Second Sunday of Lent

Second Sunday of LentFebruary 20, 2005
The Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from the land of your kin folk... to a land that I will show you (Genesis 12:1-4) Jesus... 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. (Matthew 17:1-9)
Abram is beckoned by Yahweh to leave his home land on the long journey away from the familiar and comfortable. His willingness to do so was the beginning of hope for a new relationship with God for all of us. Three of Jesus' closest disciples recall a stunning experience on a mountaintop where the relationship between Christ and his heavenly Father is momentarily revealed. The disciples want to camp out and extend this miraculous moment, but are soon brought back to the "real world". Thomas Merton (Seasons of Celebration) reflects that Lent is a time "... to rejoice in God's love... casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy. Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await God's mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer." Most of us would dearly love to go straight to the direct and eternal vision of God, bypassing all the pain and inner conflict associated with our present life. We face the same kind of choices made both by Abraham and Jesus' beloved disciples to follow God's lead wherever it might take us. If we are lucky, we may experience moments like them where we also see divine reality clearly. Very few seem to be privileged to stay on that "mountaintop". For now, for most of us,,there is no staying there. Not even for the disciples, patriarchs, saints and holy ones. All of us it seems must face our terror of going into the dark places. Our traditional practice of "giving up" something during Lent only has meaning if it brings us closer to the courage to embrace what we cannot see or understand. We, like Abraham and the disciples, have the opportunity to go into similar strange and often frightening places. The Spirit's' promise is that we will never be alone in the dark. The Most High speaks to us also, from behind the cloud of divine presence, even when we are in a valley of darkness. Before long we will all be transformed as Christ was in the presence of his Father. The kingdom of heaven is near at hand.