Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Agnes Church, Manhattan
Second Sunday of Lent, Extraordinary Form
February 28, 2021
1 Thess 4:1-7, Matt 17: 1-9
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
“This is the will of God, your holiness,” St. Paul tells us today in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. The whole season of Lent is meant to focus us anew on this call to be holy as God is holy. As Lent began, we were marked with ashes, reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return, and instructed to waste no time in pursuing holiness through repenting and believing in the Gospel. The three Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are meant to help us to unite ourselves to Jesus in his holiness, through entering into his prayer, his 40 day fast in the desert, and his giving of himself down to the last drop of his blood for us and others. Prayer, almsgiving and fasting, respectively, help us to confront the temptations of the devil to disorder our relationship with God, with others and with ourselves, to overcome the three-fold concupiscence toward individualism, materialism, and hedonism, so that we might freely live for God. God’s will for us is our sanctification and Lent is the health club for the soul that is meant to get us to shed spiritual obesity and lethargy and get us into true Christian shape.
That’s why on the Second Sunday of Lent each year we ponder the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which teaches us three essential lessons about Lent and about the perennial call to holiness.
The first is the exertion, the effort, that a holy Lent and life entails. In today’s Gospel, 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 vertiginously racing up narrow, zig-zagging paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a few hours to ascend on foot. Many Scriptural scholars, however, 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 take a whole day’s work to ascend. They would have needed to leave civilization behind, leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with him and see him revealed. The lesson for us in Lent and in life 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 a stroll on the beach. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones and push ourselves like alpine climbers.
The second lesson is the foretaste of the finish line God seeks to give us to help us to persevere. 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 — St. Luke tells us — 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. The difference about the exodus on which Jesus leads us is that the slavery is not to Pharaoh but to sin, the water is not the Red Sea but baptismal, 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 various theophanies at the top of the mountain — the presence of Moses and Elijah and the incredible change in Jesus’ appearance — left the apostles speechless and wanting to keep the experience ongoing, building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But why were the three apostles allowed to get this glimpse of Jesus’ divine glory in the first place? 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, to see, with 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. The same three apostles fell asleep in the Garden. They and the others fled in Gethsemane. Only John was present at the foot of the Cross. But while it for the most part failed them under trial, 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 is meant to help us, to use Jesus’ graphic image elsewhere in the Gospel, 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 third lesson is perhaps the most important one of all. 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 mysterious when we think about it. After pronouncing Jesus once more as his Beloved Son — and answering the question Jesus had asked in the previous scene when he surveyed who people and the apostles were saying that the Son of Man is — 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 previous two years, we can say, listening to Jesus non-stop.
But God the Father noticed something that they themselves hadn’t grasped. They had been selectively listening to his Son. They had been particularly tone deaf to what Jesus had been saying in the scene immediately preceding this one, that 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. Simon Peter, right after his name had been changed to rock, had it changed again as Jesus called him “Satan,” and told him to get behind him, so that Peter would follow Jesus rather than try to lead him, because he and the others were thinking not as God does but as human beings do. Jesus ended up telling them what would occur three separate times, but they didn’t want to hear the message. They didn’t want to live the message. 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. But when Good Friday came, most of them were not within earshot to hear Jesus’ seven last words. None except John was there to show concern. The soldiers needed to compel a stranger, Simon from Cyrene, to help Jesus because none of his closest followers, at that point, could deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus.
God the Father, who could see their hearts, knew that they were ignoring what Jesus was saying about his transfiguration in self-sacrificial love and theirs as well. That’s why he said, “Listen to him!” God the Father says the same thing to us today. He wants us to heed Jesus’ words, “Repent and Believe.” He wants us to act on Jesus’ commands to pray, fast and give alms. He wants us put into practice Jesus’ words to deny ourselves, pick up cross and follow him throughout the exertion of Lent and life to the place where he has built a booth for us. 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. But we have to seek and seize that assistance. Lent is the time we focus on this with full attention.
One last thought. Today at the beginning of the prayers at the foot of the altar, something from Psalm 43 struck me in a way it had never done before, in the context of today’s Gospel of the Transfiguration. We pray, “Emítte lucem tuam et veritátem tuam: ipsa me deduxérunt, et adduxérunt in montem sanctum tuum et in tabernácula tua,” which in English is translated, “Send forth your light and your truth: these have led me, they have brought me onto your holy mountain and in your tabernacle.” At the Transfiguration, God does send forth the light of his glory radiating through his Son and he calls our attention to the truth he speaks, commanded us to listen to him. Together that light and truth of Christ have led us to the holy mountain and into his sanctuary where the Lord wants to help us to grow in that light and truth all the way.
Today we’ve left our homes not to hike up an exceedingly high mountain but to come to this Church. It’s here at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith finds its soaring summit. The Lord wants us to make the exertion — whether big or small — to come here. He wants us to exert ourselves to leave our comfort zones to come each day during Lent if we can.It’s here that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility. It’s here we have built for him not a booth but a tabernacle and a Church so that we can come into his presence and allow him constantly to transfigure us to be holy as he is holy. It’s here where we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. Today, as a reward for our exertions, he gives us a foretaste of forever. The Father saying to us, indicating the Blessed Sacrament, “This is my beloved Son. Do whatever he tells you! Take seriously my Son’s words throughout Lent, ‘Repent and Believe!’ and follow him, accompany him, on the pilgrimage on which he wants to lead you, not to Mt. Tabor, not to Mt. Hermon, but to the Celestial Jerusalem, to the house where I’ve built a booth not only for him, for Moses and for Elijah, but for you!”
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians
Brothers, we earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that, as you received from us how you should conduct yourselves to please God—and as you are conducting yourselves—you do so even more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. This is the will of God, your holiness: that you refrain from immorality, that each of you know how to acquire a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion as do the Gentiles who do not know God; not to take advantage of or exploit a brother in this matter, for the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you before and solemnly affirmed. For God did not call us to impurity but to holiness.
The continuation of the Gospel according to St. Matthew
After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him, Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download