2nd Sunday of Lent - Repentance & Reconciliation

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT (A) [25]
Genesis 12:1-4 / Psalm 33 / 2 Timothy 1:8-10 / Matthew 17:1-9

I. INTRODUCTION - From Abraham to Jesus

The first reading presents us with what might be considered the beginning of our salvation history. God will begin to call back to himself a remnant of the people he created. It will be through this chosen few that a promise of redemption will be given and from which our Savior will enter the world. The Gospel today collaborates that Jesus is indeed the Messiah long promised. Now, the promise of God will not be given simply to a few by blood but to all who would believe. It is for this reason that Gentile Christians consider themselves spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham.

II. BODY - The Story of Abraham & Christ's Transfiguration

Long after the primordial fall, around the year 1850 BC, God gave the Semite Abram ears to hear his voice. He represented one small collection of the semi-nomadic people who lived their lives along the Arabian Peninsula. They had no place to call their own, but had close familial bonds and lived in black goatskin tents. Abram's father had led his people from the city of Ur to that of Haran. Rather than resuming relations with the gods of Ur, Abram entered into a relationship with the one true God. Upon his father's death, he and Sarai, his wife, with the family of his nephew Lot, headed toward Canaan. God had promised him that this was his land. During a peculiar adventure in Egypt, his wife posed as his sister lest the pharaoh's scouts take a liking to her and kill him. His fears about this matter were realized. She was taken. Fortunately, disaster struck the court and she was delivered back into his hands, along with rich gifts and a request that he leave the country. Returning home, he parceled land out to Lot's clan. When Lot was taken prisoner by the city of Sodom, Abram fought for his restoration. He displayed his thankfulness in getting him back by having Melchisedek make a sacrifice on his behalf. His wife gives him her handmaid to produce a child. However, in addition to this son, God will keep his promise in giving him a son directly from his wife, Sarai. Because of her advanced age, this will be understood as a miraculous intervention of God. God told him that his male descendants would have to be circumcised. God changed his name to Abraham and that of his wife to Sarah. Testing Abraham's faith, God commanded him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. His hand was actually raised to plunge a knife into the shaking flesh of his son when God stepped in and stayed his hand. Abraham becomes a model of all whom God calls to believe and trust in him.

The Gospel reading is the familiar story of the transfiguration of Jesus. Not only is something of the future glimpsed, the resurrected and glorified Christ, but also something of the past, notably the prophets Moses and Elijah. Peter's response is that of a good Jew. He wants to erect three booths, just like the tents erected in the wilderness by their forefathers. These tents were special places where God spoke to his prophets. Here Moses and Elijah are speaking to Jesus who is "as dazzling as the sun". It could be argued that this is a testimony of Christ's divinity. But, the vision does not end there. A cloud comes and overshadows them, again just as in the days of old over the tent reserved for the Most High. The voice, obviously that of the Almighty, proclaims that Jesus is his beloved Son upon whom he has rested his favor. It is at this point that the theophany ends. Jesus tells Peter, James, and John to get up and they descend the mountain. Mountains, it should be added, also represent places where prophets go, like Moses, to converse with God. The fact that three of Christ's apostles accompany him indicates something of the esteem and authority they will wield as prophets of the new covenant.

III. CONCLUSION - Repentance & Reconciliation

Moving on to the second reading and our spiritual preparation during Lent, we find Paul telling us that "God has saved us and has called us to a holy life, . . . ." He is quick to add that Christ's sacrifice and grace purely merit this salvation. However, a profound openness to God's grace and the call to discipleship are also essential. We know all too well that we can quickly backtrack in the Christian life and fall to sin. Personal sin short-circuits the destiny that God would have us embrace. Fortunately, ours is a merciful God and he has given us every means to find reconciliation in him. The special prayers, fasting, abstinence, and other forms of penance are all a part of this process of weaning away from selfishness and sin and redirecting ourselves to charity and holiness.

This is a good season for us to examine our conscience and behavior. We do this, not in light of some nebulous feeling or even according to the values of the majority of our peers, we do so in comparison to the standard of Christ and his Church. In season and out, popular or not, the truth is proclaimed.

The first realization, which must dawn upon us, is that we are all sinners. From the last harsh word we uttered to the little lies we tell; from our lack of preoccupation in the liturgy to our passivity regarding the murder of the child in the womb -- we are sinners. We need to be honest to ourselves and to God about that fact. In our consciences, we very often try to run away from this reality; after all, it is an admission of imperfection. However, humility requires this acknowledgment, even if satanic pride would deny it.

I use the word "satanic" here because I believe it is all too easy in our lax consciences to reduce all sin to the level of a simple fault, a mistake, or a stumble. All of these words fail to take into consideration that sin is more than our merely tripping over our own feet. We sin because there is a part of us that chooses to do it, likes doing it, wants to do it some more, and will seek to hide it. There is a malicious and wicked quality to it. Sometimes we might be so good at hiding our sins that we even hide them to ourselves. We rationalize that "everybody's doing it" or "that I am not a saint". And yet, if we are following in Christ's footsteps, it was for going against the former that Jesus was put to death and for the latter that he allowed his passion and death. We are all called to be holy and his grace can make this seemingly impossible goal obtainable.

This leads us to our second realization, that if we are sinners, we have not been left to despair and to die in our sins; Jesus offers us the grace of his presence, a presence of healing, peace, and forgiveness. Here too our consciences must not collapse between the tension of either being lax or scrupulous. Our appreciation of sin and the sense of guilt or remorse, which brings us to confess and seek pardon, is a noble human gesture. However, once that forgiveness of God is given, we must forgive ourselves as well. We need to believe that God does what he claims to do. When Christ forgives our sins through the instrumentality of the priest, healing us and dissolving our breach with God and the community, the slate of our lives is wiped clean. Like a newborn baby we are made new. Temporal punishment may remain and so we are given a penance; but our standing in the Church and before God is healed and restored.

We killed God's Son by our sins, and yet he forgives us and forgets the sin. Oddly enough, no matter how prayerful and devout, the failure to forgive ourselves may be the most dangerous kind of sin of all. How some people must hate themselves! I mean that. Only hate could make people rehearse their past transgressions in their minds over and over. Have they grown to desire the pain it brings? I do not know. If the lax have made themselves fools to their passions of self-love; the scrupulous have become slaves to their own self-loathing. Christ would have us be free. He would have us responsibly love ourselves as precious in his eyes because he has first loved us. Indeed, unless we love ourselves in this way, what becomes of the commandment, "To love your neighbor as yourself"?

Before I finish I would like to say a few things about conscience. It is neither the comical stereotype of an angel whispering on one shoulder and a devil on the other nor an arbitrary feeling that something is either good or bad. Conscience is an attempt of the mind to make an appropriate judgment about whether an action is either right or wrong. True judgment demands knowing the facts and deliberation over them prior to action. Odd as it may seem, we are obliged to follow our conscience even when a false judgment is made. However, as soon as we learn otherwise, we must accordingly adjust to agree with a now properly formed conscience. Judgment can be flawed for all sorts of reasons; we might be perplexed, coerced, scrupulous, lax, etc. We suspend judgment when in doubt and do not act until a certain conclusion has been reached. The Church maintains that conscience needs to be properly informed and a judgment must be made according to the appropriate law, i.e. natural law, Ten Commandments, and the law of love.

In all visible creation, only human beings have been called by God to accept responsibility for their actions. Neither pre-programmed robots nor animals of blind instinct, we have been give free will and an intellect capable of discerning God's design from the natural order and revelation. Unhealthy extremes in conscience would include the static which would have the Church spoon-feed everything, dismissing the enlightening power of God's Spirit and responsibility; and the dynamic conscience which would go to the other side in embracing revolution or even rebellion in actions. These are the people who think the Church and its bishops are always wrong until they say something with which they agree. No one can tell them what to do, even the Church! The true path of conscience is between these two and is surmised by a document from the Canadian Bishops: "We can qualify this as the dynamic Christian conscience. This is the conscience which leads us to have a responsible attitude to someone, to Jesus, to the community, to the Church, etc. Every person who fits into this category feels a responsibility for a progressive search and striving to live out a life ideal according to the mind of Christ."

Invite your friends and family to come home to God and the Church for Easter. Bring them to confession with you and support them in participating at Sunday Mass. After all, the power to loose and bind from sin, given to the Apostles, is not a principle of enslavement but of freedom. "The truth will make you free" (John 8:32).