Second Sunday of Lent
We are now firmly planted in the Lenten season, continuing the long journey to Easter. Before we reach the joy of Easter we will have to pass through this penitential desert period and then pass through Good Friday. In today’s Gospel reading from St. Luke’s Gospel we read about the Transfiguration of Jesus. In this reading, Jesus converses with Moses and with Elijah. Moses and Elijah are significant figures in the Old Testament, and the stories of both are intimately related: Moses spent 40 years wandering in the desert, Elijah spent 40 days wandering in the desert; God appeared to Moses at Horeb, God appeared to Elijah at Horeb; God fed Moses and the Israelites with mystical bread (Manna) in the desert, an angel fed Elijah with mystical bread in the desert, etc. (see especially 1 Kings 19:4-13 for these and more parallels with Elijah).
Of course, Jesus also spent 40 days in the desert, and so do we, liturgically speaking. It is no coincidence that it is Moses and Elijah who speak with Jesus at the Transfiguration, speaking with Him “of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Jesus death and resurrection is depicted as a new exodus event. The first exodus rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and, after the 40 years of wandering in the desert, brought them into the Promised Land. We participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection as a new exodus through our baptism, where we are brought out of our slavery to sin (figuratively Egypt) and into the Promised Land of heaven, after our wandering as pilgrims on this earth. Every year we experience again this journey in miniature with the Lenten season. It is after our desert wandering in Lent that we will enter the Promised Land of Easter.
In today’s second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians we hear St. Paul exhort his readers to become imitators of him, St. Paul (3:17). Indeed, we should become imitators of St. Paul, our father in the faith Abraham, whose faith we read about in today’s first reading, and of all the Saints. This is precisely because we are all called to be imitators of Christ, and that’s exactly what St. Paul and the rest of the Saints did. We need to learn, during this Lenten season, specifically by the discipline of Lent, to imitate the Saints in following Christ. The Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are wonderful ways of doing this. Christ prayed, fasted, and helped the poor and hungry. The Saints are known for imitating Christ in their prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Let us become Saints. Our lives on earth, with all of their sufferings and crosses ready for us to bear, are set up in such a way to help us become Saints. This is particularly the case with our obstacles, sufferings and challenges which present a real desert experience for us. The Church has given us the great season of Lent to help us live this out every year. Lent is the season of Saint-making. Let us strive to live out the spiritual practices we have taken up this season, to unite ourselves more fully with Jesus in order to be better imitators of Christ and the Saints, so that we might join their number.
Jeff Morrow