Dear friends in Christ
Each year on this Second Sunday of Lent we hear the Gospel of the Transfiguration. The reason for this Gospel during Lent is expressed in the words of the Preface for the Mass: For after he had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Resurrection.
Pope St Leo the Great comments further on this mystery: The great reason for this transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of his disciples, and to prevent the humiliation of his voluntarily suffering from disturbing the faith of those who had witnessed the surpassing glory that lay concealed.
Jesus Christ came into the world to suffer and to die for us. The pilgrimage of Lent is a movement towards that saving event and a preparation for the Day of His Resurrection. During Lent we try to accompany Jesus as if we were with Him in the wilderness. I spoke last Sunday of how Jesus spent those forty days with the wild beasts while the angels looked after Him. This is an image of how we live life on earth: often between our basic human instincts and the desire to be spiritual, the tension between the bodily and the heavenly. Jesus was fighting off all those temptations spiritual and bodily, and He finds the balance which is proper to the human way of being. He doesn’t reject the body but He disciplines it properly. He doesn’t fight against the spirit, but grounds it.
As we are just one week into Lent here are some concrete suggestions I make to you for observing Lent as a time of interior renewal: Don’t give up or take on more than you can manage; pray the Rosary often; have a tender devotion to St Joseph in this his special Year; do some Lenten spiritual reading, especially the Gospels; spend less time on social media; pray for others as the ultimate act of charity; remember that fasting is about God and not about ourselves. Our goal is to arrive at Easter with the love of God and neighbour more vibrant in our hearts and actions.
God bless you!
Msgr Kevin Hale