2nd. Sunday (A), of Lent
(Genesis 12:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:8-10; Matthew 17:1-9)
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, how God cherishes
us whom He has, today, called into His own presence! And how long, how carefully, and at what great
Personal price, He has prepared the way for our being able to come here rejoicing
in love – His love for us and our love for Him – and looking to Him for strength
to resist the sin abounding in the world around us and wanting to sneak into
our own lives, and for the life that will grow into eternal blessedness as
members of Jesus, the Saviour He has sent us.
(He) called us with a holy
calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace,
which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.
After the fall of Adam, God the Father longed to save from
the deceits of the devil those He had originally created – in His own image and
likeness – free; and in the intimate beatitude of the Most Holy Trinity,
His very own Son -- loving His Father with humanly-incomprehensible love -- willed
to become one of us, so that He might overcome the devil and death for us.
It was His intention that, by thus suffering for us as one of us, He
might enable all who would become His disciples to embrace freedom anew, and learn
to exercise it, in and for, love of the Father He Himself loved so wondrously. As Saint Paul told us in our second reading:
He abolished death and
brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
Dear friends in Christ, notice for how long God had been preparing
the way for our redemption!
Abraham (BC c.2000?) is known to us as our father-in-faith,
(Romans 4:16-17) and:
The Lord had said to Abram: “Go
forth from your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a
land that I will show you. I will make
you a great nation; I will bless you.
That blessing was for the nations:
In him (Abraham)
all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 18:18)
Moses (BC c.1500?) later spoke in the name of God to the Chosen
People of Israel, whom he had led out from slavery to the Egyptians, saying:
The LORD your God will raise
up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen
to Him. (Deuteronomy 18:15)
However, that promised one was not to be just another
prophet, because His words would be the very words of God Himself, and
those who might refuse to listen to His words would have to answer for that to
God Himself:
I will raise up for them a prophet
like you from among their brothers; I will put My words in His mouth, and He
will tell them everything I command Him. If anyone does not listen to My words that
the prophet speaks in My name, I Myself will call him to account.” (Deuteronomy 18:18-19)
When Moses had been speaking with God on Mount Sinai, we
are told that, unknown to him, his face had become radiant. Likewise here, when the disciples Peter,
James and John, were with Jesus on the mountain, we read that:
(Jesus) was transfigured
before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as
the light. (Matthew 17:2)
However, whereas the Israelites were afraid to approach
Moses because his face was shining, we -- the true Israel -- are exhorted, on
the contrary, to fix our eyes upon the transfigured and glorified face of
Jesus, by St. Paul who tells us (2 Corinthians 4:6):
God, Who said, "Let
light shine out of darkness," made His light shine in our hearts to give
us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Jesus was totally transfigured on that mountain top: “was
transfigured” is the Hebrew way of saying: “God transfigured Him”: for Hebrew
tradition did not allow common use of the name of God, and so, words were always
phrased in the passive voice: “Jesus was
transfigured” leaving “by Jahwe” unspoken but understood. The glory of divinity enveloped the whole
body of Jesus. This should have been the
normal state of Jesus’ humanity in His life among us, but as St. Paul tells us, for our sake He
set aside this glory and allowed Himself to be seen as an ordinary man:
Being in very nature God,
(He, Jesus) did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but
made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human
likeness. And being found in appearance
as (an ordinary) man, He humbled himself (yet further) and became obedient
to death-- even death on a cross!
(Philippians. 2:6-8)
Today, however, we worship, and with wonder and awe think
of, Jesus-in-glory, for such is the true and eternal Jesus; and we are filled
with gratitude as we realise that, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, our
weak human flesh can be taken with, in, Jesus the Christ, as members of the Body
of which He is the Head, into heaven. Our
weak, human flesh can, in Jesus, embrace, share and rejoice in, the
glory of the omnipotent and all-holy God; indeed, we can come to share in that very love
for the Father that initially led God’s own Son to become Jesus on earth.
Last Sunday we heard of Jesus being taken to the top of a
very high mountain and being shown and offered the glory of the whole world if
only He would bow down and worship Satan.
There Satan promised a false and fleeting glory; in today’s Gospel
reading, however, we hear of Jesus being enveloped in the true and eternal
glory of God:
After six days Jesus took
with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high
mountain by themselves, and He was transfigured before them.
Jesus was led by the Spirit, called by the Father, to the
mountain top as the beloved Son, before His Father as of right. Notice that He took with Him chosen
disciples, not all of them. He did this
to teach us that no office, no function, no calling, not even the calling of an
Apostle, can lead human beings into the Father’s presence: only Jesus’
Personal love and choice bestows such a privilege! And notice also, that He took the three chosen
ones into the proximity, not into the immediate presence, of Him Whose voice they
heard speaking to them from the cloud. That
proximity is as and how He will lead us too at the end of our days into the Father’s
house, as His adopted children.
This is My Son, Whom I love;
with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!
And there was Jesus alone, transfigured before them: His
face shining like the sun, and His clothes gleaming white as the light.
People of God, this vision is a God-given consolation for
us Catholics and our Orthodox brethren, to
the end of Time, because the words of Jesus echo down the ages in Mother Church,
who does not even think of changing the teaching words of Jesus to suit modern man. We can this very day listen to Him
because He Himself said to His Apostles:
When the Spirit of truth comes,
He will guide you into all truth. He
will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell
you what is yet to come. He will bring
glory to Me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.” (John 16:13-14)
By the Holy Spirit -- Jesus’ parting Gift to us -- His
truth would be known to His Church for all time; and that truth is
made known, even in our devil-tempted world of today, to all those wanting to
hear and to obey the words of God that lead to life, real life, blessed and eternal
life, through the teaching of the Apostles:
He who listens to you listens
to Me; he who rejects you rejects Me; but he who rejects Me rejects Him Who
sent Me." (Luke 10:16)
Those who listen to the Son throughout the ages are being drawn
into that final gathering together of God’s chosen People which is being
brought about by the Spirit of God, and that process is going on among us, dear
People of God, here today. As with the
disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, we too hear the words and teaching
of Jesus and are urged by Mother Church to obey the voice of the Father and
“listen to Jesus”. Mother Church -- in
the power of the Spirit given her by her Lord -- will teach us how to obey
Jesus, how to rightly love Him; and she exhorts us to have total confidence in
Him Who alone, can and will share with us His glory, and lead us and all His faithful
disciples into the home of our heavenly Father, to be welcomed by Him as His
children, loved in the Beloved, and only-begotten, Son.
