When God called Abram to leave his father’s family (in our first reading today), and to go to a land that God would show him, he didn’t give him a road map or any other instructions. It says in the Letter to the Hebrews that Abram went out “not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8). In other words, God had not yet showed him where he was headed; he did not yet know the destination.
When Abram gets to Shechem, in the land of Canaan, God reveals that he’s giving him the land where they are standing. God says, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7). It’s a pledge for the future. Abram and his people move on to Bethel, and the hill country to the east of Bethel, and there Abram builds an altar to the Lord. They’re making a progression through the promised land.
God is not giving Abram this land for a time certain, for a writ that runs out with his death, but to his children and their children after them. He gives him the name Abraham as a token of this promise. Possession of the land from the first is linked to descendants who will inherit the promise.
In order to take hold of the promise, Abraham needed faith. He was an old man, and his wife was old, and it seemed impossible that they would become the parents of a child who would inherit the land. He had to believe God in spite of appearances to the contrary. “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’” (Rom. 4:3, cf. Gen. 15:6), as St. Paul says in our reading from the Letter to the Romans, quoting Genesis. “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God” (Rom. 4:20), as St. Paul says elsewhere in the letter. God’s promise was that he would “inherit the world” (Rom. 4:13), and Abraham believed the promise.
St. Paul sees the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In him, we have become inheritors of the promise. Faith “will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead” (Rom. 4:24), as St. Paul says elsewhere in Romans. “All things are yours… the world or life or death or the present or the future – all belong to you” (1 Cor. 3:21-22), as Paul writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians.
In order to believe God, we need faith. Faith is a theological virtue, given by God, by which we draw close to God on account of what God has done. God, by his action, makes faith possible. We believe that God is trustworthy, as we recount his mighty deeds: that’s the basis of faith. Faith is exemplified by Abraham, “the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16), as our reading says, but fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is the ground of our faith. Faith in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, means new life and new relationship with God.
So if you are wondering this Lent how to deepen your faith, or perhaps how to have faith, or even whether faith is at all possible, you should chart a course with Abraham. What did it say in our first reading? “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” (Gen. 12:1). There’s the key: the little word “go.”
Abraham set out without knowing where he was going. He didn’t know the direction or the destination. No map, no compass, no idea of the final result. He heard the call and responded. He got going, and that was enough. For Abraham, the move forward was the first step in the life of faith. The journey from Haran, where he started, to Canann where he stopped, shaped everything that followed.
If you desire to have faith in God, the desire itself is a sign that God has given you the gift. In the life of faith, it’s enough to get going: to read the Scriptures, to say a prayer, to go forward to the altar rail. This is the work of Lent: to make a start. Do you wonder if your faith is deep enough, or true enough, or even really faith at all? It’s the case that we are unworthy servants when it comes to the life of faith, but to make a start is to do what we can do. God is at work in this or we would not be able to try. The fact that we wonder about our faith is a sign that God has given us the gift, and made us inheritors of the promise. This Lent, may God give all of us the faith of Abraham, and the grace to move forward in obedience to the call.