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From: Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19

The Good Example of the Patriarchs

[1] Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen. [2] For by it the men of old received divine approval.

[8] By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he
was to receive as an inheritance and he went out, not knowing where he was to
go. [9] By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living
in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. [10] For he
looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is
God. [11] By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was
past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. [12] There-
fore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many
as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

[13] These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having
seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were stran-
gers and exiles on the earth. [14] For people who speak thus make it clear that
they are seeking a homeland. [15] If they had been thinking of that land from
which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. [16] But
as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is
not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

[17] By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had re-
ceived the promises was ready to offer up his only son, [18] of whom it was said,
“Through Isaac shall your descendants be named.” [19] He considered that God
was able to raise men even from the dead; hence he did receive him back, and
this was a symbol.

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Commentary:

1. Although the text does not aim to provide a precise definition of faith, it does
in fact very clearly describe the essence of that virtue, linking it to hope in future
things and to certainty concerning supernatural truths. By means of faith, the
believer acquires certainty concerning God’s promises to man, and a firm convic-
tion that he will obtain access to heaven. The Latin translates as “substantia”
the word the RSV translates as “assurance”; “substantia”, which literally means
“that which underlies”, here refers to the solid basis provided by hope.

This verse indicates that faith, which is a type of knowledge, is different from
other types of human knowledge. Thus, man can know things by direct evidence,
by reasoned proof or by someone else’s testimony. As regards knowledge based
on information provided by someone else, that is, knowledge based on faith, we
can distinguish two types—human faith, when it is another human being whose
word one relies on (as in the case of pupil/teacher, child/parent), and supernatu-
ral faith (when the testimony comes from God himself, who is Supreme Truth).
In this latter case the knowledge provided is most certain.

However, the object of supernatural faith, that is, what one believes in (God and
the unchanging decrees of his will), is not something that is self-evident to man,
nor is it something that can be attained by the use of unaided reason.That is
why it is necessary for God himself to bear witness to what he reveals. Faith,
then, is certain knowledge, but it is knowledge of things which are not self-evi-
dent, things which one does not see but which one can hope for.

The verse also says that faith is “conviction” concerning things not seen. It is
therefore different from opinion, suspicion or doubt (none of which implies cer-
tainty). By saying that it has to do with things unseen, it is distinguishing faith
from knowledge and intuitive cognition (cf. “Summa Theologiae”, II-II, q. 4,a. 1).

Summing up, we can say that “when God makes a revelation, we are obliged to
render by faith a full submission of intellect and will. The faith, however, which is
the beginning of human salvation, the Catholic Church asserts to be a superna-
tural virtue whereby, with the inspiration and help of God’s grace, we believe that
what he has revealed is true—not because its intrinsic truth is seen by the natu-
ral light of reason, but because of the authority of God who reveals it, of God who
can neither deceive nor be deceived” (Vatican I, “Dei Filius”, chap. 3).

It is, therefore, a feature of faith that it makes as certain about things which are
not self-evident. That is why in order to believe one must want to believe, why the
act of believing is always free and meritorious. However, faith can, with God’s help,
reach a certainty greater than any proof can provide. ‘This faith”, St John of Avila
comments, “is not based on reasons [...]; for when a person believes on the ba-
sis of reasons, he is not believing in such a way that he is totally convinced, with-
out any doubt or scruple whatever. But the faith which God infuses is grounded
on divine Truth, and it causes one to believe more firmly than if one saw it with
one’s own eyes, and touched it with one’s hands—and to believe more certainly
than he who believes that four is greater than three, the sort of thing that is so
obvious that the mind never hesitates a moment, nor can it even if it wants to”
(”Audi, Filia”, chap. 43).

The faith which God gives a person—supernatural faith—is necessarily the point
of departure for hope and charity: it is what is usually called “living faith”.

When one lives with this kind of faith it is easy to see that the three “theological”
virtues (faith, hope and charity) are bound up with one another. Faith and hope
lead a person to unite himself to God as the source from which all good things
flow; charity unites us to God directly, by loving affection, because God is the su-
preme Good. Faith is as it were the first step: it means accepting what God says
as true.

We then unite ourselves to him through hope, insofar as we rely on God’s help to
attain beatitude. The goal of this process is charity, the fullness of which is eter-
nal possession of God, the Supreme Good. “Let us grow in hope, thereby streng-
thening our faith which is truly ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen’ (Heb 11:1).

Let us grow in this virtue, let us beg our Lord to increase his charity in us; after
all, one can only really trust what one loves with all one’s might. And it is certain-
ly worthwhile to love our Lord” (St J. Escriva, “Friends of God”, 220).

If hope in general is the conviction of being able to obtain something worthwhile in
the future, something difficult to obtain, theological hope is the conviction of being
able, with the help of God, to attain heaven. And faith is precisely what provides
certain knowledge of those two truths—that heaven is our goal and that God wants
to help us to get there (cf. “Summa Theologiae”, II-II, q. l7, a 5 and 7). Therefore,
nothing should dishearten us on this road to our ultimate goal because we put our
trust in “three truths: God is all-powerful, God has a boundless love for me, God is
faithful to his promises. And it is he, the God of mercies, who enkindles this trust
within me, so that I never feel lonely or useless or abandoned but, rather, involved
in a plan of salvation which will one day reach its goal in Paradise” (John Paul I,
“Address”, 20 September 1978).

8. Abraham, “our father in faith”, is the greatest example, in the Old Testament,
of faith in God (cf. Gen 12:1-4; Rom 4:1ff; Gal 3:6-9; Heb 6:13ff). It is not surpri-
sing that the author pauses to dwell on the faithful life of the father of the chosen
people. Putting all his trust in the divine word, Abraham gave up all the security
and comfort of his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans, to set out for a distant and
unknown place, the land of Canaan, which God had promised to give his descen-
dants. “Neither the love for his homeland nor the pleasure of his neighbors’ com-
pany nor the comforts of his father’s home were able to weaken his resolve. He
set out courageously and ardently to where God willed to lead him. What self-
abasement and abandonment! One cannot love God perfectly unless one renoun-
ces all attachment to perishable things” (St Francis de Sales, “Treatise on the
Love of God”, book 10). Abraham symbolizes the need for detachment if one is
to obtain redemption and to be a good servant of God and of others.

“Never forget that Christ cannot be reached without sacrifice. You have to get rid
of everything that gets in the way [...]. You have to do the same in this battle for
the glory of God, in this struggle of love and peace by which we are trying to
spread Christ’s kingdom. In order to serve the Church, the Pope and all souls,
you must be ready to give up everything superfluous” (St J. Escriva, “Friends of
God”, 196).

9-10. Abraham, and his son Isaac and grandson Jacob like him, far from settling
down comfortably in a permanent place, lived a nomadic existence a stranger in
a foreign land (cf. Gen 23:4). By faith the patriarch “looked forward to the city
which has foundations”, the city God would build. Instead of the provisionality of
tents and the weak foundations of cities built by men, a heavenly city was being
established, eternal and permanent, built by God on solid foundations, which
Abraham hoped one day to possess. The promised land was a symbol of the de-
finitive fatherland to which God called the father of Israel. There was even a late
Jewish tradition which spoke of Abraham being given a vision of the heavenly Je-
rusalem after he ratified his covenant with God.

Christians live in the world by the will of God, and they love the world, but at the
same time they realize they should not settle down in it as if it were the final goal
of their lives. “They are residents at home in their own country but their behavior
is more like that of people who are passing through [...]. For them any foreign
country is a homeland, and any homeland a foreign country” (”Letter to Diogne-
tus”, V, 5).

11-12. Sarah, like Abraham, was very elderly when God announced that she was
going to have a child. At first she was puzzled and even sarcastically skeptical
(cf. Gen 18:9f), but soon her attitude changed into a faith which God rewarded by
her conceiving Isaac. The faith of Sarah and her husband can be said to exceed
that of the earlier patriarchs because what God promised could come true only
by means of a miracle, since Abraham, like his wife, was old and incapable of
begetting children. That is why it says that from one man “and him as good as
dead” innumerable descendants were born. God is generous in rewarding man’s
faith. “’Si habueritis fidem, sicut granum sinapis”! — If your faith were the size of
a mustard seed!...’

“What promises are contained in this exclamation of the Master!” (St J. Escriva,
“The Way”, 585).

The conception of Isaac is also a “type” of that of Christ. “All the miraculous con-
ceptions which occurred in the Old Testament were prefigurements of the grea-
test of all miracles, the Incarnation of the Word. It was fitting that his birth from
a Virgin should be prefigured by other births so as to prepare people’s minds for
faith. But there is this difference: God miraculously enabled Sarah to conceive
by means of human seed, whereas the blessed Virgin conceived without it” (St
Thomas Aquinas, “Commentary on Heb.”, 11, 3).

13-16. After speaking about the faith of Abel, Noah and Abraham, the sacred wri-
ter goes on to give a brief panoramic account of the entire history of the Patriarchs
and the Exodus. It does not deal with events in chronological order. By recalling
that the Patriarchs left their own country to journey abroad “seeking a homeland”,
he brings in the exodus from Egypt. Between Abraham, who left Ur to travel to
the land of Canaan, and the people of Israel, who left Egypt for the promised land,
there is an obvious parallel, which is even more marked if one bears in mind that
neither Abraham nor the Israelites led by Moses were destined to take posses-
sion of the land: that was reserved to their descendants. The only thing Abraham
managed to do was to purchase the cave of Machpelah, near Hebron, and the
land immediately around it, for which he had to pay a very high price in silver. The
cave became the burial ground of Sarah, Abraham himself, Isaac, Rebecca, Ja-
cob and Leah. But Abraham publicly admitted he was “a stranger and a sojour-
ner” in Canaan when he bought the cave from the Hittites (Gen 23:4). Nor did the
Hebrews of Moses’ generation manage to enter Canaan. The nearest they got to
it was descriptions brought by their spies; and Moses himself was only able to
view it from a distance, from Mount Nebo, just prior to his death (cf. Deut 32:49-
52; 33:1-4). Abraham, and later Isaac and Jacob (who led a nomadic existence in
Canaan), like the Israelites in the wilderness, prefigure Christians, who are also
in search of a land of their own, a better homeland, that is, heaven (cf. Heb 13:14).
It certainly is moving to recall the Patriarchs and the Exodus, and very helpful to
the faith and hope of Christians amid the difficulties they encounter in this world.
Those men of faith are said to have “seen” what was promised: this may be a re-
ference to some special grace God gave them, as was the case with Abraham
(cf. Jn 8:56), or else to the intuitive vision of supernatural things which faith pro-
vides (cf. “Commentary on Heb, ad loc.”). “They greeted it from afar,” happy to
do so. “They greeted the promises and rejoiced,” St John Chrysostom says, “for
they already had such faith in those promises that they could make signs of gree-
ting. This comparison is taken from seafaring: when from afar sailors espy the ci-
ty they are making for, even before entering the port they cheer in greeting”
(”Hom. on Heb.”, 23).

The Patriarchs’ attitude was a true indication of their faith in a future life, for, as
St Thomas points out, by describing themselves as strangers and sojourners
(Gen 23:4; 47:9; cf. Deut 26:5) they showed they were heading towards their
homeland, the heavenly Jerusalem. They did not set their hearts on an earthly
homeland, or on their parental homestead, for if so they could in fact have cho-
sen to return to it (cf. “Commentary on Heb, ad loc.”). Thus the promises made
to them found their fulfillment not in something earthly but in the eternity of hea-
ven: “Therefore God is not ashamed” to be called the God of Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob: seeing their faith and fidelity, he overlooked their sins and faults. And
he is disposed to act in the same way towards Christians.

In vv. 14 and 16, in the Greek text and the New Vulgate—and in the RSV — the
verbs are in the present tense, as distinct from the past (aorist) used generally
in this passage. This is because the whole paragraph is recalling the life of the
Patriarchs, but with the intention of stressing that their faith is an example to all
generations. What we have here is a mixture of history and sapiential writing,
using verbs which indicate that the action—or at least some of its effects—is still
going on.

17-19. It is very difficult for us to imagine what Abraham thought when God asked
him to sacrifice Isaac, the son of the promise, his only son, in the mountains of
Moriah (cf. Gen 22:2). The Old Testament shows how resolute Abraham was, his
absolute docility, his serenity even in the midst of suffering his trust in God (cf.
Gen 22:1-18). This is revealed in the touching conversation between the Patriarch
and his son, when Isaac asks him where is the lamb for the offering and Abraham
replies, “God will provide himself with the lamb for a burnt offering, my son”. In St
Paul’s epistles generally Abraham’s faith is proposed as an example (cf. Gal 3:7;
Rom 4:3, 11-12; 4:17-22); but that was in the context of his faith in God’s promise
that he would have a multitude of descendants. Here, however, the Patriarch’s
faith is to be seen in the way he approaches a commandment which seems to
negate that promise: how could God possibly ask him to sacrifice his only son?
The answer lies in the fact that God knew that Abraham had faith in his ability to
bring the dead back to life.

Abraham’s obedience to God in this episode is the most striking proof of his faith.
Here most of all the Patriarch “believed against hope [...]; he grew strong in his
faith as he gave glory to God” (Rom 4:18, 21). “The Patriarch hears words which
deny the promise; he hears the very author of the promise contradict himself, but
he is not dismayed; he is going to obey as if everything were completely consis-
tent. And in fact the two things were compatible: the two things God said were
contradictory as far as human logic was concerned; but faith brought them into
agreement [...].

“God tested Abraham’s faith. Did he not know the strength and integrity of that
great man? Undoubtedly he did, very well. Why, then, did he put them to the
test? He did not do it to prove to himself the Patriarch’s virtue; he did it to show
the world how excellent Abraham was. The Apostle, moreover, shows the He-
brews one of the causes of our temptations, so that anyone who is afflicted
should not think that God has abandoned him” (”Hom. on Heb.”, 25). we know,
moreover, that precisely on account of Abraham’s generosity and faith, God re-
newed his promise to him, now ratifying it with an oath (cf. Gen 22:16; Heb 6:
13-18).

19. “Hence he did receive him back, and this was a symbol”: after offering Isaac,
Abraham was given him back, because God stepped in before Isaac was sacri-
ficed (Gen 22:11-12). And he received him as “a symbol” (literally, as “a para-
ble”). Tradition has always seen the sacrifice of Isaac, the only Son, as a sym-
bol of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ; and, particularly, it has seen God’s in-
tervention on Mount Moriah as a symbol of the Resurrection. “He saw it as a
symbol,” Theodoret comments, “that is, as a prefigurement of the Resurrection.
(Isaac) was brought to death by his father’s will, and then brought back to life
by the voice which prevented his death. All this amounts to a prefiguring of the
passion of the Savior, and that is why the Lord told the Jews, ‘Your father Abra-
ham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad’ (Jn 8:56)”
(”Interpretatio Ep. ad Haebreos, ad loc.”).

Origen, a writer of Christian antiquity, reflects this tradition very beautifully when
he says that the sacrifice of Isaac helps us to understand the mystery of Re-
demption. “Isaac carrying the wood for the burnt offering is a symbol of Christ,
who carried his (own) cross. But it is also the function of the priest to carry the
wood for the burnt offering [...]. Christ is the Word of God, but the Word made
flesh. Therefore, there is in Christ an element which comes from above and ano-
ther which comes from human nature, which he took on in the womb of the Vir-
gin. This is why Christ experiences suffering: he suffers in the flesh, and he dies,
but what suffers death is the flesh, and the ram is a figure of this, as St John
said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’ (Jn 1:29)
[...]. Christ is at one and the same time victim and high priest. Thus, according
to the spirit he offers the victim to his father, according to his flesh, he himself
is offered on the altar of the cross” (”Homilies on Genesis”, 8, 6 and 9).

For all these reasons, Eucharistic Prayer I links Christ’s sacrifice with those of
Abel, Isaac and Melchizedek.

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.