Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

2rd Sunday of Lent – ​​Year B

1st reading: Genesis 22, 1-2.9-13.15-18

Psalm: 115 (116b), 10.15, 16ac-17, 18-19

2rd reading: Romans 8, 31b-34

Gospel: Mark 9, 2-10

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A word about Abraham and Isaac which we will find as a second reading in the Easter Vigil.

Abraham, who had no children - although he is old and his wife Sarah too - receives a son, Isaac, who is the son of the promise. And Abraham does not receive this son to keep him for himself: he understands that the promise that God made him to be the father of a numerous people will pass through Isaac, and he wants to give Isaac to God, to consecrate him to God. He understands that this is what is being asked of him, and he knows no other way to offer his son to God than to offer him as a burnt offering. God will undeceive him, because man does not have the power to enter into the mystery of death in order to come out alive. It will be necessary for God himself, through the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, to come and experience human death in order to be able to destroy it from within.

This Gospel of the Transfiguration is extremely rich. For more than 15 centuries, the Church has proclaimed it during this time of Lent. She contemplates this event which is multiple.

The first thing we can note is the transfiguration of Jesus. He is resplendent: his clothes of such whiteness that no one on earth can achieve such whiteness. Mark does not describe the Transfiguration any further… In fact, Jesus is glorified. Jesus transfigured, it is Jesus who has arrived at the end of the journey. He is there in the fullness of life, and one of the consequences is that others, who have entered this fullness, are present: Moses and Elijah. We recognize them because, in the fullness of Heaven, there is no longer any distance between being and appearance. In Heaven, when we meet Moses, we will know it is Moses because it is Moses. We will no longer have to present our identity in a worldly way: we will manifest who we are. Jesus glorified, this means that our humanity, our body, our humanity in all that it is carnal, is capable of bearing the glory of God and of radiating the glory of God. Our destiny is not the destruction of our body for something else, but the transfiguration of our body that we will experience in the resurrection... For eternity, we are human beings and we will never be angels, otherwise God would have us created angels.

The second thing that is notable is the words of the Father: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him”. After I proclaimed the Gospel, I said, “Let us cheer the Word of God,” and you responded, “Praise be to You, Lord Jesus.” In fact, if we wanted to understand better, it would have been wise to say “Let us acclaim the Word of God”. We do not acclaim a text that we have just heard, to say: it is good, what we have just heard... We acclaim the second person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Word who makes himself heard through the holy Gospel. And it is to him that we say: “Praise be to you Lord Jesus” which is the word made flesh.

We know with what assiduity Saint Thérèse nourished herself with the Holy Gospels. She says it very clearly, she writes it in her manuscript A:

If I open a book composed by a spiritual author (even the most beautiful, the most touching), I immediately feel my heart tighten and I read without, so to speak, understanding, or if I understand, my mind stops without being able to meditate... In this helplessness, Holy Scripture and Imitation come to my aid; in them I find solid and pure food. But above all it is the Gospel that sustains me during my prayers, in it I find everything that is necessary for my poor little soul. I always discover new lights, hidden and mysterious meanings… (Ms A 83)

This manuscript A which she wrote in 1895; 2 years later, when she was already bedridden, in May, she said:

For me, I no longer find anything in books, except in the Gospel. This book is enough for me. I listen with delight to these words of Jesus who tells me everything I have to do: “Learn from me that I am meek and humble in heart”: then I have peace, according to his sweet promise:…And you find rest for your little souls… (CJ May 15, 3).

Feeding on the Gospel, feeding on the Holy Scriptures, I often come back to this, brothers and sisters, but it is a necessity in Christian life. And I know that more and more the baptized are taking the time to read and meditate on the Word of God, and this Lenten season is a blessed time for us to invest more in this meditative reading.

“This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” The third thing is that, if Jesus is to be listened to, he is also to be contemplated. We know how much Saint Thérèse is attached to contemplating the face of Jesus. This Holy Face whose devotion spreads in the 19thrd century even before the first photos of the Shroud. And Thérèse likes to contemplate this Face; she will add this name of “the Holy Face” to her religious name: Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face. What she contemplates in this Face is at the same time this glorified Christ, but also this Face humiliated in the Passion. In the Holy Face of Tours, Jesus has his eyes downcast and tears are flowing...

This is consistent with what we find in the Scriptures:

In the book of Habakkuk: “Your eyes are too pure to see evil, you cannot bear the sight of oppression” (Ha 1,13).

In the book of Wisdom: “Yet you pity all men, because you can do anything. You close your eyes to their sins, so that they may convert” (Wis 11,23)

And Thérèse contemplates this Face of Jesus, with lowered eyes, and she says in August 97:

How well Our Lord did to lower his eyes to give us his portrait! Since the eyes are the mirror of the soul, if we had guessed his soul, we would have died of joy.

Oh ! How much good this Holy Face has done me in my life! While I was composing my hymn: “Living with Love” she helped me do it with great ease. I wrote from memory, during my evening silence, the 15 verses that I had composed, without a draft, during the day. That day, on my way to the refectory after the exam, I had just composed the stanza “Forgiveness of sinners”. I repeated it to him, in passing, with a lot of love. Looking at her, I cried with love. (CJ August 5, 7)

This stanza, the 11rd, says this:

To live on love is to wipe your face

It is to obtain forgiveness from sinners

O God of Love! may they come into your grace

And may they bless your Name forever...

Until my heart resounds blasphemy

To erase it, I always want to sing:

“Your Sacred Name, I adore it and I Love it

I live on Love!…”

Finally, there is a fourth event which is often not perceived. This fourth event is the end of the Transfiguration. For what ? Why, if not because Jesus renounces his glory? For what? To enter freely into his Passion

The Father does not wait until Jesus is dead to glorify him: he glorifies him. And for us men and for our Salvation, Jesus renounces his glory to head towards the cross, to enter into human death, destroy it from the inside and save us.

In contemplating the Transfiguration of Jesus, we must contemplate precisely this renunciation of Jesus for us, out of love for us, to go to the end of the path freely.

Thus Thérèse, in this same poem Vivre d’amour, will exclaim:

Living on Love is not on earth

Set up your tent at the top of Tabor.

With Jesus is to climb Calvary,

It’s looking at the Cross as a treasure!…

In Heaven I must live of enjoyment

Then the trial will have fled forever

But exiled I want in suffering

Live on love.

Amen