Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, B, Vigil
February 24, 2024
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
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, will behold Jesus transfigured among us. On the Second Sunday of Lent, the Church each year has us pray over the scene of the Lord’s transfiguration. Part of the reason is to give us, like God gave the three chosen apostles, a brief taste of the glory of Jesus, so that we may be strengthened for the journey of Lent just like Jesus intended to fortify these three friends before they would behold Jesus transfigured in blood on Mount Calvary. Knowing that the one who carried the Cross to Golgotha and the one who summons us in Lent to carry our Cross is in fact God provides the greatest possible confidence that the way of the Cross is in fact the divine way. And so it’s meant to inspire us to live Lent with great courage, focus and abandon. This year, as we continue to pray for all those in the Holy Land after the October 7 Hamas attacks and the ongoing war in Gaza, the remembrance of how the Lord became dazzlingly white is a powerful reminder that the bloodshed, hatred, and darkness do not have the last word, but that God himself entered not just the world but the Holy Land to lead us all on an exodus ultimately from death to life.
* The scene of the Transfiguration has three concrete lessons that are meant to influence the way that every Catholic lives Lent and life.
* The first lesson concerns the exertion, the effort, that a holy Lent entails. Jesus led Peter, James and John on what St. Mark calls 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, approximately five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1886 feet). That would have been a whole day’s work to ascend. They would have needed to leave civilization behind, to leave their comfort zones behind, and to climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, in order to pray with Jesus. 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. It’s not even in a mountain climbing zig-zagging van. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our own comfort zones behind. Each of us needs to ask: What is the Lord asking me to leave behind in order to advance with him 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 became radiant.
