Now the LORD had said unto Abram,
Get you out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, unto a land that I will show you:
All Commentaries on Genesis 12:1 Go To Genesis 12
Caesarius of Arles
AD 542
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.” 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.” 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.
