THE GOD WHO CALLS
Second Sunday of Lent: Year C
in the Jubilee Year of Mercy
by Joseph O’Hanlon (OGF)
Miserandoatqueeligendo
Mercied and therefore called
IN THE BEGINNING…
The beginning of God’s work with us is vocation. We are not just born. To be born is to be called. Our parents wanted a baby. God wanted you. Only God knew what we would become. Only God foresees our potential. Sometimes we surprise our parents. We never surprise God.
The first utterance of God in our Bible is AND GOD SAID. The “and” is important. God creates and so speaks. God’s speaking is always vocational; it is always calling, inviting, always urging humanity to new ways, calling humanity to repentance, to deeper covenant love.
The Second Sunday of Lent reveals THE GOD WHO CALLS. Readings explore who this God is and what his calling is all about. This Sunday is a Vocations Sunday (so is every other Sunday, indeed, every Mass, as Pope Francis says so eloquently in EvangeliiGaudium[1]), exploring the one who calls and the one called.The first movement of the symphony of Lent to Pentecost reveals the nature of the God who calls, and reveals, too, how we are to answer.
An evangelizing community knows that the LORD
has taken the initiative, he has loved us first
(cf. 1 John 4:19), and therefore we can move forward,
boldly take the initiative, go out to others, seek those
who have fallen away, stand at the crossroads,
and welcome the outcast. Such a community
has an endless desire to show mercy. (EG24)
SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT: YEAR C: YEAR OF LUKE
First Reading
Genesis 15: 5-12; 17-18
In Genesis 15:1 the Word of the LORD comes to Abram (the same Word that will become flesh) and clarifies the callof our father in faith. It is Sarah who will bear a son. What Abram is called to listen, and to put his trust in God’s word.
In the Bible, faith is not a matter of believing but of trusting. We may believe many things about God but we are called to trust in the One who speaks to us. Faith is profound trust in a person whose promises are the purpose of our life. Our reading unfortunately omits the 15:1: Do not be afraid. Every call from Abram to Moses, from Moses to Elijah, from Elijah to Mary, from Simon Peter to us, is always given with an assurance that there is nothing to fear in God’s call. Of course, one must always raise objections: I do not know a man(Luke 1:34).
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 27 (26 in JB and Lectionary) – A Psalm of Trust
This psalm is recited for about two months before New Year (Rosh Ha-Shanah) and the onset of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) in the Jewish liturgical calendar. This is a period that seeks God’s merciful forgiveness, a plea for general absolution. It emphasizes that a call for mercy will never go unheeded. For,
Almighty God is the One who:
Is my light and my help
The stronghold of my life
The LORD who listens to my voice
There is no need to be afraid:
Whom shall I fear?
Before whom shall I cower in fear?
The LORD is the one who hears my voice
The One who gives mercy in answer to my call
Who does not hide his face
Who does not in anger dismiss me
Who forever has been my help
Hope in him, hold firm,
Take heart,
Hope in the LORD.
Second Reading
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Note to ministers of the Word:
When St Paul, and every writer in the NT canon, writes “brothers” or “my brothers”, theymeans “brothers and sisters” and readers should amend the Lectionary and for “brothers” read “Brothers and Sisters.” (See NRSV).
Philippi was a town adapted by the Romans as a retirement colony for old soldiers. Paul founded his little church there with a prayer – group of women led by Lydia, in whose house Paul set up a house – church, baptizing her and her household (Acts 16:11-15). The little church in Philippi was Paul’s favourite, and Philippians is his most joyful letter.
Rejecting those whose hearts are set exclusively on “earthly things”, Paul, the greatest pastor the Church has ever known,emphasises that “our homeland is in heaven”, that is to say, our hope is in God, and in our Lord Jesus Christ who
Comes from heaven (from God)
Who is our Saviour
Who transfigures us
And our transfiguration will be done as will the transfiguration of the whole universe!
What Paul requires of the delightful Christians of Philippi, his joy and his crown, is that they remain firm in their trust in the LORD.
GOSPEL
Luke 9:28-36
WE ARE TRANSFIGURED BY LISTENING
Luke’s Gospel is unique in its insistence on praying. The beginning is swaddled in prayer and the ending is shrouded in prayer. Luke opens his Gospel in a context of a praying people (1:10), and he closes it with praying: and they were continually in the Temple blessing God (24:53). Throughout his Gospel Luke presents Jesus as a man of prayer and defining moments ofHis life are wrapped in prayer. It is worth noting some of the occasions when Jesus is found to be praying:
3:21Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had beenbaptizedand was praying …
5:16But He was accustomed to withdraw into the desert places and to pray.
6:12Now during those days He went out to the mountain to pray; and He spent the night in prayer to God. [Then He chooses the Twelve.]
9:18And it happened that [Jesus] was praying alone, with only His disciples with Him, He asked them …
9:28Now after these words it happened that after eight days, [Jesus] tookwith him Peter and John, and James ands went up on the mountain to pray. And while He was praying …
11:1[Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and when He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray”.
18:1Then [Jesus] told them a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart…
22:40Coming to that place [the Mount of Olives], [Jesus] said to them, “Pray that you do not come to a testing.”
22:41Then He withdrew from them … knelt down, and prayed …
22:44And being in agony, He prayed all the more …
It is worth noting that Jesus is transfigured while He is praying: As he prayed (JB).
For a full discussion on Jesus, the man of prayer, see my The Jesus who Was/The Jesus who Is, pp.164-185.Luke/Acts refers to prayer/praying 47 times.
The mountain, not any mountain. Gospel writers almost always use the definite article to indicate that they have in mind the mountain of God, the mountain where God meets with His servants and where divine revelation is given. The model for this is meeting is Moses meeting God on the mountain of God throughout Exodus (see esp. Exodus34:29-34). So the mountain in the Gospels does not have a geographical location. It is a theological mountain. See 6:12 – 17, where in prayer Jesus chooses the Twelve and then goes down on to the plain where He meets with the people and preaches His Sermon on the Plain, not on Matthew’s mountain.
It was St Jerome who gave us transfiguratusest ante eos (and he was transfigured before themin Mark 9:2) to describe the change which Luke says occurred while he was praying (9:29).[2]Luke expands what Mark and Matthew have to say about the two men Moses and Elijah by saying that they appeared in gloryand that they were speaking of His (h)exodos, his departure, which He [Jesus] was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.
It is often said that Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets. More likely, I think, is that for Luke they represent two faithful, dedicated, and utterly obedient servants of the LORD. They now share with Jesus that glory which only God possesses and only God can bestow. This allows Luke to emphasize that the three are talking about the death of Jesus which Jesus endures in Jerusalem, handing over life into God’s safe keeping: Into your hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:46).
As usual, the disciples were weighed down with sleep (Luke 22:45), yet manage to keep awake or had woken up (the JB is too kind). But significantly Luke records that “they saw his glory” (note “we have seen his glory in John 1:14), the glory shared by Moses and Elijah. The cloud comes (a sign of God’s presence since in another exodus God guides His people in fire by night and cloud by day) and overshadowsthem so that they were afraid. The voice is the voice of God: This is my Son, the Chosen One. The revelation of the divine sonship of the Lord Jesus not only authenticates the life and death (exodos) of Jesus but lays the command upon the disciples which long ago was laid on the whole of God’s people: Listen!
Listen, Israel, (Shema, Isra’el) begins the prayer recited several times a day by devote Jews. Shema, Isra’el!are the opening words of Moses’ address to all the people (Deuteronomy 5:1-29)that sets forth the Ten Commandmentsas God’s design for obedient, grace-filled living.In the Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration all these memories are evoked and their divine authority emphasized, except that God now requires that we listen to Jesus, God’s Son, the One chosen in order to know and to experience the fullness of God’s designs for humanity. The Word of God spoken through Moses has been made flesh and lives in the midst of humanity.It is to Him that we must listen.
To translate verse 36 literally, In the happening of the voice, Jesus alone was to be found. To listen to Him is all we know and all we need to know. Everything we learn in our journey through Luke’s pages about God’s Son is confirmed in God’s naming of Him as the Chosen One, chosen to be for us as no one else can be: in the happening of the voice, Jesus alone was to be found.In that moment of revelation, Jesus stands alone, the only way to glory. To take up the cross and lose one’s life, is to reach the mountain and enter the cloud of glory. The one whom Moses and all the prophets reveal must set his face toward Jerusalem, must embrace what will happen there. And thus He will come to us around a table to break the word and bless the bread.
WE ARE TRANSFIGURED BY LISTENING
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[1]See especially, Chapter One: The Church’s Missionary Transformation.
[2]The Latin phrase, transfiguratusest, comes from the Vulgate of St Jerome, which, despite the opposition of St Augustine, became the Bible for Christianity of the West. The English priest, John Wyclif (1333 – 1384), attempted to give God’s Word in English, and it is to him that we owe the phrase he was transfigured before them. For his pains he was condemned by a Synod of Bishops and expelled from Oxford. He returned to Lutterworth as parish priest and there suffered what was to prove a fatal stroke as he said Mass in the parish church on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, 28 December, 1384.