Second Sunday of Lent and Anointing of the Sick

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 that has a destination beyond the journey.  The destination is God’s vision of where God wants us all to be.

Abram left his hometown with his wife Sara, relatives, and belongings.  He set out on a journey to a strange new land called Canaan because he heard a call from God.  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.  It seems to me that it was an intense prayer experience that Jesus had with his favorite three disciples on the mountaintop.  Just as Abram had a vision that he held onto for the rest of his life, despite his setbacks and sufferings, so, too, Peter, James, and John had experienced something heavenly on that mountaintop that sustained them through their difficult journey of faith.

When I was a student in Rome we celebrated Mass on a rough-hewn altar of stone, under a dazzling sun with clouds moving, overshadowing and enveloping our liturgy, on top of Mount Tabor.  In the midst of desert terrain, one could imagine how something like the transfiguration took place as an intense prayer experience on that 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.

It’s easy to get lost in the journey and forget our destination.  That’s why we celebrate the Sacrament of the Sick for the elderly and the infirmed.  It’s too easy to become locked in our pains and not believe in God’s promise.  77-year old Pope Francis tells us that the Anointing of the Sick is a beautiful sacrament that assures us that we are not alone in moments of pain and sickness.  The comfort that accompanies the sacraments is the presence of Christ himself.

Jesus, he says, “takes us by the hand.  He reminds us that now we belong to him and that nothing – not even evil or death – can separate us from him.”  Lent is a time of almsgiving, fasting, and praying.  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