The Two Dramas of the Second Sunday of Lent, Second Sunday of Lent (B), February 25, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Second Sunday of Lent, Year B
February 25, 2024
Gen 22:1-2.9-13.15-18, Ps 116, Rom 8:31-34, Mk 9:2-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• There’s a rhythm at the beginning of every Lent. On the First Sunday, we always ponder Jesus’ forty days in the desert and how he resisted the temptations of the devil, so that we can learn from his triumph how to reject the devil’s machinations during our annual 40 days with Jesus in the desert and beyond. On the Second Sunday, our thoughts are always framed by two dramas, that of Abraham in the first reading and of the Transfiguration in the Gospel, because Abraham and the Transfiguration teach us various indispensable elements that are meant to influence the way we live each Lent. Today I’d like to cull from these dramas five different essential elements that will help us to live Lent and Life.
• The first is the faithful exertion, the trusting effort, that a holy Lent entails. In today’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up a “high mountain apart by themselves.” 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 few 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, nearly five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1,886 feet). That would have taken a whole day’s work to ascend. Jesus and the three apostles needed to leave civilization behind, to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. We see an even greater exertion involved in what God asked Abraham. Abram was 75 years old — well past retirement age for people today — when the Lord called to him while he was in Ur of the Chaldeans (modern-day Iraq) and told him to leave the land of his kinfolk and go, not to a known, posh retirement community, but to an unknown land God would show him. God was asking him to pack up his bags completely and leave everything behind. Abram could have easily replied, “I’m an old dog, Lord, and I’m too tired to learn new tricks,” but he didn’t. He did, rather, what the Lord commanded. Little did he know that the land of Canaan to which the Lord was leading him would not have a welcome mat, but that he would have to fight for the land. But Abram and his entire family and flocks left and made the journey, not knowing how long the journey would last or where it would end up. The lesson for us this Lent is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make a journey of faith, a holy 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 car. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones behind. It’s as if God were asking us to go to live in an igloo in Antarctica: Would you do it? While he’s not drawing us to the south pole, he is asking us, in Lent, first to go out into the desert with him, then to climb a high mountain, then to leave our safe spaces and follow him along the way of the Cross. And so it’s important for us to ask: What’s my Ur of the Chaldeans? What is the Lord asking me to leave behind in order to be able to make with him a real pilgrimage of faith?
• The second lesson we learn is about what real faith is. We see this in Abraham’s trust in God when God promised him something that would have seemed impossible under the biological know-how of 3,800 years ago and still today. Abram was 75 and his wife, Sarai, was 65. She had tried in vain to conceive children. But God told Abram that he would finally become not just a father through Sarai, but the father of many nations. He took Abram outside and asked him to look into the sky and count the stars if he could. “So shall your descendants be,” God said. But what careful students of the text grasp is that a few verses later it said, “When the sun was about to set” (Gen 15:12). In other words, God had Abram look into the sky when the sky was blue, not dark. Abram couldn’t see the stars but he knew that they were there, and he believed that God would give him just as many children, even though he couldn’t yet see them, or hold them, or love them. And God had Abram wait 25 years for the fulfillment of this promise, when he was 100 and Sarai 90, changing their names to indicate that they were to be parents of many. The Church gives us the figure of Abraham at the beginning of every Lent precisely to help us to focus on our own faith, our faith in God’s promises. Do we really stake our life on the Lord’s word? For example, when Jesus tells us over and again not to be afraid, that even though people can harm the body, they can’t harm the soul, do we hold onto our insecurities and preoccupations or do we find our courage in God? In this time of the National Eucharistic Revival, when he tells us “This is my Body,” “This is the chalice of my blood,” and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” do we act on these truths and recognize that in Mass we meet God? We finish most of our prayers with the word “Amen!” Many catechists say this expression means “Yes!” with a hundred exclamation points, or that it means “So be it!” But in Hebrew the word “amen” means to “support” or “uphold.” When we say “amen!,” we’re declaring that we’re staking our whole life on what we’ve just said “Amen!” to. That’s what Abraham did when he believed God more than he believed common sense and biological observation. That’s the type of faith that God wants to help grow in us every Lent.
• The third lesson is about sacrifice. In Lent, we’re called to make sacrifices of our time in prayer, of our nourishment and pleasures in fasting, and of our things and ourselves in almsgiving. But often our sacrifices can be relatively small and unthreatening. The Church gives us the scene of Abraham’s sacrificing Isaac in today’s first reading to help us to see that God sometimes tests us in faith, like he put Abraham to the test, by asking us to sacrifice what we humanly love most in order to help us learn to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. It wasn’t enough that God had asked Abram to leave Ur and have to fight for part of Canaan. It wasn’t enough for him to believe that, even at advanced ages, he and Sarai could conceive. It wasn’t enough for him to have to wait 25 years for the fulfillment of that startling promise. It was to sacrifice that long awaited son. How shocking God’s words must have been to Abraham when God told him, “Take your son, Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust.” This went against every paternal instinct in Abraham’s aged body. Any father worthy of the name would die to save the life of a son or daughter, not become the child’s executioner. It was a three-day journey. Abraham loaded the wood of the sacrifice on Isaac’s shoulders. We don’t know exactly how old Isaac was, but he was old enough to be able to carry the wood for three days. Biblical scholars say he was anywhere between a teenager and a young adult and therefore easily able to overpower a man 100 years his senior. When Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb for the Holocaust?,” Abraham prophetically replied, “God himself will provide the lamb.” Abraham built the altar, tied down the humble, willing Isaac and took out his knife to slaughter — to slaughter! — his son. It’s at that moment, the angel of the Lord stopped him, saying, “Abraham! Abraham! … Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.” Why would God have designed such a test? Most rabbinical scholars say it was to put a definitive end to child sacrifice in the land of Canaan, to show Abraham’s descendants that unlike their neighbors, God did not want sons and daughters made in his image and likeness to be slain. Christians have always had a different answer, based on the Letter to the Hebrews. The sacred author tells us, “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’ He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol” (Heb 11:17-19). Abraham knew that Isaac was the son of the promise and, because he believed in God, he knew that even should Isaac die, God, who is faithful to his promises, would raise him from the dead. That would take extraordinary faith even today, 2,000 years after Jesus’ resurrection, but Abraham had that faith in God’s fidelity to his promise, in God’s love, 1,800 years before Christ’s resurrection! That’s the type of faith that God wants to see in us, that God wants to grant us if we accept that grace. Abraham received Isaac back as a symbol, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us. A symbol of what? A symbol of Christ’s own resurrection! God provided far more than a ram caught in a thicket. He provided his own Son, the Lamb of God, who like Isaac willingly carried the wood for the sacrifice and allowed himself to be bound. Unlike what happened on Mount Moriah, however, at the sacrifice of Calvary, no angel cried out, “Stop!” and “Don’t lay a hand or a nail on him!” The sacrifice was completed. Mary, our mother in faith, was there, knowing that even should Jesus die, God the Father would raise him from the dead. This faith we see in Abraham and in Mary is the type of faith we’re supposed to have in general, but especially with regard to our own death. God permits us to suffer and die because he intends to raise us from the dead as well. In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” The apostle goes on to say, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s the faith that God wants to see grow in us this Lent, that even if we undergo persecution, peril and the sword, even if we are like sleep to be slaughtered, even if we should die, we cannot be separated from Christ’s love and that love, which is more powerful than death, will raise us up. In order to experience that growth in faith, however, we need first to be put to the test. We have to be asked to sacrifice our “Isaac,” the person or thing that we love, in order to make God the pearl of great price worth selling everything else in our life. I remember my first year in seminary when I realized just how attached I was to my computer — it was one of the original generations of Macs — and what it stored. Everything I had done since from ages 14 to 23 was on it. After reading this story, I asked myself if God were to ask me to give up my computer, would I do it? Would I toss it out the fourth floor window if God were asking? Would I chuck all my past, all the work, all of it, if God demanded it? Ultimately, after three long days of prayer, God helped me to have the courage to say yes should God have demanded it. Thankfully he didn’t. But this is the type of faith Jesus demands of his disciples. This is the type of faith he wants to help us to obtain through the various tests and trials of Lent, as we give up our time to pray, our food to fast, and our possessions to others. Would we give up our cell phone or laptop? Would we sacrifice our social media accounts? Would we give up Columbia? Would we sacrifice our desire to control our future? God wants to help each of us this Lent to identify our Isaacs and make sure our Isaacs are able to be offered to God rather than become our gods. And he wants us to grasp that if we make such a sacrifice, he will be able to raise what we seem to lose from the dead, to give us, as he promised elsewhere, 100-fold in this life and eternal life.
• The fourth Lenten lesson we encounter on this Second Sunday of Lent is the divine assistance God gives us to make the sacrifice of what we hold dearest, including our own life. We see this in the scene of 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 what St. Luke calls the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem: like Moses led the Israelites from slavery to Pharaoh through the water of the Red Sea and the desert to the promised land flowing with milk and honey, Jesus would leads us from slavery to sin through the waters of baptism and the desert of Lent to the promised land irrigated by the Living Water welling up to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain was so powerful the three apostles didn’t know what to say, but they wanted to keep the experience going for as long as possible, building tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Why did Jesus want Peter, James and John to have this window into what likely occurred regularly in Jesus’ prayer, this glimpse of his divine glory? 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. In the Preface of today’s Mass, every priest in the world 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 when they would see Jesus transfigured in blood. We know that it didn’t fully work. All three apostles fell asleep in the Garden. All three fled Gethsemane. Only one of the three — John — was present at the foot of the Cross. But while for the most part the lesson of the Transfiguration 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 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, to use Jesus’ images from the Sermon on the Mount, to cut off whatever hands or feet and pluck out whatever eyes keep us from him. Whatever we may have to sacrifice is small compared to the glory of Jesus we await, the glory he wants to share with us.
• The fifth and final lesson is 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 during Jesus’ transfiguration. But what he says is really quite strange. After pronouncing Jesus once more as his Beloved Son — and answering the question Jesus had asked in Caesarea Philippi, when he surveyed the apostles about who the people and they said he was — God the Father thundered, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” It’s a peculiar imperative since Peter, James and John had been listening to Jesus almost non-stop for the previous two years. They listened to him call them from their boats to be fishers of men. They heard him preach the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Sower and the Seed, the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, and so many others. They were raptly attuned to the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain and the great Eucharistic discourse in the Capernaum synagogue. They hearkened to him when he taught them how to pray. They hung on his words as he instructed them walking along the dusty streets of Palestine. They gave him both ears as he lambasted the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees and consoled widows, sinners, and so many others. They had spent the previous two years constantly listening to Jesus. But God the Father noticed something that they themselves hadn’t yet grasped: they had only been selectively listening to Jesus. 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. Jesus told them that three times in the Gospels and who knows how many other times, but they didn’t want to hear the message, and when Good Friday came, only one of them was within earshot to hear Jesus’ seven last words. Even when Mary Magdalene, or the disciples in Emmaus, or the other apostles to doubting Thomas were testifying that Jesus had been raised just as he promised, the others still didn’t want to listen and believe. They were still obviously “questioning what rising from the dead meant,” as St. Mark tells us at the end of today’s scene. What they were even less willing to hear was what Jesus said after the prediction of his own crucifixion, death and resurrection, 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 they didn’t want to hear or heed that message at all. God the Father, who could see their hearts, knew that they were seeking to ignore what Jesus was saying about his and their transfiguration in suffering. So that’s why he said, “Listen to him!” God the Father says the same thing to us today. On Ash Wednesday Jesus said to each of us, “Repent and Believe!” Have we acted on those words? He called us to prayer, fasting and almsgiving: Are we doing all three with firm commitment? In response to his summons, have we denied ourselves, assumed our crosses and begun to follow Jesus up close along the way of the Cross to Calvary? 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 trusting, obedient ears; after all, since he didn’t spare his own Son, he will give us everything else besides. But learning how to listen to what Jesus says to us, and becoming true doers of his word, is the most important parts of Lent.
• Today we’ve left our dorm rooms, apartments and rectories, our Urs of the Chaldeans, not to travel to the ancient Holy Land, not to go to a place that the Lord will show us later, but to come to Notre Dame Church. We’ve climbed not the Mount of Transfiguration but Morningside heights. It’s here at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith is meant to find its source and summit. The Lord wants us to make the journey of faith, the holy exertion, to leave our comfort zones behind each day and come here each day during Lent if we can. It’s here that we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. It’s here at Mass that we present ourselves and what we have to the Lord, praying that these sacrifices, united to Christ’s, may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father. It’s here at Mass that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility. It’s here that the Lord wants us to increase our faith in his promises, especially that if we worthily eat his flesh and drink his blood, we’ll have his life in us and live forever. It’s here where, after building a tabernacle and a Church for him, he wants to build a booth within us from where he wants to transfigure our whole life. If God didn’t even spare his own Son but gives him to us here each day, we have full confidence that he really will give us everything else besides. Today as a reward for our exertions, as a foretaste of forever, God the Father gives us what he holds dearest and was willing to sacrifice for our salvation. Today as we get ready hear St. John the Baptist’s words, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!,” the Lamb God himself provided, let us also hear the Father saying 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 I sent him to lead you, up not Mt. Moriah, or Mt. Tabor, or Mt. Hermon, but the Celestial Jerusalem to my house where I’ve built a place not only for him, Moses and Elijah, but for you! Don’t be afraid of this journey of faith, but like Abraham, like Mary, follow my beloved Son this Lent and through life, listen to him, sacrifice with him, as he leads you on an exodus not to an unknown place but straight to my eternal embrace.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

When they came to the place of which God had told him,
Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.
Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the LORD’s messenger called to him from heaven,
“Abraham, Abraham!”
“Here I am!” he answered.
“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger.
“Do not do the least thing to him.
I know now how devoted you are to God,
since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”
As Abraham looked about,
he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket.
So he went and took the ram
and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.

Again the LORD’s messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said:
“I swear by myself, declares the LORD,
that because you acted as you did
in not withholding from me your beloved son,
I will bless you abundantly
and make your descendants as countless
as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore;
your descendants shall take possession
of the gates of their enemies,
and in your descendants all the nations of the earth
shall find blessing—
all this because you obeyed my command.”

Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who acquits us, who will condemn?
Christ Jesus it is who died—or, rather, was raised—
who also is at the right hand of God,
who indeed intercedes for us.

As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.

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