Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s Holy Mass we are invited to contemplate two towering figures in salvation history: Abraham, our father in faith, and Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. Both stand before us in today’s readings—one pleading for mercy, the other commanding absolute discipleship. Abraham is the friend of God; Jesus is God Himself. Their contrast reveals not only the greatness of Abraham’s faith, but even more, the infinite dignity and divine authority of Christ, before whom even Abraham must bow.
In the first reading from Genesis, Abraham is shown at his noblest. He intercedes for Sodom, appealing to God's justice and mercy with humble boldness. He dares to bargain with the Lord, reducing the number of the righteous needed to save the city from fifty all the way down to ten. Abraham is deeply conscious of his lowliness—“I am but dust and ashes”—yet he approaches God like a son pleading with his father. His heart burns with compassion, and he desires salvation for the wicked, if only a few righteous can be found among them.
But even Abraham—this great patriarch, chosen and blessed by God, this man through whom “all the nations of the earth will find blessing”—even he is only a man. A creature. Dust and ashes. He pleads for mercy, but he cannot offer it himself. He cannot save Sodom. He can only pray that God will spare it.
Now contrast this with the way Jesus is described in the Gospel. He does not intercede as a servant; he commands as Lord. A scribe comes to him, eager to follow, and Jesus answers not with welcome enthusiasm, but with a warning: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” And when another asks to bury his father first, Jesus replies with words that strike us with divine severity: “Let the dead bury their dead. You, follow me.”
Jesus does not plead with God for mercy—he is mercy incarnate. He does not ask for justice—he is the Judge himself. He does not negotiate salvation—he brings it, in his very person. Jesus does not merely speak with God as Abraham did—he is the Word of God made flesh, the one through whom all things were made, including Abraham himself.
Where Abraham approached with trembling, Jesus speaks with sovereign authority. Where Abraham calls himself “dust and ashes,” Jesus calls himself “the Son of Man,” a title from Daniel’s vision of divine majesty. Where Abraham hopes that ten righteous men might save a city, Jesus himself is the one righteous man whose death will save the world.
And so we learn a deep truth today: Jesus is greater than Abraham—not by degrees, but by nature. Abraham is man; Jesus is God. Abraham was chosen; Jesus is the one who chooses. Abraham walked with the Lord; Jesus is the Lord who walks among us.
Yet this divine Jesus invites us to follow him, not with half-hearted intentions or conditional commitments, but with total surrender. “Follow me,” he says, even if it means leaving everything behind—home, family, comfort, certainty. The cost of discipleship is high because the One we follow is not a mere prophet, not a wise teacher, but the eternal Son of the Living God.
And this is what we must learn from the contrast: if Abraham, the friend of God, called himself “dust and ashes,” how much more should we approach Christ with reverence, with awe, with obedience? If Abraham’s intercession moved the heart of God, how much more powerful is the sacrifice of Jesus, who saves not just ten, but the multitude who follow him through the narrow way of the Cross?
Let us honor Abraham's faith—but let us worship Jesus, who is the fulfillment of all that Abraham hoped for.
Let us pray like Abraham—for our cities, our nations, our world—but let us also follow Christ, leaving behind everything that binds us to the dead things of this world.
And above all, let us never forget who it is that calls us—not merely a teacher, not merely a prophet, but God-with-us, Emmanuel—worthy not only of our words, but of our entire being.
May the Mother who loved him and loves us, continue to pray for us so that we too may one day look upon the One who is love and mercy itself. May you be blessed. +
Amen.
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