Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2022. The Gospel of St. Luke 9:28-36. Theme: False Expectations
The Transfiguration of Jesus which we are told about in today’s gospel was a manifestation of who Christ really was and what his mission as the Messiah was meant to be. Not only did the three disciples catch a glimpse of his divinity brilliantly radiating from within him, they also heard the voice of God the Father declaring that Jesus was his Chosen Son. Standing next to Jesus in this mystical vision are two great prophets of the Old Testament: Moses and Elijah. St. Luke makes a point of telling us that the three of them were discussing Jesus’ “exodus” which is Bible-speak for his approaching Passion and Resurrection. In other words, they were conversing about his ultimate mission as the Messiah. This is a very important part of the manifestation because the disciples, like most of the Jews at the time, had some very definite, preconceived, and erroneous ideas about the Messiah.
The prophets of Israel had foretold the coming of this Great Hero, a Savior sent by God, who would deliver them from evil and bring them joy, peace and fulfillment. Most of them interpreted this to mean that the Messiah was going to be a great Warrior-King who would free God’s people from Roman tyranny. They expected him to expel the enemy and re-establish a glorious Jewish nation. They clung to this idea because it fit the plan that they themselves expected. It was what they wanted; it was what they thought that God should do. But they had misinterpreted the Word of God spoken through the prophets.
Like them, I think we all run the risk of developing false ideas about who God is and how he should act in our lives. And I am sure that we all have our own expectations of how we want him to intervene in our lives. And I think that if we are really honest about it, our default expectation is that God will grant us all our wishes and make our lives happy and perfect, that is, according to how we define “happy” and “perfect”. When we do this we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and failure. We are creating an unrealistic god for ourselves, a god fashioned according to our own making, a god of our own imagining and hoping. In other words, we are worshipping a “magic genie-in-a-bottle” kind of God and telling him what wishes we want to come true in our lives.
I honestly think that is a major reason behind the loss of faith among so many people today. You know, we hear a lot of people these days, especially the young, declaring that they are atheists. But I don’t buy it from most of them. I think that what they have rejected is the false god of their own making. I say this because when having a sincere conversation with such people it becomes apparent that their real issue is actually not unbelief in God. Instead, it seems mostly to be anger at or disappointment with God, or more accurately, with the false god they have fashioned and expected him to be.
Typically, such people developed their magical image about God when they were children but they never progressed into an adult understanding. They never came to know the real God through prayer from the heart and encountering him in the Scriptures. And so quite often their faith and hope in this god of their own making comes crashing down all around them after he failed to hear their prayers in some difficult times, such as preventing a divorce in the family or sparing a loved one from death. But this false god, of course, doesn’t exist and so could never have delivered what they desired in the first place. He could never be all that they expected him to be. And so they lost faith in him.
It’s very much the same way that the Jewish people formed a false idea of the Messiah and then rejected him when he was not what they expected him to be. Peter, James and John had their erroneous preconceived notions about God and the Savior shaken out of them on that mount of the Transfiguration. And it’s so vital that we, too, leave our preconceived ideas and unrealistic expectations behind and come to know and encounter the real God who is revealed in Jesus.
And the best way for us to do this is by heeding the words that God the Father spoke at the Transfiguration when he said: “This is my chosen Son, listen to him.” We need to listen to Christ and ponder his words in our hearts and minds. We need to develop the habit and practice of prayerfully reading the Gospels, through which the Holy Spirit will help us to banish from our minds any false ideas we may have built up about God. This is precisely why Pope Francis never tires of urging us to read and reflect upon the Gospels frequently.
When we start coming before Jesus in this kind of prayerfulness - and with trust and humility - we will begin to see him in a new light. And we will see ourselves as Christians in a new light as well. Our meaningful encounters with him through prayer of the heart while pondering the gospels in our minds can be like our own personal transfiguration experiences. These can be times when God allows us to see Jesus with spiritual vision, to contemplate him in a new way and better understand who he really is and who he wants to be for us.
And then, by sharing what Jesus means to us and how our faith-relationship with him makes a difference in our lives, we can hopefully inspire others to discover and encounter the true image of God for themselves. We can encourage them by our own personal testimony and experiences to listen for the voice of the Chosen Son speaking to their own hearts. And then once they begin to do so, they too will find the love, the inner joy, the acceptance, the serenity and peace of heart that they have been desiring and seeking for so long.
LECTIO DIVINA means "sacred reading". If you want to learn how to pray from the heart pondering the Gospels, follow the simple steps in the diagram below. You can choose any story from the Gospels you wish. Some people find it easiest to use the Gospels chosen the day's Mass. you can find these at https://bible.usccb.org/
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