Homily for 2d Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Lent
March 4, 2012
Collect
Mark 9: 2-10
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle

“Nourish us inwardly by your word” (Collect).


The Collect for this 2d Sunday of Lent is based on the gospel reading, which is always one of the Synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration. The key idea seems to be “listen.” The prayer alludes explicitly to that command from heaven: “Listen to my beloved Son” (Mark 9:7).

Then the prayer itself is uttered: “Nourish us inwardly by your word.” Pardon the pun, but there’s a play on words there.

God’s word is food for our souls: “Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deut 8:3). God’s word feeds us, as Jesus tells the people in the synagog at Capernaum (John 6:41-51) the day after he’s miraculously fed the huge crowd with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish (John 6:1-14). God’s word elevates us, inspires us, captures us, converts us, transforms us into his holy people—but only if we listen to it, take it in, absorb it, let it become part of us, as our bodies do with food.

It’s not only a written word or a spoken word that the prayer refers to, however. “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14); it’s of this Word that the Father commands, “Listen to him.” Jesus is the ultimate nourishment of our hearts, our minds, our souls —whatever the Collect means by “inwardly.” The food that is Jesus comes to us in his teaching that we read in the NT and hear in preaching, true; more important, he comes to us in a personal relationship: “Rabbi, it’s good that we’re here!” (Mark 9:5)—not to mention that he comes to us in the Holy Eucharist and all that implies: “Say but the word, and my soul shall be healed!” (Communion rite).

All of that healing and nurturing and transforming of us from what St. Paul calls “the earthly man” or “the flesh” into “the spiritual man” (cf. 1 Cor 15:36-49; Gal 5:16-26), into God’s redeemed person, has to begin inwardly. Well aware of that, Jesus warns us that all manner of sins—and he has quite a list—begin in the heart, and it’s those desires, those aspirations, those intentions that render a person unclean in God’s eyes (cf. Mark 7:20-23). St. James says something similar: “Where do the wars and conflicts among you come from? Isn’t it from your passions…? You covet but don’t possess. You kill and envy but you can’t obtain. Don’t you know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God?” (4:1-2,4).

So our inner person, our deepest self, needs to be converted, needs to submit to God’s Word and be fed by him. “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

The Collect continues: “…that, with spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory.” When I clean my glasses, I see better. The word of God cleanses our vision: Christ is our light, as catechumens will celebrate on the 4th Sunday of Lent when they hear, in the A Cycle of readings, the gospel of Jesus curing the man born blind, and as we’ll all proclaim in the solemn Easter liturgy. When the word of God takes root in our inner selves, we see and judge the world differently. Unconverted—blind—Peter objects to the Messiah’s future passion and death, and Jesus rebukes him severely: “Get behind me, Satan! The way you think isn’t God’s way but man’s” (Mark 8:31-33). When our spiritual sight has been purified, we see people as God’s daughters and sons. We see God’s hand at work in our life circumstances. We see God leading us as rapidly as we’ll allow him toward a closer and closer union with him—a union that will culminate in what we call the beatific vision: “we rejoice to behold your glory.”

Till then we see flashes of his glory, as Peter, James, and John did on Mt. Tabor. We see or experience flashes of divine glory in the goodness of so many people in our lives, and people we only read or hear about. We see or experience it in deep friendships. We see it in the quiet beauty and the awful power of nature. We see it in the sublime work of artists, musicians, even writers, with their power to transport us. We see it in the peace that comes to us when we encounter him in prayer or in rising “purely” above our own passions to forgive someone or to put aside our selfishness and pride in service of our sisters and brothers. We see it in the sacred liturgy when it’s done well; one reason why these rites are often called “mysteries” is their unexplainable power (“ineffable” power, to use a word from the revised Missal) to bring us into another world, into the divine presence. The Prayer after Communion will allude to this, as we thank the Lord “for allowing us while still on earth to be partakers even now of the things of heaven.”

Even now it is “good for us to be here,” to stand before the Lord, to listen to the beloved Son, and to open our minds and hearts and souls to his grace—to be renewed, to be nudged a little further along on the path toward heavenly glory.

Illustration: Mosaic of the Transfiguration in the National Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C.