In Abraham's time, covenants or formal agreements were made the way the Book of Genesis tells us today. An animal (usually a lamb or a calf) was sacrificed, split in half, and the two parts were placed facing each other. The two parties making the covenant passed through the middle of the two halves. This action signified the commitment the parties made. They pledged to be faithful to the covenant. The party that broke the covenant should suffer the fate of the sacrificed animal: death.

When God spoke to Abraham for the first time, God promised him to give him a new land and make of him a great nation. In today's reading from the Book of Genesis, God gave Abraham more details about how God would make a great nation from him. It would not be through a third person, but through Abraham himself. Abraham would become a father.

God also renewed his commitment to give Abraham the Promised Land. Abraham asked God for a sign that the promise of land would be fulfilled. God then made a Covenant with Abraham. God chose fire as the symbol of his physical manifestation when making the covenant with Abraham. Centuries later God showed his presence among Abraham's descendants, guiding them through the desert, with a pillar of fire. In today’s Gospel reading on the Mount of the Transfiguration, the Lord shone so brightly that it seemed as if he himself were on fire.

This is how the Book of Genesis tells us about the moment God made the solemn agreement, “When the sun set, there was darkness, and a burning fire and a burning torch passed through the midst of the slaughtered animals.” It is noteworthy that Abraham did not pass through the slaughtered animals. It was God who solemnly committed to give Abraham the Promised Land. What God did there was incredible. God promised to give his own life in case God himself did not fulfill the promise!

The Promised Land, in the literal sense, represents the physical territory of Israel. God gave this land, not during Abraham’s lifetime, but after the Exodus. The Promised Land went on to reach its maximum extent during the times of Kings David and Solomon. The Promised Land, in the spiritual sense, represents Heaven, Eternal Life. Heaven is our homeland as St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, "Our citizenship is in heaven."

The Death of God should have been the consequence of God's failure to fulfill his promise to give Abraham and his descendants the Promised Land. What is puzzling in the unfolding story is that God will precisely give his own life to fulfill the promise. Not because God failed to fulfill it, but because it is precisely how God chose to fulfill his promise.

St. Luke tells us about the Transfiguration of the Lord, "And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem." The Lord's exodus was his Passion and Death. God fulfilled the commitment of the Promised Land through the Lord’s triumphant Resurrection.

The risen Lord opened the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven for all the descendants of Abraham. St. Paul connects the reading from Genesis and the Gospel reading: "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform to his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself" (Philippians 3:1). Let us humbly ask the Lord to grant us, his baptized brothers and sisters and descendants of Abraham, the grace of finding us worthy of admission into the Kingdom of Heaven, our true homeland.