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Presentation
The Editors

Being given the subject of this issue, we may well ask what Abraham has to do with the twentieth century, since we are living in a cultural and social context sa very different from his. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the majority of believers throughout the world in our day and age claim him for their own. For the Jewish people he is their Father - Avinu - whose merits are so copious that they suffice to cover the faults of his descendents in the eyes of God. Christians have always from the very beginning looked on themselves as his children, as witness the authors of the New Testament, Matthew for instance, in the opening verse of his gospel; the writings of Paul or James; a tradition that has been continued through the Fathers of the Church. Then too, Moslems see him as the founder of worship at Mecca and as the "Father of Moslems" (Sur. 22,78).
A careful reading of the Vatican II Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions shows us haw important this Patriarch is. In paragraph 3 he is referred to as he who "submitted to God's plan"; then in the following section he is mentioned six times, either by name or in more general terms as Patriarch, as Father (as the Jewish custom is). The Council "remembers the spiritual ties which link the people of the New Covenant to the stock of Abraham."
What is this mysterious link which binds together all that faith endures throughout the ages, that the persan of and the way in which this latter responded? By reflecting his call is in same way the same as our own.
the children of Abraham? Could the answer be, perhaps, faith is still living today the call that God made to Abraham on these thoughts we may find that his manner of living
We can recognize ourselves in him, we can feel that we are members of his people, the immense assembly of believers. We can see in him the archetype, the symbol as it were, of one of those figures in whom, as Jung says, is expressed the conscious or unconscious aspirations that are handed down from one generation to another. The centuries separating us from him lose their distance and he becomes for us the model of faith, the destroyer of idols, who puts himself in the hands of the only true Lord, breaking the dearest ties of homeland and family in order to find the liberty of the children of God.
In his reaction to idolatry, in the free and even daring way he felt he could speak to God (cf. Gen. 18:22-33) Abraham can still give us an important lesson today. In this world of ours which boasts so much of its technological progress, our consumer society tends to worship the work of its hands or else sets up or supports systems which enslave thousands upon thousands of other human beings to such an extent that humanity no longer sees clearly where it is going and is rushing madly along a collision course it can no longar control. In this sorry state of affairs should not all believers belonging to the three great monotheistic religions work together with other people of good will to recover the liberty which Abraham the nomad found, and aim at freeing their brothers and sisters who are crushed by injustice? Perhaps this will be the way that the promises made to this Patriarch will be fulfilled: "By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves."
(Gen. 12:3)