Transfiguration Sunday

The 2nd Sunday of Lent, Transfiguration Sunday.

Image: Bill Gullo/Unsplash

While Jesus has successfully completed His forty days in the desert and was rewarded with Transfiguration in the sight of His disciples, we are only at day seven. How are you doing ? Are you being changed by your increased prayer and focus on goodness OR, like the first week at the gym, are things beginning to hurt a bit? The concepts of changing, transforming, and transfiguration all intrigue me as we begin week two.

The Paulists tell me:”

To be changed means to become different. Lots of us make changes in our habits during Lent, only to revert to our old ways once Lent is over.

To be transformed means to become thoroughly or dramatically different. It’s still a neutral term: transformation may be thorough, but it’s not necessarily better.

But to be transfigured means to be elevated, to become thoroughly or dramatically more beautiful.”

What an awesome thought: to be transfigured, to be whole and beautiful. It is of course a gift from a loving God who acts in each of us.

On God’s behalf, who will you help be open to transfiguration this Lent?

Who will you allow to bring you to the fullness of beauty this Lent?

-Maureen Condon, CSJ Associate

Ash Wednesday in Two Words

If there are two words that perhaps best describe the intent of Ash Wednesday and of the Lenten season that follows, those words are found in the Scripture assigned to the day.  In the second reading in the liturgy for Ash Wednesday (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2) we read “be reconciled to God”  .. in the present moment “for now is the acceptable time” (and what a hard time we are facing in the world just now; a time when our Lenten commitments find added importance).

What might the words, “be reconciled” mean as, once again, we are called to move into the season of Lent? What might they mean as we hope to sustain our Lenten commitments beyond the designated season in ways that impact our living for the life of God’s world?

Reconciliation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is to “restore friendly relationships”. To deepen, strengthen or to restore relationships, is then, at the very heart of living Lent and indeed life more widely. As I begin Lent, I might ask myself how is my relationship with God, with self, with other humans and with all of creation of which I am a part? How am I called to repent of broken relationships? How do I need to become more deeply a person of relationship and reconciliation? What do I need to do so as form or deepen relationships of love and respect?

These questions go far beyond the three traditional practices of Lent, the call to prayer, fasting and almsgiving (charity toward the neighbour) and yet the traditional practices remain significant as a means toward the restoration or deepening of right relationships.  Lenten practices are never ends in themselves. They are always God-and other-directed!  They help us creatively mend and build relationship with God, other humans and all of creation. It is only in relationship that they find meaning.

In Lent we remind ourselves anew of the Pascal Mystery and Jesus’ journey to the cross and to resurrection not because God wills suffering but because in the face of injustice and cruelty Christ commits to an ultimate act of reconciliation and an act of hope. In so doing he calls us to follow Him, to repair relationships that cause pain, separation and destruction. He opens for us a way by reminding us how deeply we are loved, even in our vulnerabilities and frailties; loved in order that we may love in turn. In Lent we walk with Him and he walks with us in the joys and turmoil of our lives.

So, this Lent and especially in our current, violent, broken world may we be “reconciled” and become reconcilers like Christ, menders of breaches, bearers of hope!  

-Sister Mary Rowell, CSJ

Image: Ahna Ziegler/Unsplash