2nd Sunday of Lent 2022
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9: 28-36
I don’t know whether you have noticed, but whatever the Gospel readings may be on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays of Lent, the themes for the first and second Sundays are unvarying. The First Sunday always tells us of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, to which He was led by the Spirit, and in which He fasted and was tempted; the Second Sunday always describes the Transfiguration. The authors are changed according to a three year cycle, but the subject matter is not.
It is easy to understand why the wilderness and the temptations are there, as they set the pattern for our own Lenten journey, but why the Transfiguration? There is a clue in the identity of the disciples who witnessed the event.
These are Peter, James and John. Where else do we encounter them as a threesome? It is in the Garden of Gethsemane, where, you may recall, they are separated from the rest and taken forward to be the close witnesses of Jesus’ Agony. What is the connection? It seems reasonable to suppose that they were given the vision of the Transfiguration to prepare them for the ordeal of Gethsemane: that Jesus hoped that the foretaste of His glory revealed at Mount Tabor would sustain them through this new and contrasting vision in which He cried aloud to the Father and His sweat fell like gouts of blood.
If that was Our Lord’s intention, is it fair to say that it failed? The mention of sleep provides a link. At the Transfiguration, Luke tells us, the disciples were heavy with sleep, but they stayed awake: in Gethsemane, sleep overcame them, because the experience was too much to bear. Even the recollection of what they had seen on the mountain wasn’t sufficient to uphold them in the time of trial. The memory and the promise of glory could not carry them through the present experience of agony.
As always, we have to ask ourselves “How does this relate to us?” We too have our Transfiguration moments, those times when we are filled with joy, when God seems very close to us, when the promise of future glory is thoroughly credible. We also have our Gethsemane times, when anguish threatens to overwhelm us, when God seems far away, when His promises may feel like pie in the sky.
Do the Transfiguration times carry us through their opposite? When we are in Gethsemane, do we remember Mt. Tabor, when the promise of resurrection, of final victory lifted our hearts? If not, we should not despair—the same thing happened to Peter, James, and John—and yet we do need to call to mind those times of promise, those experiences of the closeness of God, and to look beyond present agony to the reality of resurrection. If our hearts have failed, we need to lift them up again, as we claim that we do in every celebration of Mass in the preface dialogue as we approach the Eucharistic Prayer.
It is important to remember too that any experience we have of the presence of God is always likely to be a matter of both light and shade. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is variously described as “fear of the Lord” and as “wonder and awe”. When the disciples on Mt. Tabor are covered by the cloud, which indicates the presence of God as it had done for the Israelites during their wilderness journey, they are afraid. God is a loving and generous God, but He IS God, beyond our comprehension, not to be trifled with.
At such times, we may even share the experience of Abraham, who witnessed the presence of God under the signs of the smoking furnace and the firebrand. Like the Gethsemane disciples, Abraham takes refuge in sleep, and terror seizes him. That terror is the prelude to God’s gift of a covenant. In every Mass, God’s covenant is renewed with us in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, transformed into the very essence of the Son of God. We do not, I trust, seek refuge in sleep, but we should be seized by awe, as we witness something greater than Abraham’s vision, greater even than the Transfiguration, as the Son of the Father, the Chosen One, becomes present for us as our food. Every Mass should be a Transfiguration moment for us, to sustain us during our own Gethsemane times.
