Some were reached by the Word of God through the law of promise and the discernment of the good inherent in them from their first formation. They did not hesitate but followed it readily as did Abraham, our father. Since he offered himself in love through the law of promise, God appeared to him, saying, Go from your country and your kindred and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And he went without hesitating at all but being ready for his calling. This is the model for the beginning of this way of life. It still persists in those who follow this pattern. Wherever and whenever souls endure and bow to it they easily attain the virtues, since their hearts are ready to be guided by the Spirit of God.

It is not by chance that God orders Abraham to leave his land and his relatives but because he sees in him something that makes him worthy of being the object of divine concern, that is, his faith in God. But it was not fitting that the one who had faith in God should remain among perverse people—the father of Abraham was in fact an idolater—because the company of the wicked often does harm to zealous people, especially to those whose zeal is new. That is why the Savior also proclaims, If anyone wishes to follow me and does not hate his father, his brothers, his sisters, and even his wife and children, he cannot be my disciple.^[1] The Lord did not say that in order to provoke hatred of one’s relatives, but if one of them becomes an obstacle to virtue, it is necessary to hate him for virtue’s sake. That is what the apostles did, who said, Look, we have left everything in order to follow you.^[2]

Such is the order given now to the patriarch, and God tells him that he will show him a land in which to live, that he will make of him a great nation, that he will bless and magnify his name.

Abraham represents the mind. In fact Abraham signifies passage. Therefore, in order that the mind, which in Adam had allowed itself to run to pleasure and to bodily attractions, should turn toward the ideal form of virtue, a wise man has been proposed to us as an example to imitate. Actually Abraham in Hebrew signifies father, in the sense that the mind, with the authority, the judgment and the solicitude of a father, governs the entire person. This mind then was in Haran, that is, in caverns, subject to the different passions. For this reason it is told, Go from your country, that is, from your body. From this land went forth the one whose homeland is in the heavens.

The right thing to do, brothers and sisters, is to believe God before he pays up anything, because just as he cannot possibly lie, so he cannot deceive. For he is God. That’s how our ancestors believed him. That’s how Abraham believed him. There’s a faith for you that really deserves to be admired and made widely known. He had received nothing from him, and he believed his promise. We do not yet believe him, though we have already received so much. Was Abraham ever in a position to say to him, I will believe you, because you promised me that and paid up? No, he believed from the very first command given, without having received anything else at all. Go out from your country, he was told, and from your kindred, and go into a country which I will give you. And he believed straightaway, and [God] didn’t give him that country but kept it for his seed.

When the sacred lesson was read just now, we heard the Lord say to blessed Abraham, Leave your country, your kinsfolk and your father’s house. Now everything that was written in the Old Testament, dearly beloved, provided a type and image of the New Testament. As the apostle says, Now all these things happened to them as a type, and they were written for our correction, upon whom the final age of the world has come.^[1] Therefore, if what happened corporally in Abraham was written for us, we will see it fulfilled spiritually in us if we live piously and justly. Leave your country, the Lord said, your kinsfolk and your father’s house. We believe and perceive all these things fulfilled in us, brothers, through the sacrament of baptism. Our land is our body; we go forth properly from our land if we abandon our carnal habits to follow the footsteps of Christ. Does not one seem to you happily to leave his land, that is, himself, if from being proud he becomes humble; from irascible, patient; from dissolute, chaste; from avaricious, generous; from envious, kind; from cruel, gentle? Truly, brothers, one who is changed thus out of love for God happily leaves his own land. Finally, even in private conversation, if one who is wicked suddenly begins to perform good works we are inclined to speak thus of him: He has gone out of himself. Indeed, he is properly said to have gone out of himself if he rejects his vices and delights in virtue. Leave your country, says the Lord. Our country, that is, our body, was the land of the dying before baptism, but through baptism it has become the land of the living. It is the very land of which the psalmist relates: I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living.^[2] Through baptism, as I said, we have become the land of the living and not of the dying, that is, of the virtues and not of the vices. However, this is true only if after receiving baptism we do not return to the slough of vices, if when we have become the land of the living we do not perform the blameworthy, wicked deeds of death. And come, says the Lord, into the land which I will show you. It is certain that then we will come with joy to the land that God shows us if with his help we first repel sins and vices from our land, that is, from our body.

Leave your kinsfolk. Our kinsfolk is understood as those vices and sins that are in part born with us in some way and are increased and nourished after infancy by our bad acts. Therefore we leave our kinsfolk when through the grace of baptism we are emptied of all sins and vices. However, this is true only if later we strive as much as we can with God’s help to expel vice and to be filled with virtues. If after being freed from all evil through baptism we are willing to be slothful and idle, I fear that what is written in the Gospel may be fulfilled in us: When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he roams through dry places in search of rest and finds none. If after he returns he finds his house unoccupied, he takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.^[1] Therefore let us so go forth from our kinsfolk, that is, from our sins and vices, that we may never again wish to return to them as a dog to its vomit.^[2]

Leave your father’s house. This we ought to accept in a spiritual manner, dearly beloved. The devil was our father before the grace of Christ; of him the Lord spoke in the Gospel when he rebuked the Jews: The father from whom you are is the devil, and the desires of your father it is your will to do.^[1] He said the devil was the father of humanity, not because of birth from him but because of imitation of his wickedness. Indeed, they could not have been born of him, but they did want to imitate him. This fact that the devil was our first father the psalmist relates in the person of God speaking to the church: Hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear, forget your people and your father’s house.^[2]

As for the promise to make of him a great nation, is it necessary to give a meaning other than the literal one? Because it is clear that it was realized in its historical sense. But, having become a people, it is truly great when it is adorned with virtues. And it is manifest that when the progress becomes more important in the soul, there is established in it a grandeur which is no longer earthly but heavenly. And this soul is a blessing that is not simply offered but realized, because the name is made great and becomes celebrated because it is accompanied by virtue and by that beauty which confers a spiritual blessing. It is worth more to have a good name than to have riches.^[1]

The scope of the promise is extraordinary: I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and magnify your name. Not only will I place you at the head of a great nation and cause your name to be great, but as well, I will bless you, and you will be blessed. I will favor you with so much blessing, he says, that it will last for all time. You will be blessed to such an extent that everyone will be anxious to thrust themselves into your company in preference to the highest honor. See how God right from the beginning foretold to him the honor he would later confer upon him. I will make you a great nation, he said; I will magnify your name; I will bless you, and you will be blessed. Hence the Jews too found in the patriarch grounds for self-importance and endeavored to establish their kinship with him in the words We are the children of Abraham.^[1] For you to learn, however, that on the basis of their evil ways they are in fact unworthy of such kinship, Christ says to them, If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham.^[2] John too, the son of Zechariah, when those anxious to be baptized flocked to the Jordan, said to them, Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that benefits repentance, and don’t presume to say, ‘We have Abraham for our father.’ I tell you, after all, that God can raise up children to Abraham even from these stones.^[3] Do you see how great his name was in everyone’s estimation? For the time being, however, before the sequel the just man’s God-fearing qualities are demonstrated in the way he believed the words coming from God and accepted without demur everything, difficult though it seemed.

The promise of this blessing is greater and more important than the preceding one. That was earthly, this one is heavenly, since that one referred to the generation of the fleshly Israel and this one to the generation of the spiritual Israel; that one to the nation born from him according to the flesh and this one to the generation of the nation saved in Christ from all the families of the earth. Among these saved are included all those born from him according to the flesh, who wished also to imitate the piety of his faith. To all these together the apostle Paul says, If you are of Christ, you are then the seed of Abraham.^[1] Therefore when he says, In you will be blessed all the families of the earth, it is as if he were saying, And in your seed will be blessed the families of the earth. Mary, from whom would be born the Christ, was present already when these things were said to him. This is what the apostle meant when he spoke of them [the descendents of Levi] as in the loins of Abraham. How marvelous was the dispensation of the divine severity and goodness. The multitude of those who had gathered for a work of pride merited to be divided from one another into different languages and races. . . . This one man, who abandoned that region, going forth from it willingly by the order of the Lord, heard addressed to himself the promise that in one common blessing there would be reunited in him all the peoples divided into various regions and languages.

In this, his going forth by divine command from the land, from his kin and from the house of his father, it is clear that all the sons of his promise, among whom are we also, must imitate him. We go forth from our land when we renounce the pleasures of the flesh; from our kin when, in the measure possible for humans, we make an effort to rid ourselves of all the vices with which we are born. We go forth from the house of our father when, for love of the heavenly life, we want to leave the world itself with its head, the devil. All of us, in fact, because of the first disobedience, are born into the world as sons of the devil. But, through the grace of regeneration, all those who belong to the seed of Abraham are made sons of God, because our Father who is in heaven^[1] says to us, that is, to his church, Hear, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear; forget your people and your father’s house.^[2]

Please note that the same Moses says in another passage that God appeared to Abraham. Yet the same Moses hears from God that no man can see God and live.^[1] If God cannot be seen, how did God appear? If he appeared, how is it that he cannot be seen? For John says similarly, No one has ever seen God.^[2] And the apostle Paul says, Whom no man has seen or can see.^[3] But certainly Scripture does not lie; therefore God was really seen. Accordingly this can only mean that it was not the Father, who never has been seen, that was seen, but the Son, who willed to descend and to be seen, for the simple reason that he has descended. In fact, he is the image of the invisible God,^[4] that our limited human nature and frailty might in time grow accustomed to see God the Father in him who is the Image of God, that is, in the Son of God. Gradually and by degrees, human frailty had to be strengthened by means of the Image for the glory of being able one day to see God the Father.

Where there is Bethel, that is, the house of God, there is also the altar. Where there is the altar, there is also the calling on the name of God. It is not by chance that he made such great progress. He hoped in the help of God. The athlete of God exercised and strengthened himself in adversity. He went into the desert.

The content on the literal level is clear. As for the spiritual meaning, it is this. Those who are wise in God are above the earth, since they are not of the earth. A famine then came over the earth, because for those who are concerned about earthly things, there often occurs a famine in this sense, that they no longer hear the word of the Lord. Then, if they are worthy of it, the Word is given back to them one day.

Thus Abraham went to Egypt to sojourn there, not to dwell there, because he had sympathy for the victims of the famine. Likewise Daniel and his companions did not come to Babylon because of sins they had committed but to aid the people who had been deported there on account of their own sins.

On the literal level Abraham made an intelligent compromise with the lustfulness of the Egyptians, being certain that God, who had made him leave his own country, would watch over his marriage. He suggested to his wife that she tell them that she was his sister, because if they were told that and only that at the beginning, they would not have the idea that she was his wife, and by that means he would deceive them. In fact, marriage between brother and sister was practiced in Egypt and in his own country, as he said later, She really is my sister.^[1] It was therefore a clever strategy to suggest to Sarah to say only that at first. As the laws against adultery were probably respected among the Egyptians, Abraham thought in fact that they would kill him in order not to be considered as adulterers.

So much for the literal level. As for the spiritual meaning, those who pass from virtue to vice are said to descend into Egypt. One finds often in the Scriptures, Woe to those who descend into Egypt. Here it does not say he descended but he entered. His descent is an entrance, because every zealous man condescends to those who fall without falling with them . . . to deliver them from their fall. Just as one becomes Jewish for the sake of the Jews without being a Jew,^[2] and ungodly for the sake of the ungodly without being ungodly, so one comes into Egypt without living as an Egyptian.

The others then descend there, but Abraham enters there. It is not their vice that leads him there but the fulfillment of a divine plan. The virtuous man enters into Egypt in the sense that he makes use of foreign culture to draw something useful from it, as Paul the blessed apostle did in citing the verse of Aratus, for we are indeed his offspring,^[3] in order to behave accordingly, and to an unknown god or Cretans are always liars.^[4] He urges us in the same way to take every thought captive^[5] in order to put it at the service of Christ.

Having entered Egypt, as we have explained it, he imposes restrictions on virtue that she should not say that she is his wife, because the zealous and perfect man does not say that virtue^[6] has become his exclusive privilege in order not to provoke the jealousy of those who do not have it. He says that she is his sister, giving himself thus a secondary rank with regard to the union that he enjoys with her, in order to put himself within range of the weak and to inspire in them the desire to receive her as something that is at the disposition of all in common. The fact is that often, when we want to direct the attention of someone to a teaching, we begin by putting it in language common with him, for example the teaching about providence, so that afterward he may receive it personally. The evangelical teaching is thus the gracious spouse of the zealous man, but he does not keep her for himself, even if he speaks of her only among the mature.^[7] He places her in common with all, like Paul, who said, I wish that all were as I myself am,^[8] because, having become such, they might know that this culture is the spouse of the perfect man. Wisdom begets discernment to a man;^[9] and as for me, says the perfect, I became enamored of her beauty,^[10] that of wisdom, it is understood. But the wise man wishes to share with all that which is his, because in this way they will not become jealous.

There came a famine, and so he went to Egypt. He knew that in Egypt the dissipation of youth was widespread, characterized by lust, impudent desires and unrestrained passions. He understood that among such men the modesty of his wife would be defenseless and that her beauty would be a danger for him. So he told his wife to say that she was his sister. By this we are taught that it is not so much beauty that one should seek in a wife, for this often leads to the death of the husband. In fact, it is not so much the beauty of the wife but her virtue and her seriousness that make a husband happy. Whoever desires the happiness of marriage should look not for a wealthy woman, who will not be held in check by the obligations of marriage. One looks not for one ornamented with jewels but with good manners. The wife who is conscious of being of a higher social level generally humiliates her husband. These things have a close connection with pride. Sarah was not richer in goods. She was not of more noble origin. Therefore she did not think her husband inferior but loved him as one of equal dignity. She was not held back by riches, by her parents, by her relatives, but she followed her husband wherever he went. She went to a foreign land; she declared herself to be his sister. She was willing, if necessary, to endanger her own modesty rather than the security of her husband. To safeguard her husband, she lied, saying that she was his sister out of fear that those who were seeking to ensnare her modesty would have killed him as a rival and defender of his wife. The Egyptians, in fact, as soon as they saw her, struck by her uncommon beauty, presented her to the king and treated Abraham with respect, honoring him as the brother of her who was pleasing to the king.

Having built an altar there and called upon God, Abraham proceeded thence and dwelt in the desert and was compelled by pressure of famine to go on into Egypt. There he called his wife his sister, and he told no lie. For she was this also, because she was near of blood; just as Lot, on account of the same nearness, being his brother’s son, is called his brother. Now he did not deny that she was his wife but held his peace about it, committing to God the defense of his wife’s chastity and providing as a man against human wiles. If he had not provided against the danger as much as he could, he would have been tempting God rather than trusting in him. We have said enough about this matter against the calumnies of Faustus the Manichaean. At last what Abraham had expected the Lord to do took place. For Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who had taken her to him as his wife, restored her to her husband when faced with severe plague. And far be it from us to believe that she was defiled by lying with another. It is much more credible that, by these great afflictions, Pharaoh was not permitted to do this.

Abraham gave a human reason as human beings do. Nevertheless, because Sarah thought it was Abraham who was sterile, she was taken to the palace. [This happened] first, so that she might learn that it was she who was barren; second, so that her love for her husband might be seen, for she did not exchange [her husband] for a king while she was a sojourner; and [last], so that the mystery of her descendants might be prefigured in her. Just as she had no love for the kingdom of Egypt, they would not love the idols, the garlic or the onions of Egypt. The entire house of Pharaoh was struck down by Sarah’s deliverance. So too would all Egypt be struck down by the deliverance of her descendants.^[1]

The intelligent strategy of the patriarch did not fail. They did not seek to do him harm. Moreover, a way out of it presented itself so that the marriage of the holy man would not be violated, because the Egyptians did not fling themselves on the woman relinquished by him. But the officials, after having seen her, in order to obtain the gratitude of the king, presented her to him as a gift, and thus it happened that they treated Abraham well because of her.

Abraham entered then into Egypt allegorically by adapting himself as one of the perfect to the imperfect in order to do good to them instead of holding on to virtue as a privilege, as has been said above, but in showing her to all as his sister, in humility, so that by contemplating her they might come to love her. But observe how it is said that the officials saw her. There are in fact in the ranks of the allegorically viewed Egyptians some men who are purer, who have a great capacity for perceiving virtue. And they not only perceived her, but they introduced her to their superior, that is, to the reason that governs them, and they praised her.