father has invested Himself heart and soul in our salvation. There is nothing He is holding back. If we ever doubt it, all we need to do is look up at a cross and remember that the One who died was the sinless Lamb of God who took our place on death row.

This truth should not only fill us with awe but with great confidence. In the second reading, Saint Paul assures us, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” Because God offered up His only Son for us, we can trust that He will not hold anything else back from us. We can trust that He will provide for us in our need. We can trust that He will comfort us in our sorrows. We can believe that, no matter how great our sins may be, He will forgive us. We can also rest assured that, no matter how far off we may have strayed, He will always call us back to the right path. He has made a big investment in us by handing over His only Son and we can be sure that He will not rest until that investment pays dividends in our lives.

What does God ask for in return for His great generosity? He wants nothing more than that we love Him in return. As He has devoted Himself to us, He desires that we devote ourselves to Him. As He has invested Himself one hundred percent in us, He longs for us to trust Him enough to invest one hundred percent of ourselve in Him.

This is the great truth of the spiritual life that so often gets lost on us. God’s desire for us is not just that we keep commandments, follow rules or make sacrifices. All those practices only have meaning if we do them as an expression of our love for the Lord. Without love - without a willingness to give ourselves completely to God - they have little value. What God wants more than anything else from us is our heart. Once we give our heart to the Lord without holding anything back, then all the rest will fall into place.

In his classic work, The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a’ Kempis expresses this truth beautifully. Jesus says, “I care for nothing that you offer me besides yourself; it is not your gift I want, it is you....[N]othing you give can please me, if you fail to offer yourself.”

That is the purpose of the prayers, sacrifices and charity we offer during these forty days of Lent. We go without meat to teach our heart to hunger only for God. We give our money to others to teach our soul that only God can provide us with what we really need. And we pray to remind ourselves that our Heavenly Father wants nothing else than that we give ourselves totally to Him just as He has given Himself one hundred percent to us in His Son, Jesus Christ.