Second Sunday of Lent

Dominica II in Quadragesima A
5 March 2023

The first Sunday of Lent we began with a typical focus on the Devil’s temptation of Jesus in the desert, together with the Old Testament reading from Genesis of the fall of Adam and Eve by sin.  The second Sunday of Lent places our focus on the Transfiguration of the Lord on the mountain.  But we miss the very beginning snippet of today’s Gospel passage in Matthew chapter 17.  That missing introductory snippet reads: “And after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John…” and on with the rest of today’s selection.  I am choosing to alert you to that simple missing phrase, “and after six days”, because it sets the stage for understanding the Transfiguration as a parallel and fulfillment of an event in the Old Testament.

What is the point in highlighting the timing of “after six days”?  That timing gives us a connection, a parallel to the Old Testament accounts of Moses on Mt. Sinai.  With this in mind we can see a number of parallels between Moses on Mt. Sinai and Jesus on the mountain of the transfiguration.  In fact, I think it is worth hearing directly from the Old Testament to appreciate some similarities.  The Book of Exodus, chapter 24, verse 16b-18, says: “and on the seventh day [the Lord] called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.  Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.  And Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain.  And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”

Notice some parallels here: “After six days,” puts you at the seventh day.  On the seventh day Moses went up to be with the Lord God.  After six days, Jesus goes up the mountain where His presence as God is revealed.  The cloud on Mt. Sinai revealed the glory of the Lord.  In the Gospel we have the transfiguration of the Lord by which his glory was shone, his face shining like the sun, and his clothing becoming white as light.  In the Old Testament a cloud is a symbol of the presence of the glory of God and comes to be an image of the Holy Spirit.  In the Gospel we have a “bright cloud” from which the Father’s voice is heard.  When you put it all together, we have a key revelation of the Blessed Trinity in this event of the Transfiguration.  The Father, the Incarnate Son, and the Holy Spirit are all present here along with the Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah.

Appreciating this parallel helps us see that Jesus is the new Moses.  He fulfills the mission of Moses and he is greater than Moses.  And that, in turn, communicates to us some significant meaning about what the Lord is coming to do and what he means for us.

With our Blessed Lord as the new Moses, and aware of the significance of Moses in salvation history, we can ask: What then is the exodus through which Jesus is leading us?  Our Lenten Sunday Masses are highlighting some aspects of this journey.  Last weekend we confronted temptation and sin and we saw its effects and destruction in the lives of Adam and Eve, our first parents.  They – and through them the human nature we inherit – were disfigured by sin.  Their eyes were opened and the impact of sin was seen in their relationship with one another and with God.  They began to fail to trust one another such that they began hiding themselves from one another and hiding themselves from God.  We inherit that disfigurement through Original Sin and we further harm our own nature, our very selves and our hope for eternal life, by our personal sins.  By listening to the “voice” of temptation we fall further under the dominance of the evil one and we harm our likeness to God, which is our fundamental dignity.  That’s the bad news.  It’s important to have that fundamental understanding of the reality of things.  The bad news explains much about ourselves and our world.  That’s perhaps why we face that sober truth so early in Lent as we did last Sunday.  But this weekend our Lenten journey places before us a new hope.  Just as God’s people were led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, the new Moses – Jesus – is shown in the Gospel, and the exodus he leads us through is not liberation from a geographical place like Egypt, but liberation from the moral slavery to sin and the “place” of damnation.  The Transfiguration of God in our human flesh, affords us the Good News and the hope of our human nature being transformed where it has been disfigured by sin.  Our Lord has accomplished salvation for us.  Lent is our annual opportunity to be renewed in that pattern and to live more deeply the redemption the Lord won for us.  But there is an important key to keep in mind: We are never permitted to dismiss suffering and the Cross as part of this journey our Lord made as the New Moses.  We are never permitted to dismiss suffering and the cross as part of our own journey in following the Lord on our exodus to newness of life.  In the Gospel selection, the Lord required that they come down the mountain and continue on to Jerusalem, the place of his exodus from this life.  The Lord instructed Peter, James, and John, not to share the vision until after he had been raised from the dead.  In other words, the Lord accepts his suffering and death.  Just so, we cannot avoid the valleys of this life.  We cannot avoid suffering and our own crosses.  We cannot avoid going to our own Jerusalems for our own exodus.  Our sins are real and do real harm.  The Lord saves us from the eternal consequences of sin.  Yet, the disfiguring reality of sin requires our own transfiguration through struggle and sacrifice and much grace from God.  In all this we seek to cooperate with the Lord and his mission and to willingly go where he is leading.  In Lent we are called to leave our places of comfort, the places where we have set up our “tents”, to use an image from the Gospel.  We are called to go where we do not always want to go.  We take up penances and mortifications so that we are transformed by participating in the Cross.  We come here, where we seek to be worthily prepared, so that we can be nourished by the very sacrifice of the Lord on the Cross and so grow in his glory and know ourselves to be sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.