Second Sunday of Lent (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, March 4, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil
March 4, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily:

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in the Gospel this Sunday, as we, with the apostles Peter, James and John, behold Jesus transfigured among us.
• Every year ten days into Lent the Church has us journey with Jesus to the top of an exceedingly high mountain. It does so for the same reason why God the Father conceded to Peter, James and John the experience of the Transfiguration in the first place: to give them a foretaste of Jesus Christ’s glory, to sustain them when they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, pain and suffering on Good Friday.
• We see the connection between Mt. Tabor and Mt. Calvary, between the glory of the Transfiguration and the glorification of Christ on the throne of the Cross, in what the subject matter of the conversation between Jesus and the two great heroes of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, was. Moses and Elijah are both precursors of Lent. Elijah had lived a Lent of 40 days crossing the desert to the mountain of God, Horeb, being hunted by King Ahab. Moses had spent 40 days in prayer at the top of Mt. Sinai. They came specifically to speak with Jesus not about the glory that was to come, not about Heaven, but about the culmination of the Lenten Season: Jesus’ suffering, Cross and death. St. Luke tells us they spoke about the “exodus” that Jesus was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when he would lead us, like Moses led the Israelites from slavery through water and the desert to the promised land, only this time the slavery is not Pharaoh but sin, the water is not the Red Sea but baptism, the desert is not in the Middle East but the experience of Lent, and the Promised Land is not flowing with milk and honey but the Living Water that wells up to eternal life.
• There are three lessons from the Transfiguration that are meant to influence the way we live Lent and life.
• The first is the exertion, the effort that a holy Lent entails. Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a tough climb. Christian tradition normally associates the mountain where Jesus was transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans up narrow zig-zagging paths. It takes vigorous climbers at least a couple of hours to ascend on foot. The apostles needed to leave civilization and their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping a little for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. The lesson for us is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion this Lent. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in some comfy vehicle. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving — if we’ve set proper resolutions — all require effort, sacrifice, and perseverance. Repenting and believing in the Gospel require grit.
• That leads us to the second lesson, which is the help God gives us to make this exertion. In the Transfiguration, Saints Peter, James and John saw something extraordinary at the end of their spiritual and physical climb. Jesus was transfigured. He and his clothes were radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history. The cloud — a sign of God’s presence — came down upon them. God the Father spoke to them. All of these theophanies were so powerful the apostles didn’t know what to say. They wanted to prolong the experience, offering to make tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. These experiences all took place to strengthen them in faith as they would descend the Mount of Transfiguration to ascend Mount Calvary. When they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, they would be able to remember Jesus’ divinity. The Church helps us to capture the reason for Jesus’ transfiguration in the Eucharistic Preface for Mass, in which the priest prays, “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Resurrection.” It was to sustain their faith in trial. We know that it didn’t fully work. They fell asleep in the Garden. They fled in Gethsemane. Only John was present at the foot of the Cross. But while it for the most part failed them in the moment, it’s meant to sustain us in Lent and in life. This vision of Jesus’ glory is what has sustained the faith of the martyrs in making the sacrifice of themselves for God, because they knew that once they breathed their last, they would see Jesus transfigured. This vision of Jesus’ glory, and how he wants us to share in it, is meant to give us the hope to persevere in faith no matter what trials come our way. It’s also what’s meant to help us boldly make the sacrifices necessary in Lent to come into greater union with the Lord. If anything is keeping us from the Lord, the vision of the Lord’s glory will inspire us to excise them, or to use Jesus’ biblical image, to cut off those hands or feet and pluck out the eyes. The sacrifice is worth it! Whatever we have to give up makes sense compared to the glory of Jesus we await, the glory he wants to share with us.
• The final lesson is perhaps the most important. After all the other aspects of Jesus’ transfiguration, God the Father finally speaks. He talks only three times in the entire New Testament, at Jesus’ baptism, when he pronounces Jesus his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased; at the Last Supper when, in response to Jesus’ prayer to glorify his name, replies that he has glorified it and will glorify it again; and here. But what he says at the top of the mountain is quite surprising. God the Father thunders, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” It’s a peculiar imperative. After all, what had Peter, James and John been doing for the previous two years but listening to Jesus? They listened to him call them from their boats to be fishers of men. They heard him say all his parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Sower and the Seed, the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, and so many others. They listened to the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain and the great Eucharistic discourse in the Capernaum synagogue. They listened to him teach them how to pray. They listened to him instruct them as they walked along the dusty streets of Palestine. They listened to him lambaste the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees and console widows, sinners, and so many others. They had spent the last two years constantly listening to Jesus. But God the Father noticed something that they themselves hadn’t grasped. They had been selectively listening to Jesus. They were particularly tone deaf to what Jesus had been saying about how he was going to be betrayed, suffer greatly in Jerusalem, be tortured, crucified, killed and on the third day be raised. They didn’t want to hear it, and when Good Friday came, most of them were not within earshot to hear Jesus’ seven last words. What they were even less willing to hear was what Jesus said after that, namely, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” To be Jesus’ disciple, to be able to follow him, they needed to say no to their earthly ambitions and be crucified with Jesus. God the Father, who could see their hearts, knew that they were ignoring what Jesus was saying about his transfiguration in suffering and theirs as well. And so that’s why he said, “Listen to him!” The same Father gives us the same loving command.
• On Sunday we will leave our homes to climb not the Mount of Transfiguration but to the altar of God. It’s there at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith finds its source and summit. The Lord wants us to make the exertion to leave our comfort zones and come, even to come each day during Lent if we can. It’s at Mass that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility. We build not a booth for him but a tabernacle and a Church so that we can come into his presence and allow him to transfigure us. And it’s at Mass that we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. Each time we go to Mass God give us as a reward for our exertions, as a foretaste of forever, what he holds dearest but was willing to sacrifice for our salvation. As we behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, God the Father says to us, “This is my beloved Son. Do whatever he tells you! Take seriously his words throughout Lent, ‘Repent and Believe!’ and follow him, accompany him, on the pilgrimage on which he wants to lead you, up not Mt. Tabor, but the Celestial Jerusalem to my house where I’ve built a booth not only for him, for Moses and for Elijah, but for you!”

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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