Homily for the
2d Sunday of Lent
March 1, 2026
Matt 17: 1-9
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
The Transfiguration
(Carl Bloch)
“He was transfigured before them; his
face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light” (Matt 17: 2).
Last Sunday’s gospel recounted how
Jesus was tempted by the devil. We met
Jesus in his humanity, dealing with the loneliness of the desert, fasting from
food, tempted by pleasure, pride, and power.
Jesus was and is very like us—except that he completely rejected sin.
Today’s gospel shows us the other half
of Jesus, so to speak. He’s not only
human; he’s also divine. We get a
glimpse of his glory, but it’s not a private glory. He’s not alone; Moses and Elijah, the great
saints of Israel, are his companions, basking in his glory.
Glorious Jesus hasn’t left his humanity
behind. “Don’t tell the vision to anyone
until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead” (17:9). It’s not God who will die on Calvary, but a
flesh and blood man like us.
If Jesus as man turned away Satan’s
temptations and showed us flesh and blood folks that it’s possible for us to
say “no” to the Evil One, Jesus transfigured so gloriously before the eyes of
his 3 close friends shows us our future destiny. We’re not gods, but if we do as the voice
from the cloud—his Father’s voice—commands, if we “listen to him” (17:5), then
Jesus’ glory is promised also to us.
Moses and Elijah—and by implication all who are faithful to the Law and
the prophets—already share in Jesus’ glory.
And we will, too, not held back by our
human nature, the same human nature that Jesus has, the same human nature of
Moses and Elijah. Glory like the sun is
our destiny, the purpose for which God created us. The old catechism that Catholics my age
learned taught us that God made us to know him, to love him, and to serve him
in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next world. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us “that Jesus, at
the Transfiguration, began to shine with the radiance of heaven so as to entrance
us with the prospect of our own beautiful transfiguration.”[1]
St. Paul expresses a similar
thought: “Christ Jesus destroyed death
and brought life and immortality to light thru the Gospel” (2 Tim 1:10). We portray the saints with halos around their
heads; they’re filled with Christ’s divine light. Their faces, like his, shine like the
sun. If we listen to Jesus, that glory
will be ours, too.
[1] Robert Barron, “The Strange Light,”
in The Word on Fire Bible: The Gospels (Park Ridge, Ill., 2020), p. 107.
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