Down to the thousandth generation...

The first reading for Morning Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours is taken from Chapter Seven of Deuteronomy. It ends with:

Understand, then, that the Lord, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation towards those who love him and keep his commandments.

It is natural to look at this and say, “A thousand generations; that’s about 40 years times 1000; or God keeps his covenant for 40,000 years;” concluding perhaps that we are about a good 35,000 years away from the end of the world and the general judgment.

St. Augustine suggested that we look at it from a spiritual perspective, not carnal, and offered the following. The number 1000 is 10 raised to the third. God’s covenant was given to a people to whom he had given 10 commandments, commandments that are a burden, and without grace, impossible to fulfill; thus the revelation of the Trinity by Jesus Christ is that sign of grace which makes the keeping of the commandments possible; hence to love him and keep his commandments, is the commandments (10) informed by the grace of the Triune God (3), signified by 1000.

Thus, as we are children of Abraham by faith, an imperishable seed, not by the will of man, but of God, so also are the faithful followers of Jesus Christ the inheritors of the covenent. Which generation? The one referred to in Luke:

All generations will call me blessed

A blessed Lent to you.