By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
March 17, 2019: Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 15: 5-12; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1; Luke 9: 28-36
We find ourselves at the second milestone on our journey to holiness; the second Sunday of Lent and the milestone is the Mountain! After the desert experience, the dry, the empty and the lonely experience, we are led to the mountain experience, an experience of elation, ecstasy and exuberance. We are given this experience to remain focused on the ultimate joy that is in store for us and thus never to lose hope or give up.
Mountain is an experience of joy, excitement, freshness, sunlight, and thrill. On our journey to holiness, these experiences are given as foretastes of the heaven that we are promised with. And we grow through these experiences into heaven. Mountain Experiences are foretastes of heaven, experiences closer in nature to heaven, a preparation towards heaven.
Holding on to the Lord’s Covenant: We go up the mountain, holding on to the Covenant that the Lord has made with us, an unfailing security that sustains us in the uphill journey. The Covenant offers us a secure foundation on which to build our entire journey to heaven, the mountain taking us closer to heaven. The first reading today offers us the example of Abraham who founded his life on the promises of the Lord and was ready to give up everything that he had, towards ascending that holy mountain of the Lord. His confidence in the Lord and on the covenant, was rewarded though much late yet in a manner concrete and tangible.
Keep Climbing in your Commitment: If Covenant is the gift from God, commitment is the response required from us, a way to ascend towards heaven, crossing remarkable milestones. The second reading instructs us how to keep climbing in our commitment towards being transfigured into the image of Christ himself. We know a journey uphill is always tough and demanding, but the fact is that we are being led up by someone who has come from the top and so has a first had experience of not only what it means to be up there but also what it takes to get there. Because, Christ who is from heaven has the experience of having lived through the same life that we have and having reached that heavens, promising us that the same is possible with us.
Be Transformed towards Communion: Heaven is communion, communion with the Father, the Son and the Spirit and we grow into that communion. We are drawn towards it in our daily life, through the mountain experiences of joy and esctasy – but we are not to get stuck there! Like Peter and the other disciples wanted, we might think of laying our tents there. That is not our call; our call is to be continuously transformed into the image and likeness of God, into being children of the Covenant, ever faithful in our climbing, deepening our commitment to be transfigured, that finally we get ourselves transfigured into Christ.
The Lenten journey is likened to this journey of holiness, growing through the mountain experiences into heaven. Let us resolve to never give up on this journey – neither due to discouragement nor due to presumptuous disillusionment that we have reached heaven much before actually doing so.
As we find ourselves with the Transfigured Lord on the mountain today, let us keep in mind that we have not reached the destiny as yet. The Lord reminds us this: that it is not enough to see the Lord transfigured and be taken up by that; but it is our call to be transfigured ourselves into the Lord’s image and thus grow into the heaven that is promised to us.
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.