Glimpsing Heaven's GLORY, may we worship God, NOT our bellies!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C

One could perhaps sum up the great narrowness and poverty of our modern world, a poverty that often leads to bitter emptiness in the midst of material plenty, with one simple phrase: “Seeing is believing.” As our technology has given us enormous material power, we have reduced knowledge to that which we can measure physically. Our lives are more comfortable and prosperous than previous generations could ever have imagined… think of what shoveling was like for our grandparents! These advances have also given us terrifying power to destroy, and we have used that power wantonly in the last century, and continue to use it now, especially against those brothers and sisters of ours who happen to be still in the womb. We are enormously wealthy and comfortable, full of food and entertainment, and yet so often bitterly empty, sad, confused.

Even as we have artificially limited knowledge to what we can touch, we still know most things on the basis of the testimony of others. To take a famous philosophical example, “England is an island.” Unless you’ve paddled around her shores, you’re trusting other people’s testimony! The number of planets, the Big Bang, the composition of the plastics that surround us… very few of us actually understand those things to the point that we could explain, demonstrate, or prove how they work, and yet we trust the testimony of those who do. We think of ourselves as living in a world that bases its decision on proof and data, but this is a tale we tell ourselves, a charade… we continue to operate on the testimony of others, while pretending that it’s all about the cold hard evidence.

During this Lenten season, we open our minds and hearts once again to the mystery of God, and perhaps by identifying this very modern prejudice which we absorb from the cultural air we breathe, we can return once again to God, and abandon modern idols that lead us to self-destruction.

In our first reading, Abram cut a covenant with God. That is the Hebrew idiom - and we see why - the animals that have been sacrificed are cut in half. To walk between those halved carcasses implied, “May God do thus and so to me if I break this covenant.” Strangely, now it is God who is making this promise, this covenant with Abram, God who passes between the carcasses. These circumstances are replete with mystery, and not least is the fact that apparently, at the beginning, God takes Abram outside to look up at the sky… and then some time later the sun sets! “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can,” says God to Abram, “Just so shall your descendents be.” How many stars can you see in mid-afternoon? And, yet, God calls Abram to trust Him, and later God will change his name to Abraham. “Abram put his faith in the Lord, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.” Some time later the sun sets, and Abrams sees that fire pot and flaming torch pass through the carcasses. He is promised a land, and a people, offspring like the stars, even as he cannot see them. Now you can see vividly why we call Abram “our forefather in faith.” He is given a glimpse of God’s power and glory, but he must trust and believe without seeing fully.

Our psalm echoes this theme: “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” In light of God’s faithfulness to us, we trust Him in mystery.

I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted and wait for the Lord.

Here there is confidence, trust, and the mystery of God’s promises. For the Hebrew people, the “land of the living” was still a mysterious category… they had begun to realize that God’s promise included a land and a life beyond our mortal span, that one must wait on the Lord even beyond death, but this was shadowy and implicit until the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus shines the full light of day on God’s promises, and we see that magnificently in our Gospel, which tells us of the Transfiguration. It is traditionally believe that this took place on Mount Tabor, on the very spot pictured on the front of this Sunday’s bulletin. I had the privilege of praying there in December of 2007. Jesus took His closest disciples, Peter, James, and John up the mountain. From that mountain you can see a beautiful panorama of the Jezreel valley, perhaps the richest and most fertile land in all of Israel. From that vantage point, above the clouds, Jesus is transfigured. The veil of His human flesh becomes transparent to His Divine Glory; Peter, James and John catch a glimpse of the fullness of His identity, Jesus who is fully man, but also fully God, and they see Him conversing with Moses, and Elijah, who stand for the whole Law and all the Prophets. The curtain is pulled back and they see deeper into the cloud of mystery. They do not fully understand, and this is particularly clear when Peter in his exaltation and enthusiasm suggests that they could build each of them a tent! He wants to linger in this glimpse, but there is still a rugged road ahead, which leads to the Cross, not only for Jesus, but eventually also for Peter, and for each of us.

Why are Peter, James, and John given this glimpse? As Jesus converses with Moses and Elijah about His exodus, the great definitive Exodus through sin and death, that Exodus upon Calvary that breaks the bonds of sin and death and opens up the path to eternal life, these three apostles are fortified and strengthened for this path that they too will walk.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, may this glimpse also fortify us, as we walk the path that leads to Calvary for each of us. May this glimpse broaden our vision, may we recognize that this world is deeply mysterious and goes far beyond what we can measure with our eyes and our instruments. If we will broaden our vision, lift up our eyes, by God’s grace and mercy we may perhaps avoid becoming “enemies of the cross of Christ.” These are strong words from St. Paul, but if anyone ever needed to hear them, it is us. How does Paul describe this enmity?

Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things.

Does that sound familiar? Our society obviously and even violently worships its stomach: we are told we must obey our most broken impulses and desires. Every day, as we consume hours of media which is designed to train us as docile consumers who respond to every exhortation to “buy now,” we truly worship our desires, and often pay the greatest homage to the lowest among them, lust and sloth and gluttony. We have been educated and trained to trust only that which we can grasp and have and consume right now. This Lenten season is a God-given and desperately needed opportunity for each of us to fight against these velvet subtle shackles that have truly turned many of us into mere slaves. A glimpse of heavenly glory, a glimpse of eternal consequences can serve us, too, to strengthen us for the battle.

God did not make us only for this mortal world, but for eternal life and glory! Having described the reign and kingdom of sin, St. Paul continues:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.

As citizens of the glorious mystery of heaven, the adopted sons and daughters of the Most High God, we too are called to glory. May these weeks of discipline - of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving - train us, equip us, and strengthen us to broaden our vision and raise our eyes on high, may we strive not to merely satisfy our bellies, but may we strive for virtue and holiness and eternal life. May the infinite gift of Jesus’ glorious Body and Blood strengthen us for this daily battle and journey. Amen.

+ A. M. D. G. +