Second Sunday of Lent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 27, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent (B), Vigil
February 27, 2021

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.
• The scene of the Transfiguration has three lessons 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 hike up an “exceedingly high mountain.” 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 would take vigorous climbers at least a couple of hours to ascend on foot. But Scriptural scholars believe the more likely place where this glorification happened was Mount Hermon, now in southern Syria and close to Caesarea Philippi where the preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel took place. Mount Hermon is 9,232 feet tall, approximately five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1886 feet). That would have been a whole day’s work to ascend. They needed to leave civilization behind, they needed to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. The lesson for us this Lent is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. Jesus never says to us, “Stay where you are,” but always “Come!,” and “Go!” and “Follow me!” And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in a comfy golf cart. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones behind. What is the Lord asking you to leave behind in order to advance on the journey of faith?
• The second Lenten lesson 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, about the “exodus” he 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 sin not Pharaoh, the water is baptismal not the Red Sea, the desert is not in the Middle East but in Lent, and the Promised Land is not flowing with milk and honey but the Living Water that wells up to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain was so powerful they didn’t know what to say, but they wanted to keep the experience going for as long as possible, building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Why did this scene of the Transfiguration happen? The reason was ultimately to strengthen them to remain strong in faith even when 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 in glory. 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, it’s meant to sustain us. 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 live Lent boldly and 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 help 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 of the other aspects of Jesus’ transfiguration, God the Father finally speaks. He speaks 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 is really quite strange when you think about it. After pronouncing Jesus once more as his Beloved Son — and answering the question Jesus asked in the previous scene when he surveyed who people and who the apostles were saying him to be — God the Father thundered, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” It’s a peculiar imperative from God the Father. 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 and they had been 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. Jesus ended up telling them what would occur three separate times, but they didn’t want to hear the message 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 him. 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 imperative. On Ash Wednesday Jesus said, “Repent and Believe!” Have we? Jesus called us to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Are we doing all three? Are we excelling in the self-denial, self-death through the Crosses God gives us and in following Jesus and heeding all of his words? God the Father who calls us to listen to his Son will listen to our prayers for all of the help we need to have the trusting, obedient ears needed. That’s one of the most important parts of Lent.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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