Pope Benedict XVI, General audience, January 23

Pope's catechesis on faith: "Abraham, the believer, teaches us faith, and, as a stranger on earth, shows us the true homeland. Faith makes us pilgrims on earth, inserted into the world and history, but on the way to the heavenly homeland. 

The country to which God leads Abraham is far from his native land, it is already inhabited by other peoples, and will never really belong to him. The biblical narrator emphasizes this, although very discreetly: when Abraham arrived in the place of God's promise, "the Canaanites were then in the land" (Gen 12:6). The land that God gives to Abraham does not belong to him, he is a stranger and will remain so forever, with all that this entails: having no intentions of possession, always averting their poverty, seeing everything as a gift. This is also the spiritual condition of those who agree to follow the Lord, who decide to leave, accepting His call, under the sign of His invisible but powerful blessing."

Pope Benedict XVI, General audience, January 23