Homily

Lent is an opportune time for our journey toward the Lord. It is the appropriate time to get out of the prison of self-love and rise higher and higher, far above our dull mediocrity. The liturgy of this Second Sunday is dominated by two mountains that stand tall, fascinating and terrible before our daily lives: Mount Moriah - the tradition that symbolically identifies with the hill of the Temple of Jerusalem - and Mount Tabor: the mountain of Abraham’s test and the Mountain of Jesus’ Transfiguration.
The book of Genesis, in the first reading, presents us with the terrible and silent three-day journey faced by the biblical patriarch towards the peak of the test: it is the paradigm of every journey of faith, and of the very Lenten journey. It is a difficult and struggled path, accompanied only by the relentless command, “Take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love … and offer him there as a burnt-offering.” Then silence. Silence of God, silence of Abraham, silence of the young and unaware Isaac who only once, with heart-breaking naiveté, “ said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ Isaac continued, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?’ Abraham replied, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.’” It is faith at its pure level, the simple and total faith of the child who trusts entirely in his father (“if you do not become like little children ... “, says Jesus.)
Abraham must renounce his paternity to rely solely on the Word of God. It is not his son Isaac to ensure him posterity, but only the Word of the Lord. And God puts him to the test by making out the possibility of the destruction of his paternity. And so, after the test, Abraham receives Isaac not as a son of his flesh, but as the son of divine promise. He, who had given up Isaac’s life, finds him again full of joy, as the merciful father in the Gospel parable was full of joy in finding the prodigal son “who had died and returned to life.” Abraham receives Isaac, giving us a highest example of faith that will make him worshipped by future generations of Jews, Christians and Muslims, as “Father of all believers.” On top of that mountain the believer discovers a child of the absolute and demanding love of God. May Abraham’s faith accompany us on our journey of every day!
The mountain of the Transfiguration, which future traditions identify with Mount Tabor, stands as the high point of Jesus’ life with his disciples. We can compare it to the pinnacle of our pilgrimage, both of our week and of our very existence. The Lord chooses and takes us with him on the mountain, as he did with his three closest friends, to share with him the experience of intimate communion with the Father; an experience so profound as to transfigure his face, his body and even his clothes. Jesus was entirely transfigured, inside and out. Some suggest that the core of the story is based on an experience that struck Jesus first of all: a heavenly vision that produced a transfiguration in him. It is a likely scenario and, no doubt, suggestive because it allows us to grasp more deeply Jesus’ spiritual life. Sometimes we forget that he also had his spiritual journey, as the Gospel notes about his childhood: Jesus “grew in wisdom, age and grace.” No doubt there he did not lack the joys of the fruits of his pastoral ministry as well as the worries and anxieties about what the will of the Father was (Gethsemane and the cross are the most dramatic moments). It was not that everything was obvious and planned for him; eliminating both the effort, and the joy of a journey.
Jesus, as well as Abraham, then Moses, Elijah and every believer had to climb the mountain. Jesus felt the need to climb the mountain; he needed to meet with the Father. It is true that communion with the Father was his whole life, the bread of his days, the substance of his mission, and the heart of all that he was and did; and yet, Jesus needed moments when this intimate relationship emerged in its fullness. Tabor was one of these special moments of communion, which the Gospel stretches to the entire story of the people of Israel, as evidenced by the presence of Moses and Elijah, who “talked with him.” However Jesus did not only live this experience by himself; he wanted to involve his three closest friends. It was a moment of great significance for the personal life of Jesus, and it also became such for the three disciples, and for all those who let themselves be involved in this same climb.
In the tradition of the Church there have been many interpretations of this passage of the Gospel. Among the most constant is to see in the monastic life a reflection of the Transfiguration, because of the radical nature of the choice it entails. But I think we can see the mountain of the Transfiguration also in the Sunday liturgy to which we are all called to participate and live united with Jesus, in the highest moment of communion with God. It is right during the Holy Liturgy that we can repeat Peter’s same words: “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings...” On this holy mountain of the Sunday liturgy, we find ourselves in the company of the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament, and we too hear the voice Peter, James, and John heard with Jesus: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to Him!” Immediately the three disciples found themselves with “only Jesus.” They looked around amazed, perhaps with a sense of loss to be returned to “normality”, seeing no one, but only Jesus.
The weekdays following Sunday start here, or, if you will on he descent from the mountain. The disciples are no longer as before. They return to daily life with no richness of themselves, of their ideas, of their own projects and dreams or something else. They have witnessed the vision of the transfigured Jesus, and that is enough. Yes, the Christian community, every believer is not given other than Jesus; He alone is the treasure, the wealth, the reason for our life and that of the Church. God himself, in fact built the dwelling Peter wanted to build with his own hands, when “the Word became flesh and came to make his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14). And with the apostle Paul, we are pleased to say that nothing, no one, neither pain nor fatigue nor death will separate us from the love of Christ.