Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, Year A

Do You Want To Be Transformed? 
Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Have you ever had a mountaintop experience? Have you ever had a profound experience when you felt an unusual outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Have you ever had an encounter with Jesus Christ? The experience was so real, so true, so overwhelming, so captivating that you heard the Son of God talking to you. This experience is usually called a deep religious experience. It is usually the turning point in the lives of many. In the Jewish theology, it is called Shekhinah (which means the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God. Although the term, Shekhinah, does not occur in the Bible, the Bible is littered with stories of persons who had a heightened presence of God. Some Christians experienced this in a  retreat or summer camp. Some experienced it while studying and reflecting on the Word of God. Some experienced it when they were alone with self. An intentional reflection over life’s ups and downs had also led some to have a deep religious experience.

The scene in today’s Gospel of Jesus with his three disciples on a mountaintop  (Matthew 17:1-9) is a theophaneia that reveals Jesus’ hidden identity through his transfigured appearance and God’s Word (Voice) that sounded from heaven. A theophany is a mysterious appearance or manifestation of the God of Abraham to a person or a people which also includes a revelation, such as that given to Moses at the burning bush of Exodus 3:2-6. In today’s Gospel, Jesus stands between Moses and Elijah on Mount Hermon, and a voice declared from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai; and Elijah is considered the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. So, on a mountaintop, there is the Law and the Prophets in conversation with Jesus Christ, the New Testament/Covenant. This gives a weighty credibility to Jesus’ earlier declaration: “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17).  

But what were the representative of the Law and prophets doing on the mountaintop where Jesus was transfigured? They came to confirm that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. They came to support Jesus’ claim to be the Redeemer, and indeed Jesus is the Redeemer. That is why he is the only one whose “face shone like the sun and his clothes became as dazzling white as light.” The culmination of this support happened when the Father speaks from heaven the same message he delivered at Jesus’ baptism: that Jesus is God’s beloved Son to whom his disciples must listen. So, at the Transfiguration, the Old Testament and the Father in heaven testify and confirm that Jesus is truly the Messiah of the Jews and the Redeemer of the human race. 

A Christian by definition is a follower of Jesus Christ. A Christian is the person who listens to Jesus because you cannot follow someone you are unwilling to listen to. During this season of Lent, what is Jesus asking us to do? On Ash Wednesday, we read the Gospel of Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 in which Jesus teaches us how we should pray, fast, and give-alms. It is what we have come to know as the three disciplines or pillars of of Lent. Each of the three activities connects us to Jesus. Lent is a penitential period when we come to grips with our limitations, our sins, and our attachments in order to prepare for real communion with God. It is a period of preparation for Easter. At every Lent, the Church directs our attention to Jesus’ call to prayer, fasting and alms-giving. A Christian should pray always, however at Lenten season we pray more in order to know Jesus as our Voice. Prayer according to St. John Damascene is the raising of the mind and heart to God. To pray is to attend to God, and pay more attention to him. It is to be more aware of God and to seek communion with him in a conscious way. The second activity of Lent is fasting. Fasting is becoming popular today. People engage in dry fasting, intermittent fasting etc. for various health benefits like losing weight, controlling blood sugar, body building, and as an anti-aging practice. But that’s not the reason why we fast during Lent. We fast in order to know Jesus as our Food. We can easily attach ourselves to created things and make them godlike in our life. We depend on them as sources of joy. If this is your experience right now, Jesus is asking us during this holy season to actively detach ourselves from them, so as to find what the soul really wants. The soul can be ensnared in secondary goods and then begins to forget what it really wants. St. Augustine said that it is only in God that our soul is finally at rest. Lent is a wonderful time to set aside all material pleasures in order to give the soul a chance to find what it is seeking for, what it is wired for and also allow a deeper hunger to emerge. The third and final pillar of Lent is almsgiving. We can easily connect fasting and prayer to spiritual life because of their obvious fruits. But it is not so with almsgiving. If you are asking yourself how almsgiving help your soul, here is your answer. The heart of the spiritual life is love (caritas). Love is to will the good of the other and to do something about it. Almsgiving is a very concrete way to will the good of the other, especially the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Almsgiving really heightens our sense of solidarity within the mystical body. It reminds us that we are connected with each other. During this Lent, try to share some of your goods with the less privileged. Give generously and do not complain. Give some of your money to the church during offertory collection. Give to charity groups like Mary’s Place, Catholic Charity, St. Vincent de Paul etc. Get a charity box or poor box and daily put some money into it. At the end of the Lenten season, bring the money to the church for the care of the poor among us. Remember that in the faces of the poor we see Jesus. So, whoever feeds the poor, clothes the poor, and attends to their needs is doing all of that to Jesus himself. And Jesus promises that when you come to his Father’s house, he will remember. If we listen to Jesus today, tomorrow and everyday, we will be transformed and transfigured, and eventually transited into eternal glory.