(Second Sunday of Lent (A): This homily was given on March 5, 2023 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Genesis 12:1-4; Psalm 33:4-22; 2 Timothy 1:8-10; Matthew 17:1-9.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Second Sunday of Lent 2023]
A couple of years after I arrived at St. Pius, a young man
came to see me whose heart was filled with fear and anxiety. And understandably so. He thought that he might have contracted an
incurable disease in and through his own sinful behavior. We spoke for a half-hour or so that day, and
one of the things I told him was that this difficult situation provided him
with a great opportunity: an opportunity to return to God, and to get his life
back in order. I also told him to pray
very hard that the test results would come back negative from the doctor’s
office—something he was no doubt already doing.
I promised him, of course, that I would do the same.
As I recall, I did see him at Mass the following Sunday, but
I haven’t seen him here since—which means I haven’t seen him here in this building
in 30 years!
Several months after our conversation I did happen to run
into him in town. I said to him, “How
are you doing?” He said, “Fine.” I said, “That’s good.” Now to be perfectly honest with you, because
there were other people around at the time, I did not say to him what I really
wanted to say to him. When he indicated
that he was doing fine I wanted to say, “Well, that’s what I figured. God delivers you from a disease that would
have plagued you for the rest of your life, and within two weeks you forget all
about him.”
God, my brothers and sisters, is always trying to teach us
things. He’s always trying to teach us
things that will make us better, stronger, healthier, holier people. And one of the “classrooms” out of which the
Lord teaches us most often is the classroom of our personal experience. In other words, in and through the events and
circumstances of our lives (both the good and the bad), God tries to teach us some
important, valuable, foundational lessons.
The problem is that very often we either don’t recognize this when it’s
happening, or in a given instance we simply make the choice to ignore the lesson
completely!
Which usually opens us up to a lot of unnecessary pain and
suffering. Take, for example, the young
man I just mentioned. In the midst of
his fear and his anxiety the Lord was saying to him, “My son, you need me. You need to learn to put me at the center of
your life. You need to stop living by your
own rules, and start living your life by mine.
You are now experiencing the consequences of trying to do things your
way. You’re suffering because of your
sin. I give you my commandments because I love you and want you to have peace
and order in your life. So please listen
to me and take this lesson to heart. Go to Mass faithfully, go to confession
regularly, and start to practice your Catholic faith again.”
I pray that at some point in the last 30 years this young
man (who is not so young anymore if he’s still here on earth with us!) has
somehow finally learned that basic but very important spiritual lesson.
And then we have the example given to us in today’s gospel
reading. In this famous scene from
Scripture, Jesus takes Peter, James and John to the top of Mt. Tabor, and gives
them a little glimpse of his divinity.
He gives them a chance to see him in his glorified, heavenly state.
And why did the Lord do this? Was it because he and his three apostles had
nothing better to do that afternoon? Did
Jesus say to himself, “These guys look awfully bored. I think I’ll take them up this mountain and
give them a little light show! That’ll
wake them up! That’ll get their
attention!”
No! He did it to
teach them something. Jesus knew
that the time of his passion and death was fast approaching, and he wanted
these apostles—who were the leaders of the apostolic group—to be as ready as
they possibly could be to face the horrors of those days: Holy Thursday and
Good Friday. So he gave them this little
glimpse of his glory on Mt. Tabor to strengthen them; to increase their trust;
to teach them that he would still be in control even when everything seemed to
be out of control.
Well, unfortunately, as we all know from reading the Bible,
Peter, James and John did not learn the lesson very well. When the heat got turned up in the Garden of
Gethsemane at the arrest of our Lord, all three abandoned him. They ran away as fast as they could. Later that same night Peter denied three
times that he even knew Jesus!
Afterward, when he realized what he had done, he experienced incredible
remorse. The Bible tells us that he went
out and wept bitterly. For Peter, that
was unnecessary suffering. I’m convinced
that if he and his fellow apostles had taken more time to think and pray about
the experience they had that day on Mt. Tabor, they would have handled
themselves a lot differently during that first Holy Week.
From all that I’ve said today, I think it should be clear:
Discovering what the Lord is trying to teach us in and through the experiences
of our daily lives is extremely important.
So I will close my homily this morning by giving you a homework
assignment. The next time you sit down
to pray, don’t just say prayers. Do more
than that. Bring your entire life into
your prayer! That is to say, think of
all the circumstances—the good and the bad—that you’re dealing with at the
present time. Then say, “Lord Jesus,
help me to see what you are trying to teach me in the midst of all this. Help me to recognize the lessons you want me
to learn from these experiences.”
If you do this faithfully and often enough, I’m confident
that the Lord will give you the insights that you’re seeking, the insights that
you need.
Then, of course, take the final step. This is the most difficult one, but it’s also
the most rewarding one. It’s the one that will make the real difference in the
quality of your life:
TAKE THE MESSAGE OF EACH LESSON TO HEART, AND THEN PUT THOSE MESSAGES INTO PRACTICE!
