Genesis 15:5-12.17-18

Psalm 26

Philippians 3:17-4,1

Luke 9:28-36

Reflections

To contemplate His face! The alternative Entrance Antiphon today gives us a key to the reading of the Gospel of the Transfiguration and the other Bible and liturgical texts in today’s Mass. The antiphon says: “To seek your face; I seek it, Lord! Do not hide from me!” An answer to this insistent appeal comes from the mountain where Jesus is transfigured in the presence of three chosen disciples: “The aspect of his face was changed, and his clothing became brilliant as lightning” (v.29). The evangelists dwell on the shining splendour that is the exterior sign of the identity of Jesus; indeed, light is the mark of God’s world, of joy and festivity. Here the light is not from outside, but shines forth from the person of Christ. Luke is careful to point out that “Jesus went up the mountain to pray, and while He was praying, his face was changed.” It is from the relationship with the Father that Jesus is dynamically transformed: his total identification with the Father shines in his face.

 

The path of interior transformation is the same for the apostle as it was for Jesus: prayer which is a listening to and dialoguing with God in faith and in humble abandonment to Him, has the power to transform the life of a Christian and a missionary. Indeed, contemplation or prayer is the experience that founds mission. This was definitely the experience of Peter who clearly says that he was not “repeating cleverly invented myths”, since he was one of the three eye-witnesses, “when we were with him on the holy mountain”. (2Pt.1:16.18). In his confusion and fear (v.33-34), Peter would have wished to avoid the mysterious “exodus” - that strange passing that would be completed in Jerusalem, about which Moses and Elijah spoke to Jesus (v.31). He would have liked to fix in time that splendid vision of the Kingdom (v.33), making it a perpetual “feast of tabernacles” (Zc.14:16-18). Later, having overcome the crisis of the days of the Passion, Peter and his companions found that the experience of intimacy with the Teacher and of listening to the Chosen One of the Father (v.35) took pre-eminence. Thus the apostles were confirmed in their vocation and commitment to the courageous mission of proclamation, right up to martyrdom. “Listen to him!” said the voice from the cloud (v.36). Pope Benedict XVI notes clearly how pressing this command to listen and to trust in the Master, to gaze at and to rediscover the fascinating face of Christ. (*)

 

Peter had to leave the world of his purely human mental processes and enter into God’s way of thinking (Mt.16:23). The same happened to Abraham (1st Reading). In each yearly cycle, the second Sunday in Lent presents an emblematic episode in Abraham’s life (the call, the son Isaac, the covenant). God promises territory and descendants to Abraham, an old man with no land and no children; but in return He asks for the total commitment of his heart, and faithfulness to the covenant (v.18). Abraham comes to understand that to believe is not a casual action, but it entails moving the centre of one’s life and basing it totally on God. Through Faith, as St. Paul explains (II Reading), we have the power to remain “faithful in the Lord” (4:1) even in times of trial, not behaving “like the enemies of the cross of Christ” (3:18) but as friends who wait for his coming “as saviour” (3:20).

 

The transfigured, fascinating face of Jesus foreshadows what he will be, really and definitively, after Easter. The same promise has been made to us! The true dignity and worth of every single human person, which should never be defaced for any reason, is based firmly on this call to life and to glory. As we know only too well, the Face of Jesus is disfigured in the faces of many human persons, all over the world. At their meeting in Puebla (Mexico) in 1979, the Bishops of Latin America declared: “This situation of extreme and widespread poverty takes on, in real life, very concrete features, in which we must recognise the face of the suffering Christ, of the Lord who calls upon us and challenges us” (n. 31). They continued with a whole list of disfigured faces: the faces of sick, abandoned and exploited children; the faces of confused and exploited youth; the faces of indios and afroamericans who are forced to the edges of society; the faces of rural workers who are both exploited and neglected; the faces of workers who are underpaid, unemployed, sacked; the faces of old people who live on the edge of both family and civil society (cf. Puebla 32-43) The list could go on, with the additions that each of us could make, looking around our own country and society. Each issue is a compelling call to the consciences of those in power in the various nations, and of the missionaries of the Gospel of Jesus. Mission is to give back and to assure dignity and smile to defaced and disfigured faces.

 

 

The Pope’s words

(*)  “Conversion means to change the trend of our life’s journey: not by a simple adjustment, but by a real and true reverse of direction. Conversion is to go against the tide, where the “tide” is the superficial, incoherent and deceitful lifestyle that often sweeps us along, dominates us and makes us slaves of what is evil or, anyhow, captives of moral mediocrity. Through conversion, instead, we aim at the height of Christian life, we entrust ourselves to the living and personal Gospel which is Jesus Christ. His person is the final aim and deep sense of conversion; He is the way on which we are all called to travel in life, enlightened by his light and sustained by his strength which moves our steps. In this way conversion expresses his most bright and fascinating face: it is not just a simple moral decision which rectifies our life behaviour, but a faith choice which totally involves us in a most profound communion with the living and concrete person of Christ.”

Benedict XVI

General audience of Ash Wednesday, 17.02.2010

 

In the steps of Missionaries

- 28/2: St. Auguste Chapdelaine, a priest of the Parish Society for Foreign Missions, martyred (+1856) at Xilinxian, in the Province of Guangxi (China).

- 1/3: Birth of the Latin-American Confederation of Religious (CLAR, 1959), with its headquarters in Colombia. It is an institution highly deserving for its encouragement, coordination and inculturation of Consecrated Life.

- 3/3: BB. Liberato Weiss, Samuele Marzorati and Michele Pio Fasoli from Zerbo, Franciscan priests who were stoned to death at Gondar (Ethiopia) in 1716.

- 3/3: St. Catherine Drexel (who died in Philadelphia, USA, in 1955), Foundress. She gave away her large inheritance in favour of the Native American Indians and Afro-Americans, opening around sixty schools and missions for them.

- 6/3: St. Ollegario of Tarragona (Spain, 1137), Bishop of Barcellona, and also of Tarragona from the time this ancient diocese was freed from the domination of the Moors.