A Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent

​+ On this second Sunday of Lent our Holy Mother the Church calls us to enter into the mystery of the Transfiguration of Our Blessed Lord, a mystery which we also contemplate on its proper feast on August 6th. This is, perhaps, a strange choice as we move forward with our Lenten disciplines—the Transfiguration has little to do with the prayer, fasting and almsgiving we have taken on in order to do more intense and effective combat with the world, the flesh and the devil. So too, its repetition in both Lent and in August may seem unnecessary: there are other Gospel passages that are more directly ‘Lenten’ as it were that could, perhaps, serve well today.
 
This repetition is most probably explained by the fact that the feast of the Transfiguration was a relatively late arrival in the universal calendar in the West, whereas the use of this Gospel in Lent is very ancient indeed—a tradition thankfully respected by modern liturgical reformers. Why, then, does the Church take us up to the heights of a mountain a mere ten days into Lent when perhaps we should keep our attention more solidly fixed on our Lenten resolutions and penitential practices?
 
The answer is, it would seem, so as to teach us what is of true and lasting importance. For whilst prayer, fasting and almsgiving are good and necessary practices, and whilst self-denial and other physical penances are necessary and indeed are sometimes demanded of us by the justice of Almighty God (a reality we forget to our peril), they are a means to an end. They are not ends in themselves.
 
That is to say, Almighty God did not create men and women in His image and likeness so that they might do penance. Penance is undertaken that we might open ourselves more fully to God’s grace so that we may no longer obscure our true nature and dignity—lost through Original Sin, won back for us through the redemption wrought by Christ on the Cross and squandered again by our personal sins. And certainly, our sins require penance of us through which acts we physically as well as spiritually hope for God’s mercy and long corporeally for restitution to His grace. But we are not created in order to do penance. The pessimism of Manicheanism and the dour outlook of Jansenism are heresies which the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord sharply rebukes.
 
For, as St Benedict teaches, to be swallowed up with too much sorrow is dangerous even if we justly deserve the punishment we have received. We need encouragement. We need hope of something more. (Cf. Rule, ch. 27). Indeed, in the Prologue to his Rule he advises the aspirant to monastic life that:
 
“…if, for good reason, for the amendment of evil habit or the preservation of charity, there be some strictness of discipline, do not be at once dismayed and run away from the way of salvation, of which the entrance must needs be narrow. But, as we progress in our monastic life and in faith, our hearts shall be enlarged, and we shall run with unspeakable sweetness of love in the way of God’s commandments; so that, never abandoning His rule but persevering in His teaching in the monastery until death, we shall share by patience in the sufferings of Christ, that we may deserve to be partakers also of His kingdom.”
 
For it is to be partakers in His Kingdom that we enter the school of the Lord’s service. It is so that we might have eternal life that we examine ourselves and work more earnestly at purging our vices and growing in virtue in this sacred season of Lent. The Kingdom of Heaven is an eternal banquet, not a perpetual fast!
 
And this, surely, is why the liturgical tradition of our holy mother the Church has us ascend the mountain of the Transfiguration on this second Sunday of Lent. We need to keep the end, our ultimate goal, in view, lest we become discouraged or abandon our efforts. For whilst, yes, we must do penance, and yes we must persevere in our Lenten disciplines, we are called beyond them, We are called to enjoy the vision of the glorified Lord as did Saints Peter, James and John—to which blessed state we can only come if we convert, turn fully to the Lord and remove all that blocks our vision of His radiant face.
 
We should, then, be greatly encouraged by this: there is an end to worldly penance and suffering. Even monastic noviciates come to an end! And beyond these necessary and just disciplines there is life in the presence of our Divine Lord and Saviour, of which life we have a foretaste in this Holy Mass. As we contemplate His Transfiguration, and as we worship Him at His altar this morning, as ever, let us beg the grace of perseverance we so need. +

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