2nd. SUNDAY of LENT (C)
(Genesis
15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:20–4:1; Luke 9:28-36)
Dear People of God, today’s Gospel is replete with teaching
about Jesus. Notice first of all that:
While Jesus was praying, His face
changed in appearance, and His clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with Him,
Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His exodus which He was going
to accomplish in Jerusalem.
The meaning is clear.
Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the most charismatic figure among the OT
prophets were speaking with Jesus about His imminent exodus, Passover, in
Jerusalem; thereby telling us that the Law and the Prophets of Israel had
indeed been leading to, speaking of, and preparing for, Jesus at their deepest
level and according to their supreme intention and purpose. We, Catholics and Christians, who desire to
know and love our Lord and Saviour as fully as we can, should aspire to recognize
and appreciate ever better the witness to Jesus contained in the writings of
the Old Testament.
In the Old Testament God spoke frequently to Moses from a
cloud that accompanied Israel throughout her desert wanderings:
The Lord said to Moses, “Come up
to Me on the mountain … and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and
commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.” Now
the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and cloud covered it six days. On the seventh day He called to Moses out of
the midst of the cloud, so Moses went into the midst of the cloud and up the
mountain. And Moses was on the mountain
forty days and forty nights. (Exodus
24:12, 15-18)
In such a way Moses was taught by God throughout Israel’s forty
years journeying to the Promised Land.
Notice, however, that in today’s Gospel reading, God the
Father -- again speaking from a cloud -- told the disciples Peter, James and
John:
This is My chosen (beloved) Son. Hear
Him!
That would seem to be saying that no more would there be a
voice from a heavenly cloud speaking to the new Israel, but that the words of
Jesus Himself would be all that could be desired or would be needed. Indeed, those words would seem to proclaim
Jesus as God, speaking on behalf of, and with the authority of, the Father
Himself.
‘Hear Him’ is a command, a command for Christians of all
time, meaning ‘hear and obey’. There,
indeed, we have the first of all commandments for Christians, a command which
Jesus Himself confirmed:
If you love Me, keep My
commandments. (John 14:15)
But there is more in the Father’s words beside the
commandment to ‘hear’ Jesus; there is also a most intimately Personal invitation
or call – This (Gift) is My chosen, My
beloved, Son, hear Him – hear Him in such a way as to love
Him as well as to obey Him; the implication being that the only true knowledge
of Jesus (‘hear Him’) is that which results in love for Him. Jesus Himself is sublime in His humility: He
is well-satisfied concerning our love for Him if we keep His commandments. But the Father’s words are words of the ultimate and most sublime Father about His only chosen, begotten, and beloved, Son: they not only mysteriously embrace the full ardour of the
Father’s beatific love for His Son, they
also indicate something of the Father’s burning desire that we who receive this
gift of His Son, should both hear Him
and also come to love Him as the Father Himself wants us to love Him, that is, by
our sharing, participating in and with, the Father’s very own love for Him.
Turning our attention now to the first reading we were told
that, on hearing God’s humanly-inconceivable promise:
Abram put his faith in the Lord,
Who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
However, that most laudable initial faith of Abram -- soon
to be named Abraham -- had to be strengthened for future trials:
The LORD said to Abram: “Know for
certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where
they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation they
must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth. You, however, shall join your forefathers in
peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.
And so, as an unforgettable support for such enduring faith
by Abram and subsequently of Israel, Abram was given – as you heard -- a
mysterious vision and historic promise. Abram himself had had some part to play in
that vision, for he had brought, prepared, and arranged the animals called for
by the Lord; and subsequently, he had stayed beside them, to protect their
integrity as sacrifices, until such time as the Lord God Himself had appeared
under the same fiery symbol He would later use again in the burning bush for
Moses and the column of fire going before and guiding Israel through the desert
of Sinai, and ultimately climaxing with the tongues of fire at Pentecost.
When the sun had set and it was
dark, there appeared a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch, which passed
between those (sacrificial) pieces.
Such was the awesome background to the Lord’s words of confirmation
for Abram’s faith:
To your descendants I give this
land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great River, the Euphrates.
As one of those described by St. Paul in the second reading
whose ‘citizenship is in heaven’, Abram was subsequently named Abraham and, as befitting
our Christian awareness of him as our ‘father in faith’, he lived St. Paul’s
exhortation in today’s second reading, in the most exemplary manner:
Stand
firm
in the Lord.
People of God, let us now closely observe and carefully
imitate both Abraham and Mary. Yes
indeed, let us keep our eyes firmly on Abraham whose admirable faith in God was
confirmed by the Lord’s mysterious and
fiery self-manifestation amidst the sacrificial flesh; let us keep our eyes
even more firmly fixed on Mary, whose supreme faith in God’s promise was
confirmed both by the awesome mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation brought about
in her own womb, and by the consummate mystery of the His Passion, Death, and
Resurrection given us for our confirmation and constant growth in the faith we
have received from God the Father Who first drew us to Jesus. Today, God renews His choice of us by calling
us anew to ‘hear’ His Son -- Who speaks clearly and surely to us in and through
His Church -- and on hearing Him, to love Him by the Spirit, now gifted by God for
that very purpose, that we might in some measure become ablaze with the
Father’s own love for His Son.
There is no faith without promises, there is no faith
without mystery, and our Christian faith, in its ultimate awareness of and response
to the totality of human experience and divine goodness, embraces unimaginable
promises together with unfathomable mystery.
There, indeed, lies an inescapable tension, but it is one designed not for
our destruction but for an ever-continuing and harmonious development of all
our human capabilities originally given us as the ‘image and likeness of God’.
Promises and mystery are not to the liking of modern
secular society where tangible, controllable, profitable, and temporal – quick
-- attainments are sought at every level.
All too often, for such people, as St. Paul said in the second reading:
Their God is their stomach, their
glory is in their shame. Their minds are
occupied with earthly things, and their end is destruction.
For us, however:
Our citizenship is in heaven, and
from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with
His glorified body.
And although we ‘await’ the fulness of what can only be
bestowed on us in our heavenly and eternal home, we already have, and even now
rejoice and delight in, what is a foretaste of that heavenly fulfilment: the
mysterious presence and power of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our life
… the Father anticipating and fulfilling us so mysteriously, knowing us and
loving us so intimately; the Son, our Lord and Saviour, our glory, our example
and our companion; the Holy Spirit Who enlightens, guides, sustains and
comforts us in all our efforts to love and follow Jesus with our whole mind and
heart.
Dear People of God, those are true Catholic and Christian joys;
they are not worldly joys but they
are truly human and deeply personal joys,
arising from a personal relationship with and love of God -- Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit -- and given for the Christian fulfilment of children of God become
strangers in this world. They are far
richer and deeper than the pseudo, much sought after, joys of this world where
those who seem richest suddenly, and not infrequently, put an end to their
lives in painful emptiness; where crimes are committed for pleasures which are
totally insufficient because of their passing and yet ever-recurring and demanding
nature, pleasures which can prove deadly for those who indulge them and, too
often, harmful to others.
Therefore, my brothers and
sisters whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm in the Lord.
