The Righteous Patriarch Abraham and his nephew Lot
The holy Patriarch Abraham, born a pagan, ten generations after Noah, when the knowledge of God had perished from among men, became the beginning of God's dispensation for the universal renewal and salvation of man. He was called out of his country--the land of the Chaldees, that is, Mesopotamia--to the land of Canaan, and received the promise that through his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed; through his singular faith in the promises of God, he was justified before the giving of the Law and the coming of Grace; through his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, he portrayed the love wherewith God loved the world in sacrificing His only-begotten Son. The greatness of Abraham, and the trials that he and his righteous nephew Lot underwent, are set forth in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, chapters twelve through twenty-five. See also the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, December 11-17.