The Holy Week Retreat - The Sacrifice of Abraham - Station 3

Experience the ultimate Holy Week Retreat!

Join Fr. Jonathan Meyer (and Catholics across America!) on an epic journey through the Stations of the Eucharist. This incredible retreat will guide you through fourteen stations from Genesis to Revelation that will reshape the way you see the rest of your life. Get ready to break open the Scriptures, immerse yourself in the story of salvation history, and consider the sacrifice of Jesus Christ like never before. 

This year’s Holy Week Retreat is simple to follow. Each day, you’ll receive two reflections that will help you meditate on two of the fourteen stations. You can watch them both together, or space them out as morning and evening reflections. We’ll cover all fourteen stations by Holy Saturday so you can have the best Easter of your life!

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Transcript

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The third station of the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Abraham. O sacrament holy, O sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine. In Genesis chapter twenty-two, we encounter a powerful image. The image of Abraham being tested to sacrifice his own son. Abraham. He and his wife had no children. And yet Abraham had been promised that he would become the father of a host of nations. He would have more descendants than there are stars in the sky than there's sand on the seashore. And he and his wife have no children. Finally, God blesses him with a son, his only begotten son, Isaac. And then God tests Abraham and asks Abraham to take his son up a mountain and to kill him. Human sacrifice was common among other nations, common among other religions. So Abraham very possibly may have believed this is what God was asking of him. Abraham, being faithful, takes his son, puts wood on his son's back, his only begotten son. And his son carries this wood up a mountain. And this father is prepared to sacrifice his son. One can go through this 22nd chapter of Genesis and find, some biblical scholars have found 30 different connections between the sacrifice that Abraham is about to make of his son Isaac, and the sacrifice of Jesus on Mount Calvary. The only begotten son, the wood on his back, going up a mountain, a sacrifice being prepared, an altar being made. But as we know, praise God, our God does not delight in people killing their children. Our God does not ask us to kill our young. In fact, any of you who are watching this video that have experienced the death of a child, just know that my heart breaks with and for you. And you know how painful the death of a child is. And yet Abraham in faith was willing to offer this sacrifice if this is what God asked of him, but God did not ask him to do that. An angel appeared and stopped Abraham from the act. But then what happens is so powerful. Abraham knows that there must be a sacrifice. Abraham knows that out of gratitude for all that God has done for him, out of gratitude for everything that God has done for him, he must somehow give back. He must somehow, in thanksgiving, in gratitude, offer a sacrifice to the Lord. And so Abraham spots a ram that's caught in the thicket. Now, what is a ram and what is a thicket? Well, a definition of a ram is actually an adult male lamb. And a thicket is a thorn bush. So what adult male lamb do you know that had his head caught in a thornbush? What adult male lamb do you know that wore a crown of thorns? Well, his name is Jesus. God the Father had asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, and yet it is a ram that will replace his son on that day of sacrifice. Jesus, praise God, is our replacement sacrifice. Who should die for your sins and for my sins? We should. Who broke God's covenant again and again and again? We have. Who has continually disobeyed God's commandments thinking that our ways will bring us happiness and we end up in misery? Yeah, that's you and me. So who technically should die? We should. And yet Jesus chooses to become our replacement sacrifice. He dies in our place. He became flesh in the womb, blessed Virgin Bear, united himself to our humanity so that he could take on our sins, and he is our replacement sacrifice. If we can comprehend this, our hearts should just be overflowing with gratitude. That Jesus chose to take our place. And Jesus, the adult male lamb, with a crown of thorns in his head, is slain on Mount Calvary for you and for me. That is his love for us. That is the love of God the Father, right? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Who's his only begotten son? The adult male lamb? The ram with his head caught in a thicket. We have so much to be grateful for. I want to encourage you to live in gratitude. There was a time in my life where things were pretty rough, I'll be honest. And I decided that I was gonna every single week make a list of gratitudes, to go through my week and look at my calendar and write down everything I was grateful for. And then on Monday, I'm gonna send, I would send an email to my staff just saying, these are the things that I'm thankful for this past week, and I want you to know about it. I've been doing that now for three years. I look forward to taking those moments of going through my calendar and thanking God. And I love it when I get emails back in response. Tell me more about this. I didn't know this happened. Praise God for that. That's amazing. As we know, the word Eucharist means thanksgiving. I want to encourage you to every day be a person of gratitude. When you take those few moments of silence every day, always spend time in gratitude. Always spend time thanking God. Most importantly, thanking God for his son Jesus who died for us. Thanking God for the forgiveness of our sins, thanking God for our last confession, thanking God for the sacraments we've received, thanking God for our baptism and our incorporation into eternal life. But also thanking God for the little things. Thanking God for the snow, for rain, for the sun. Thanking God for our grandson or our granddaughter who made us a card or drew us a picture. Thanking God for the food that we eat. Thanking God for the things that we often take for granted. Like Abraham, who is overwhelmed with gratitude, I want to encourage you to offer a sacrifice of gratitude to the Lord. I guarantee it, it will be pleasing in his sight. Amen.