SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36

 

God’s call is an invitation to enter into his holiness with an attitude of faith and total trust in the Divine.  We encounter a God who speaks to us and we are called upon to listen to him and respond to him.  During the season of Lent, he invites us to convert ourselves and become like him as he prepared himself for the mission of his Father.  

As we now enter the Second Week of Lent, our task is to continue to examine our hearts and change ourselves in order to be worthy of his glorious paschal mystery.  We are called to continue to examine our hearts and to repent in order to prepare ourselves for the glorious resurrection of Christ. 

 God tells us that our thoughts are not like his thoughts and our ways are not similar to those of his choice. As human beings, we do not like change and we resist any change as much as we can.  However, change is a part of our life and we cannot just depend on our past glory and achievements.

 We know that we are pilgrims on a journey to a more permanent dwelling place, a place of total union with our God of Truth and Love. It is in this world and through this world that we are to find our God. That is the goal of living and we need to keep it constantly before our eyes.  Whatever we do on earth has its consequence in our life to come.

 The First Reading of today marks a significant stage in Abraham’s journey of faith. Though still struggling with doubt Abraham is led to make sufficient progress to put his faith in the Lord.  He had been asked to leave his homeland and to go and live in a strange place.

 If he did so, he was promised a great future for his family and descendants. Without any further guarantees, Abram sets out. His readiness to put his trust in God’s word became legendary in the tradition of Israel and is echoed again in the New Testament.

“Abram put his faith in the Lord, who counted this as making him justified,” that is, putting him right with God.

 In the Second Reading we hear, St. Paul telling the new Christians that our citizenship is in Heaven, that is, the goal and destination of our life is to be one with God. There is no other goal available to us. 

    Paul explains to them that from heaven i.e. from God comes the Saviour we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which he can subdue the whole universe.

 At the same time, we do not belong to this world because Christ died for us so that we may be made righteous through Him. Through His death on the cross as the sacrificial Lamb, we qualify to inherit the salvation that awaits all those who persevere in their living faith.  

Since Christ died for us, we are indebted to Him for the gifts of righteousness, salvation, and eternal life in the Kingdom of God. We are indebted to Christ for what awaits us after the last trumpet. At that moment, in the twinkle of an eye, we will all be changed in the image of Christ. Eventually, Jesus will come to save us and will transform our lowly bodies like his own glorious body. 

In today’s Gospel reading we have the story of the transfiguration of Jesus on the Mountain. Luke explains that just before the transfiguration, Peter, in the name of his fellow disciples, had made the dramatic acknowledgment that Jesus, their teacher, was the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour King expected by Israel.

Having confirmed Peter in his mission as the “rock” and foundation upon which he would build his Church, Jesus begins to instruct them about what it will mean to be companions of the Messiah. The Messiah, their Jesus, will become a hunted figure, hunted not by foreigners but by the rulers of his own people.

The entire episode of the Transfiguration is intended to clarify the divine identity of Jesus. He is the Messiah, God’s chosen person, and who should be listened to. This is made clear from the voice that emerges from the cloud. Secondly, the transfiguration foreshadows Jesus’ exaltation to heaven as recounted by Luke. Finally, the transfiguration story continues teaching the disciples of Jesus about the deeper mystery of who he is and what he is about.

     The transfiguration mystery of Jesus challenges all explanations. It is what we generally term a mystery. It is an encounter with the divine that is briefly experienced in the context of prayer. The transformation or transfiguration of Jesus that the disciples experienced was not simply something they were to see and experience as happening to him alone.

It was also an invitation for them to undergo a transformation and transfiguration of their own. By listening to Jesus, listening to all that he invites us to be and to do, however much it may seem to go against the conventions we were brought upon.

It means especially listening to those words of Jesus;

It means having total trust in walking his Way;

It means a total trust that only his Way brings us into full union with God,

the source of all Truth, Love, Happiness, and Peace.

 

 -        @Avinash Bitra OFM Cap.