God's Promise to make us "exceedingly fertile"

In today’s first reading, Gen. 17: 3-9, God  tells Abram that he is to be the father of a host of nations, that God will make him “exceedingly fertile”, that “kings shall come from him”--that he shall be a royal kingdom--that he and his descendants will be given the land in which he was then staying.  Recall that God had asked Abram to leave the land of Ur and go to the land “that I will show you.”  He also asked Abraham (his name was changed when God established his covenant with him) to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, and Abraham obeyed  (God provided a ram instead). Abram trusted God, unlike our first parents, Adam and Eve.  Abraham, truly, is our father of faith and a model of trust.

The promises of the Old Covenant extend into the New Covenant established at the foot of the cross when Jesus entrusted Mary to John and John to Mary: "Woman, behold our son; son, behold your mother." Jesus, from the cross, is asking each of us to be mother, brother and sister to one another, to care for one another, to be responsible to and for each other. That means that no one should go without food, shelter, or land or the means to raise and provide for a family.  Everyone should be thriving and be exceedingly fruitful.

We await the fulfillment of the promise that the Royal Kingdom of God will be firmly established here on this earth. We believe that one day we truly will relate to each other as brothers and sisters, as one family in Christ Jesus, as men and women of faith, as Jesus prayed the night before His passion: I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one--as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me (John 17:21).  That day of prostrating ourselves before the Lord in deep faith, as Abram did, is coming--all will be one in Christ Jesus, our Lord, all Christ's enemies will be put underfoot. We also believe, as did Abraham, that God will make us--our country, our nation, all the nations of the world, all the peoples of the world-- “exceedingly fertile” and that we will come to the point of distributing this world’s goods equally to all people. God says to us, as He said to Abram:  “You will be my people and I will be your God.”   Do I believe it? do you?