Sunday 16 March 2025

2rd Sunday of Lent – ​​Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Genesis 15,5:12.17-18, XNUMX-XNUMX

Psaume : 26 (27),1, 7-8,9abcd,13-14

2rd reading: Philippians 3,17:4 – 1:XNUMX

Gospel: Luke 9,28:36b-XNUMX

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On the path to Lent, the Church invites us to contemplate this astonishing scene from the Gospel: the Transfiguration. An event in which only three apostles, Peter, John, and James, are present, but an event that will be recorded in the Gospels. This event is therefore important for us.

Jesus is transfigured; we are told more precisely that the apostles see the glory of Jesus. And this glory is manifested by the fact that the appearance of Jesus' face becomes different — Luke doesn't tell us more — and his garment becomes dazzling white. Jesus is glorified by the Father. What does this mean? It means that Jesus has reached the end of the road. It means that Jesus, who has always done the Father's will, is ready to enter Heaven.

But if Jesus does not renounce this glory, to enter freely into his Passion, we are not saved... Because finally, someone must explain to me why the transfiguration stops!... The transfiguration stops because Jesus renounces this glory to humble themselves even more and become obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross for us, to save us (Cf. Phil 2,8:XNUMX). As Thérèse will say on several occasions, "Jesus did foolish things for us." It is out of love for us, for each of us, that Jesus renounces his glory to freely enter into his Passion and come to destroy death from within by his own death and resurrection.

It is good for us to contemplate Jesus in his glory because he tells us where we are walking. He tells us that our humanity in flesh and blood is capable of bearing the glory of God, of radiating the glory of God. And this is good news! But at the same time we see that the path to this glory is the Passion. Luke tells us that Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about his Exodus to Jerusalem — ἔξοδος —, which means both the path he will take to go to Jerusalem, but also the path he will take to pass from this world to the Father through his Passion and his cross.

When Thérèse composed her great poem "Living on Love" just before Lent in 1895, at the suggestion of Sister Geneviève - her sister Céline - she composed stanza number 4:

4. Living on Love is not on earth

Set up your tent at the top of Tabor.

As Peter wants to do with Jesus;

With Jesus is to climb Calvary,

It is to look upon the Cross as a treasure!… (PN 17§4)

Yes, this scene of the Transfiguration invites us, by contemplating Jesus in glory, to understand that the path of life is the path that leads us by his Passion and by his Cross to the glory of his resurrection.

But at the same time, this path, as Paul invites us to do in his letter, teaches us from now on to contemplate the Heaven towards which we are walking, this Homeland that Thérèse contemplates so often and to which she aspires. "We have our citizenship in heaven, the apostle tells us, heaven, from where we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, who will transform our poor bodies into the image of his glorious body.

And Paul concludes: “Stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.” It is about holding fast in the Lord, that is, learning to love Heaven, and to love Heaven, to love Jesus because all of Heaven is present in Jesus. And Thérèse contemplates this Heaven, she contemplates it in Jesus. This Homeland to which she aspires, she finds it in the very face of Jesus.

She expresses it in the third stanza of another poem:

3. Your Face is my only Fatherland

She is my Kingdom of love

She is my smiling Meadow

My sweet Sun every day

She is the lily of the valley

Whose mysterious perfume

Console my exiled soul

Let him taste the peace of Heaven. (PN 20§3)

Your face is my only homeland / It is my kingdom of love…

All of Heaven is present in Jesus, and this is why the Church never ceases to read and reread the Holy Gospels. This is why the Father tells us: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: listen to him!” (Mt 17,5:XNUMX).

In this Lenten season, we must take the time to listen to Jesus, to look at him, to contemplate him: he is our treasure. We may be tempted, as Paul says in his Letter, to take our own womb for our God, to think only of earthly things, but that is not what we are called to do. As Thérèse would say in a letter to Abbé Bellière, two months before her death—and we could each hear it for ourselves:

Ah! Your soul is too great to be attached to any consolation here below. It is in heaven that you must live in advance, for it is said: "Where your treasure is, there is your heart also." Your only Treasure, is it not Jesus? Since He is in Heaven, that is where your heart must dwell, I tell you quite simply, my dear little brother, it seems to me that it will be easier for you to live with Jesus when I am near Him forever.

And now, Thérèse is with Jesus forever... She wants to help us, each of us, to truly make Jesus our only treasure and to learn to live on this earth, our pilgrimage on earth:

live it with Jesus,

live it with Jesus present in our hearts,

to live it with Jesus as Master and friend,

live it with Jesus as your guide,

live it with Jesus in trials as in joy,

live it with Jesus in all things.

Yes, just as Paul says to the Philippians: “Brothers, imitate me together”, in the same way, Therese could tell us “Imitate me” because Paul also tells us: “Look carefully at those who behave according to the example we give you.”

May we, in this time of Lent, have the simple courage to take time to contemplate Jesus, to listen to him and to seek to do what he says.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine