SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
16 MARCH 2025
Abram
had responded to God’s call to journey from his home in Ur of the Chaldeans. God had promised Abram both a land of his own
and many descendants. However, in the
land promised by God, he and his wife had not been able to conceive in their
old age. In the first reading, God
enters into a covenant with Abram. The
making of this covenant sounds strange to us.
But it was the way Abram and his contemporaries entered into agreements
with one another. Each participant would
bring an assortment of animals, kill them, and cut them in two, placing each
half on the opposite side of the road.
They would sit there all day, and then pass through the halved
animals. In sealing the deal, each party
was committed to keep the covenant or be split in half like the animals.
Abram sits
by the side of the road all day, as he wards off the birds of prey, representing
future threats to the covenant. At sundown,
Abram emerges from a trance to see a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass
between the pieces, symbolizing the presence of God. God enters into a covenant with Abram,
promising descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the land. Abram puts his faith in God’s promise to
fulfill this covenant agreement with him.
Jesus is
also on a journey. He has already passed
the tests of the devil in the desert, and he has set his sights on
Jerusalem. He stops to pray at a
mountain in Galilee, taking with him Peter, James, and John. Especially in the Gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus
spends time in prayer seeking direction from his Father at crucial times in his
ministry. As he prays, his face changes
in appearance. The answer to his prayer
is written all over his face, and he is determined to continue his journey to
Jerusalem. His clothing becomes dazzling
white, and he is joined by the two great figures of the faith. They are discussing his exodus. Moses had led his people in an exodus from
slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land. In the land promised by God, Elijah called
his people to continue their journey to the Lord in the spirit of Moses.
Emerging
from sleep, Peter and James and John see this vision of glory. Peter wants to pitch three tents and remain
in this glorious state. Instead, they
hear the voice from the cloud, the symbol of the Father’s presence, say the
same thing he said at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my chosen Son; listen to
him.”
As the
three disciples continue to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, they struggle to
listen to this voice. Once they reach
Jerusalem, they will fall asleep as Jesus agonizes over what being faithful to
the Father’s will involves. It will
involve hanging in agony on another mountain, Mt. Calvary. His face will not be changed, and there will
be no clothing. He will be surrounded not
by two figures from the past, but by two thieves. On that horribly dark day, he
will be buried in a borrowed tomb. But
three days later, he will be raised from the dead, fulfilling the vision that
Peter and James and John had glimpsed on Mount Tabor. In his exodus to Jerusalem, he did much more
than Moses or Elijah could have even done.
They had been heralds of the Messianic Age. Through the Paschal Mystery, he will initiate
the Messianic Age for all of us.
As we
continue our journey through these forty days of Lent, we pause at this Mass and
in our daily lives to take time to pray.
Like the first disciples, we are walking with Jesus on our journey to
the new and eternal Jerusalem. We open our
hearts and ears to listen carefully to his words. We must face obstacles and difficulties and
problems. We too will have to face the
agony of the Garden of Gethsemane and eventually embrace our crosses and the
cross of death. But, through prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving, we can discipline ourselves to listen to God’s chosen
Son and walk with the same faith and trust that Abraham did.
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