March 6, 2023
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A) on March 5, 2023, at The Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 33; 2 Timothy 1:8b-10; and Matthew 17:1-9.
All of today’s readings concern people on the journey of discipleship, but they are each on different points of their journey. To people not familiar with these stories, they would likely predict that each character was at a different point on the journey than they actually were.
In our second reading, the bold and adventurous Paul is reaching the end of the race, but his companion, the young and fearful Timothy, is just beginning his ministry as bishop of Ephesus. Similarly, in our gospel passage, Jesus is nearing the culmination of his earthly journey, but Peter, James, and John are not yet aware of the decades of apostolic ministry lying ahead of them.
Our first reading is about Abram first hearing God’s call, but Abram is already 75 years old. It’s amazing to think it would take roughly 800 years for God to completely fulfill the promise of Abram’s descendants being numerous, being in possession of the entire promised land, and being a sovereign nation.
Our earthly lives are limited, but God’s faithfulness endures forever. For the times when we have chosen to grasp at other sources for safety, let us ask for pardon and mercy.
Mountaintops are special places. There, we seem to be closer to God, both physically and spiritually. But we don’t have to literally climb a mountain to have a metaphysical “mountaintop experience.” Moments of spiritual revelation can happen in the most mundane places, at any point on our spiritual journey. Where have you experienced spiritual mountaintop moments in your life? For me, I’ve had them during my nighttime dreams, in parking garages, and in one rather memorable instance, when stepping out of a dentist’s office.
But I’ve had literal mountaintop experiences, too. While I was in college, I had the opportunity to climb a mountain outside the village of Llangollen, Wales to the ruins of the 13th-century castle Dinas Bran. Frankly, the ruins of Dinas Bran aren’t that remarkable. But I still treasure making that climb.
You see, this whole trip to Wales was a mountaintop experience in my life. I was there with to sing in the Llangollen Eisteddfod, sometimes referred to as “the Olympics of choral singing.” This was the furthest that I had ever traveled from home. In fact, it was the first time I had ever even been on an airplane. I had spent three whirlwind days in London, and now I was in this village of 3,000 people whose population explodes to 80,000 one week each year as groups from all over the world gather for a festival of song and dance. At the ruins of Dinas Bran, looking down on the Welsh countryside, I finally took a moment to reflect on this amazing trip.
As Dominican Sister Elizabeth Michael Boyle, O. P. wrote at the beginning of her poem called “The Climb”:
It is not the ruin
but the view from the ruin
that is worth the long climb
and the risk of a fall.It is not the temple
but the myth that built the temple
that survives
earthquake, erosion, murder, betrayaland the lightning bolt in the heart.
But then, her poem veers in a different direction. She continues:
Day after day in the August sun
we ascend and descend
and ascend again
chilled to the bone in our separate solitudes:
ruins wandering the ruins
islands adrift among islands
stones communing with stones.
So many people consider mountain climbing to be an individual experience. Think of all those motivational posters we’ve seen in corporate conference rooms: they almost always show an individual silhouetted against the sky. But now, nearly twenty-eight years after my hike to the ruins of Dinas Bran, I still remember some of the people who made that hike with me. I disagree Sr. Elizabeth about us being isolated during mountaintop experiences. The only reasons I was in Wales was because I was participating in one of the most communal events that society has devised: singing in a choir. You can’t experience that alone!
The Transfiguration itself has at least three communal dimensions. First of all, Jesus deliberately invited Peter, James, and John to share this experience. Second, Jesus conversed with two other people — Moses and Elijah, who represented the Law and the Prophets, and who had had their spiritual mountaintop experiences on the literal mountaintops! Third, by the Bible’s passive grammatical construction that Jesus was transfigured, I’ve always imagined that the Transfiguration was accomplished not by Jesus himself but by the Trinity as a whole.
Regardless of whatever Jesus himself received through the Transfiguration experience, the apostles came to know him in new ways that made sense only after Jesus’ Resurrection. It’s no wonder that Peter wanted to stay there. Witnessing the Transfiguration was a spiritual shot in the arm on his journey of discipleship. Who wouldn’t want to stay on the mountaintop?
Thirty-two days ago, the last full day of my pilgrimage to the land God promised to Abram 3800 years before, I presided at Mass in the Basilica of the Transfiguration on the top of Mt. Tabor. After walking in the footsteps of Jesus for the previous 7 days, after gaining so many new insights into the experiences of Jesus, I didn’t want to leave, either! But as I preached to the other pilgrims who were sharing that experience with me, we can’t stay on the mountaintop. The work of our redemption is ongoing. Jesus himself had to leave Mt. Tabor and resume his journey. So do we. We must continue to foster peace, to mediate conflict, and to encourage reconciliation.
None of us know how many mountaintop experiences we’ll have before we climb the final mountain to be fully united with God and our loved ones in heaven. Even when we, like Jesus, walk the lonesome valleys and stand our trials in physical isolation, we are never completely alone. We gain strength by recalling the experiences of our past and the people who have shared them with us, assured that one day we will share in the ultimate mountaintop experience of heaven.
Sister Elizabeth concludes her poem:
But it is not the ruin
but the view from the ruin
that will have been worth both climb and fall
when, back to back at the summit,
we pluck the last flower piercing the rubble
and disappear into the view.
The greatest gift of climbing either a physical or a metaphysical mountain is perspective. We can consider our mountaintop experiences to be private revelations, or we can choose to share them with others. And let us remember during this season of Lent, we do not create our own spiritual mountaintop experiences. They are freely given to us by the Holy Spirit… as long as we can allow our own personal agendas to disappear from the view God shows us.