Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

We’re 10 days into Lent and we might benefit from taking stock of the experience.  Have you found it challenging?  Have there been any new temptations?  Have you learned anything new about yourself, or others, or the world around us?  Have prayer, penance, acts of charity and sharing alms revealed anything new to you?  If so, Lent is going well…and you’re in good company.  For my part, my prayer is going alrighta few ups and a few downs; there are a few more temptations, but that’s to be expected when we fast from distractions; my acts of charity are going well and sharing money with the poor is also up.  So, as I take stock in Lent so far, my prayer is the thing that’s not going as I had hoped.  Again, I may be in good company.

In today’s gospel, Jesus goes up Mount Tabor to pray.  Remember in Scripture, mountaintops are places where God reveals Himself in some way.  So far, Jesus’ public ministryfilled with callings, with healings and with miracleshas divided many and already He is becoming a threat to the Pharisees and the religious rulers.  At this point now, there is a decision to make: will Jesus journey to Jerusalem to make a stand against the religious rulers, or will He retreat?  As He prays, Moses and Elijah appear with Him and we hear that they speak of Jerusalem as Jesus’ passage…a word meaning either liberation and freedom, or death.  Moses (the recipient of the Law of God) and Elijah (representative of all the Prophets) confirm that the path to Jerusalem is what will fulfill all that has been promised and foretold.

In Luke’s gospel, we do not hear that Jesus was transformed; rather, his face “changed in appearance”.  This is interesting: oftentimes in Scripture, when one understands a teaching or sees something for what it truly is, “it’s written all over their face”.  And so, the conversation with Moses and Elijah is a great moment of understanding for Jesus: He must go to Jerusalem for his death, in order that liberation may be won.  And all of this insight is confirmed by the Almighty: “this is my Beloved Son, my Chosen One.  Listen to Him.”  From the same voice at Jesus’ baptism to now, the Father confirms the Son’s authority, the Son’s teaching, the Son’s witness.

 

So, this revelation, this great understanding, was all accomplished simply through prayer.  Do you remember our reflections 10 days ago?  I invited us all to retreat from so many things, and to retreat into prayer with Jesus.  When we retreat into Jesuslike the three apostles on the mountainwe see His glory and come to know him.  If we avail ourselves, He teaches us how to come closer to him, how to hear the voice of the Father, and how to encounter the glory of God.  Yes, by taking time to go off and be alone with the Lord in prayer…to be in such moments of intimacy with God, we will find the light and strength and faith we need to withstand temptations, to build up the world around us, to transform the world into goodness.

Just as God had something to say to the chosen three, God also has something to say to us: he wants us to discover Him and His plan for each and all of our days.  But if we refuse to go “up the mountain to pray”, we won’t be able to hear Him, to be with Him, and we won’t be able to receive the graces He has in store for us as we make our ways through Lent.

If you’re in the same shape as I am this Lent, we can each admit of our increasing need to draw close to the source of holiness, to draw toward God in prayer.  If we do, He will fulfill all that is in store for us.

This week’s unexpected and nearly-unprecedented announcement by Pope Benedict XVI that he will abdicate the papacy at the end of this month is just now settling in to the hearts and minds of millions of Catholics throughout the world.  While many feelings, thoughts and questions abound, I wonder if we might reflect for a moment on the examples of humility and abandonment that Pope Benedict is offering to us and to the world.

So many of usmyself very much includedseek power and prestige, do we not?  Most of us, when given the opportunity, will seek our own interests first and then, maybe, seek the interests of others.  I am considering the issue of leadership on the national level and I truly cannot find many examples of political rulers abdicating the power of their throne, rather so many of themeven todayabuse the power that has been entrusted to them; not many industrial leaders will simply walk away from the corporation that’s making millions of dollars no matter what its ethical practices; few philanthropists give away their fortune to charity while still alive.

And with many other examples, we can see that Pope Benedict’s decision is fairly unique: he is handing over the prestige of his popularity, the publicity of his holy way of live, the power of his office as Peter’s successor…all to enter into a cloistered existence, removed from the public for the remainder of his days, to humbly pray for the good of the Church and all of her people.  He is abandoning his current ministry in order to re-claim a ministry of supreme value: humble prayer before God and on behalf of others.  These are the reasons I would suggest he is humbly abandoning the goods of this world in order to care for the goods of the spiritual world.

It is probably no coincidence that such an act is being taken up now.  Did you hear the three temptations in today’s gospel?  The devil appeals to our selfish tendencies in order to draw us away from God.

• When we all desire pleasure and comfort (“Tell this stone to turn into a loaf”), sometimes we need to rightly place that desire aside (“Man lives not on bread alone”).
• We all desire to be self-sufficient, to have power to do whatever we want, whenever we want, free from limitations (“I shall give you all this power” says the tempter),  but only God is self-sufficient.  Our existence depends on Him we need Him to sustain and guide us (Christ responds, “God alone must you serve”).
• We all desire recognition, popularity and praise (surely a dive from the Temple parapet would have gained Jesus instant fame), but these are no substitute for the true meaning and happiness given by humble friendship with God.

The devil wants us to keep “self” at the center of our lives, but we are invited to keep God as our center, always seeking to know and to follow ‘Goodness’ itself, ‘virtue’ itself, ‘holiness’ itself.  For, from our first reading, we’ve recounted the faithfulness of God to us; from our second reading, we’ve recalled how God himself is the only source of our salvation.

Pope Benedict acknowledges this week his frailties and his incapacity to lead…accepting now a role of humble service for the good of us all. And so, the Christian virtues of humility and obedience teach us, yet again, to give ourselves over to the source of all good, of all virtue, and of all holiness.

May our Holy Father Benedict be blessed in his humble suffering and service, and may each of us learn from our Good Pastor.