Message from Fr. James - May 3, 2026

God’s covenant promise to Abraham

Dear St. Martin’s Parishioners,

God saves us through covenants. A covenant is a relationship. It is a relationship in which persons belong fully to one another. It is a relationship of mutual love and freedom. Covenants have conditions that maintain the unity of the relationship. Covenants have consequences if the relationship is betrayed. God used covenants to save us throughout history because covenants are such powerful relationships.

Fr. Dave announced that our Giving Tuesday 2025 project would create an art gallery of God’s covenants. From Sacred Scripture, we chose to paint eight covenants between God and us. The history of our salvation is made in God’s covenants with Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the tribes of Israel, King David, and, finally, the new and eternal covenant with Jesus Christ. Each of these covenants promised a relationship between God and human kind. Each one expresses God’s love for you. Each covenant saves you from death and sin. The painting of the fourth covenant, with Abraham, is now hanging in the parish hall below the church.

“The Lord led him outside and told him, ‘Look into the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them. Such will your descendents be.’ Abraham believed the Lord, who credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:5-6). God promised, and Abraham put his faith in God. God’s covenant with Abraham is a relationship of promise and faith. You inherited the same kind of relationship with God. Abraham is our father in faith. We are his descendents in the faith. This is shown by the stars in the sky, which represent believers over all the world throughout all of history.

“When the sun set, it was dark, and a smoking brazier and a flaming torch passed between the carcasses of the animals that had been split in two. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: ‘To your descendents I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates’” (Gen 15:17-18). God promised. The promise was so great, and God’s glory so stunning, that Abram could hardly react. This is represented in Abraham’s raised hands. What does his gesture mean? It may be hard to believe because it seems “too good to be true,” but God is truth and goodness itself. Our culture values work and getting things done for ourselves, which can make it difficult to trust in the promise of another, but the most fruitful thing we can do is receive God’s promise and God’s fulfillment. This was true for Abraham, this was true for the twelve apostles at the Last Supper, and this is true for you today. Our culture values the “self-made man”, but what about the God-made-man? When we receive “the Body of Christ” in Mass, we say, “Amen.” Also in Mass we say that “all glory and honor” is God’s through Jesus Christ – not through our own work – and we respond, “Amen.” The Hebrew word, “Amen” means putting our trust, our hopes, and our whole lives on God. It is like leaning on God. That’s what we can see in Abraham’s hands raised to God.

In Christ,

Fr. James