February 28, 2021
Homily for the SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
FEBRUARY 28, 2021
AMDG
(Please read: Mark 9:2-10)
“Through the words of the Gospel, may our sins be wiped away.”
Incredible things are happening in today’s scripture readings.
We see the event happening in each reading. But, it does not stop there.
We also hear of something that is to come – later and far greater than we could even imagine.
In the first reading, the book of Genesis tells us the story of Abraham being called by God to do what would be impossible – to kill his only son.
Even though God had promised Abraham that the generations following him would be like the stars in the sky, how could that promise be kept if his only son is put to death?
Yet, Abraham takes his son to the place that God had called him to. Abraham prepares the altar to sacrifice his only son.
At the very moment when Abraham was about to kill Isaac with his knife, the angel of God stopped him.
We find out in that story that God was testing Abraham’s obedience. Would Abraham attempt to do the one thing that he knew God would never ask of him – or of anyone?
Somehow, Abraham trusted the command of God even though Abraham surely would have chosen to sacrifice himself rather than his own son. In so many ways, this passage of scripture is one of the worst stories ever told. All of time, and all of history pivoted on this one event.
With the death of Isaac, there would have been no chosen people of Israel. Everything would have stopped as Abraham killed his only son.
But, that moment never happened. Instead, Abraham found a ram with its horns caught in the thicket. The ram is what Abraham offered to God in sacrifice that day.
But, what Abraham did that day was to set into history the first step in the long story of the Jewish people.
You see, Mount Moriah – the place where Isaac was to be offered as a holocaust to God – was the exact spot where the temple would one day be constructed in a city to be known as Jerusalem. And, at that mountain, in that future temple, so many lambs and other animals would be offered to God as sacrifices. But…that was many, many centuries away.
And, of course, Isaac DID become the father of the nation of Israel.
What started as a command from God that was hard to even imagine, ended with God reassuring Abraham that “in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing – all because you obeyed my command.”
God expects much of us. God expects more than we can give to him. But, what the scriptures teach us today is that what God is really looking for is our ability to obey God’s commandments. What happens in the future does not depend on what we DO, but on how we RESPOND with faith and obedience to God.
In today’s Gospel passage, we hear today about another impossible story. In St. Mark’s gospel, Jesus takes three of his apostles with him up another mountain.
And, on that high mountain, Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John. The three apostles see Jesus, not as he is – but as he will be.
They see Jesus as he will appear after his resurrection.
As Jesus is transfigured, all of time stands still. Moses and Elijah appear beside Jesus. Yet, Moses and Elijah who represent the law and the prophets of the Old Testament have long been gone from this earth. They represent the past. Jesus represents the future. Yet, it is all happening right now.
And the apostles are stunned by what they see.
Jesus allows the three apostles to see this event to give them the strength to watch Jesus die on the cross, knowing that something better is coming soon.
What they saw on that mountain was the promise of the resurrection.
What the scriptures teach us today is that God often asks unimaginable things of us now, or he lets us see things coming in the future, to guide us in HIS way.
The fact is, that if left to ourselves we would choose our own way; we would lose sight of God. And, without God we would be lost.
And so, in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, he says, “if God is for us, who can be against us?”
That is the one line of scripture that would be worth memorizing today. “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
When we are asked to do something impossible or unimaginable, or if we are being mistreated or falsely blamed, or if we are seeing things that are beyond our belief - then we need to stop and prayerfully remind ourselves that “if God is for us, who can be against us?”
St. Paul writes, “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?”
God asked for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. But God only wanted Abraham to show his obedience to God.
Yet, God “did not spare his own Son.”
God showed the three apostles his Son in his glory – as he would be after his resurrection. As the apostles saw Jesus in his resurrected glory before he was even crucified, we see that what St. Paul writes is true for us all: “how will God not also give us everything else along with him?”
Everything that God gives to us takes us far beyond the moment when Jesus rises from the dead. It gives to us the ability to see Jesus today in his risen glory. After all, isn’t that what we see when Christ comes to us in the Most Blessed Sacrament?
What was, what is, and what will be, all comes to us from God. There are no mistakes.
Even what we find shocking or what leaves us like St. Peter who was unable to speak when he saw the transfiguration of the Lord – it is all a part of God’s greater plan for the things beyond man’s understanding, that God has in mind for humanity.
I would like to share with you today a very brief story of the life of a great saint who lived the mysteries that are presented in today’s scriptures. His name is St. Camillus de Lellis.
The mother of St. Camillus had a dream about her child that she was carrying at that time – before he was even born. She saw him as an adult, wearing an emblem of a cross on his chest, and leading other men wearing the same cross.
St. Camillus’ mother was frightened by this dream because, at that time, only those condemned to death wore a cross like the one she saw.
But, God was planning something great for her unborn child. The mother of St. Camillus never saw her dream fulfilled because she died just a few years later.
But, her son went on to become a bully, a soldier, a gambler, and a man with a violent temper.
As time went on, he was wounded and was placed in a hospital to recover. What he found was that hospitals were awful places to be at that time. He felt compassion for the sick.
As he recovered, he went back to the army and continued to gamble until he was broke.
So, to make a living, Camillus started doing odd jobs at monasteries. He would listen to the monks, and he saw the peace of their lifestyle. It was so different than his own life.
This started to have an effect on Camillus until one day as he was walking to a new monastery to find another job, he began to feel overwhelmed by how he had lived his life.
He decided to join a monastic community. But, no one would take him because of his well-known gambling addiction, his ill health, and his lack of education.
So, instead, he went to Rome and took a job in a hospital. Now he was back where he had started. Or, actually, he was back where God had started with him.
As he gave his life now to serving the sick, other men joined him. St. Camillus started a community of men who cared for the sick in hospitals.
The habit that they wore was a black cassock with a bright red cross on the front – just as his mother had seen in a dream that frightened her before her son was even born.
God was at work! A frightening dream. A son who was lost in gambling and fighting. An experience of sickness in a hospital. A conversion that seemed to take him nowhere because of his reputation. Then, the foundation of an order that wore the red cross.
But, God was not finished yet with St. Camillus. Because many years later, long after his death, another organization adopted his red cross as a sign of compassion and healing. You see it all the time when you give blood, or when you see medical aid being given to people in need all over the world by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and also the American Red cross – who have no connections to the Church.
It all started with an expectant mother’s dream, and her son’s conversion to Christ. But, that is how God works among us – in the lives of the saints, in the story of the beginnings of his people of Israel, and in the promise that his son – who would die for our salvation on the cross – would rise again, and will live forever.
No matter what life brings your way, no matter how awful things really do get from time to time – just remember: “if God is for us, who can be against!”
PRAY EVERY DAY!