Second Sunday of Lent

Beginning with Abram and Sara, our ancestors in the faith, and with Jesus, our model in the faith, God calls each of us on a journey: the destination is God’s vision of where God wants us all to be.

God tells Abram and Sara that they were to become father and mother of a race of people as numerous as the stars.  Abram had every reason in the world to ignore that call.  After all, he was seventy-five, and at this late age he and Sara had never produced one child.  How, then, could he become the father of a great nation?

The gospel today also contains a call from God to Peter, James, and John on top of the mountain with Jesus.  “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him,” says the voice from the cloud.  My take on the transfiguration is that it was an intense prayer experience that Jesus had with the three disciples on the mountain top that sustained them through their difficult journey of faith.

Back in 1967 as a seminarian, I was in Israel with a group of priests and bishops from Czechoslovakia.  One day we went to the top of Mount Tabor.  The trek to the top is quite narrow and dangerous.  The taxi drivers who took us to the top whooped and laughed and drove quite fast, making the trip intoxicating.

There on a rough-hewn altar of stone we celebrated the Eucharist under a dazzling sun with clouds moving, overshadowing and enveloping our liturgy.  At one point, the bishop presider invited us simply to look, feel, and breathe this spectacular scene.  Coming down the mountain, we could now imagine the transfiguration.

In the midst of desert terrain, I could imagine how something like the transfiguration took place as an intense prayer experience on a high mountain, as a vision of things to come in the midst of adversity.

We can’t all go to the Holy Land but we all need visions.  We are prone to despair without them.  One of our young parishioners on duty in Afghanistan, like all soldiers before him, carries a photo in his pocket of loved ones at home.  That photo is a reminder that his destination is not the war field there, but his reunion at home with his family.

Religious faith is something like that photo.  Abram and Jesus were able to stay on their journey of faith and convince others to do the same because they kept a vision in their pocket and took it out from time to time.

It’s easy to get lost in the journey and forget our destination: for parents to forget who their children are and what they really need.  For the elderly to become locked in their pains and not believe in God’s promise.  For young people to view life without any sense of where God wants them to go.  For our country to dismiss the “vision thing” in a post-election year.  For our church to forget its ultimate destination.

Lent is a time of almsgiving, fasting, and praying.  Not just saying our prayers but taking the vision out of our pockets.  Not so much talking to God but listening to what God has to say to us: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”

There is a reason for our journey, a goal of our life’s struggles: God!

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor