Hearing Luke’s account of Jesus’s transfiguration on this Second Sunday of Lent gives us a preview of Christ’s resurrection, provides us with a taste of Easter. According to St Luke, after seeing Jesus “transfigured” before their very eyes, his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John see and hear him conversing with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the Law and Elijah represents the prophets. This demonstrates that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets.
Luke even provides us with a hint about what the transfigured Jesus discussed with Moses and Elijah: the “exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.”1 Just as the Israelites left Egypt and crossed the desert to the promised land – the land God promises to Abram, whom God would later rename Abraham, in our first reading – Jesus crossed over from death to life. This makes Jesus our Passover. Hence, he is the one in whom we place our trust. The word for putting one’s trust in Jesus is “hope.”
Lent is your invitation to make your own exodus from death to life. Lent is the time to cease conducting yourself as what St Paul, in our second reading, dramatically calls an enemy of the cross Christ. The apostle writes about those whom, “with tears,” he calls “enemies of the cross of Christ” that their stomachs are their God.”2 By stating it in this emphatic manner, the apostle is highlights the importance of the spiritual discipline of fasting.
He also says that those who make themselves enemies of the cross of Christ occupy “their minds with earthly things.”3 Here the apostle points to the importance of practicing the spiritual discipline of prayer, which includes silence and solitude.
By writing that the enemies of Christ’s cross glory in their shame, that is, in their wrong-doing and selfishness, Paul is pointing to the necessity of alms-giving. Alms-giving does not merely refer to donating money – though it does include generous financial giving – it also refers to serving those in need. Serving others in various ways, according to their needs, constitutes those works referred to in the Letter of James that are necessary for salvation.4 After all, God did not reveal the promise to him until Abram sacrificed.
Practicing the three spiritual disciplines taught to us by Jesus himself (i.e., prayer, fasting, and alms-giving) is called “asceticism.” Practicing the three spiritual disciplines taught to us by Jesus himself (i.e., prayer, fasting and alms-giving) is called “asceticism.” Asceticism refers to those exercises, the practice of which, train you for something worth attaining.5 In the passage from the third chapter of his Letter to the Galatians that immediately precedes today’s second reading, St Paul not only writes about what he hopes to attain, he alludes to how it is attained: “to know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”6
The Transfiguration, by Gerard David, 1520
Endeavoring to practice the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, even if it sometimes consists of your poor attempts, is what makes you a disciple of Christ. Paul is convinced that living ascetically is how you cooperate with God’s grace in bringing about your own transfiguration. The apostle describes this transfiguration as Christ changing your “lowly body to conform with his glorified body.”7 The transfiguration to which Paul points is not only for yourself, it is for the transfiguration of the world. It is wrought by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the power that enables the Lord “to bring all things into subjection to himself.”8 This is nothing other than the power of love. Lent is not merely, or even mainly, about what you give up. It primarily about what you take up.
In the first instance, asceticism is not about self-denial. Like all spiritual disciplines, denying yourself is but a means to the end of loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor as you love yourself. You deny yourself in order to free-up more time, resources, and energy with which to serve others the name of Christ and on behalf of his church. Growth in love of God and neighbor is not only the point and purpose of Lent, for Christians, it is the goal of life!
What asceticism requires me to do is to take “responsibility for those aspects of my life that are unbalanced.” Those aspects of my life that remain unbalanced are those parts I have not yet submitted to Jesus’s Lordship. Let’s face it, we are often creatures of excess who are primarily focused on ourselves. We revere Lent as a holy season because through it the church bids us to lovingly confront ourselves. We call this self-confrontation “penance.” Deriving as it does from the word “repentance,” penance amounts to having a change of heart and mind that leads you to live more intentionally as a Christian.
Repentance does not mean being harsh with yourself. It certainly doesn’t mean being harsh with others. To the contrary, God is merciful. So, your repentance cannot be complete until you experience God’s mercy for yourself. It is in and through the sacrament of penance that you experience God’s mercy given us in Christ first-hand. This is why confession is made more available during Lent.
Confession is not where you go to admit defeat. It is where you go to claim the victory over sin and death that Christ won for you. He desperately wants you to experience his victory for yourself and then to share your experience with others. What is evangelization if not telling others what Jesus has done for you, letting them know the difference knowing Jesus makes in your life?
It is only by experiencing God’s mercy that you can extend it to others. The works in which you, as someone gifted by God with faith by the power of the Holy Spirit, are to engage are nicely schematized by the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which are depicted in the stained-glass windows on the north side of our church.
Lent prepares you for the celebration of Christ’s passing from death to life at Easter. In baptism you died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life. Lent is the time to prepare to renew your baptismal promises at the great Easter Vigil, the most important liturgy of the entire year. May this Lent accomplish your exodus, your passage from death to life in Christ our Passover!
1 Luke 9:31.↩
2 Philippians 3:18-19.↩
3 Philippians 3:19.↩
4 James 2:14- The last sentence of this verse poses a rhetorical question: Can faith without works save a believer?↩
5 R. Arbesman. “Asceticism,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, 772.↩
6 Philippians 3:10-11.↩
7 Philippians 3:21.↩
8 Philippians 3:21.↩
9 Owen F. Cummings, Lecture on the Rule of St. Benedict, date unknown..↩
Wow - "Confession is not where you go to admit defeat. It is where you go to claim the victory over sin and death that Christ won for you." I needed to hear this and will carry it in my heart. Thank you.
ReplyDelete